To change ...

Taking up the challenge offered in this blog is about accepting the invitation to change, or perhaps, to be changed. Congratulations.!!

"To change we must:

hurt enough to need to;

learn enough to want to;

and feel safe enough to try." Maxwell

I have lived with this quote for at least 15 years and it describes quite accurately my experience of "failures" and "successes" in my prayer and meditation practices. It is a circular road map. Repeating in large and small movements in life, always building, never wasted ...

Lasting change in my life has always begun in pain.

Over four years ago I was desperate for the undergirding nurture that I knew could come from a daily Centering Prayer practice. I knew this from other people's sharing, from retreats, from reading and from my own 1 or 2 week times of success. I began, a day at a time, and now find this so precious I can't conceive of life without this prayer.

"To change we must: hurt enough to need to ..."

My "hurt" was not life shattering, just the feelings most of you already know. Chronic feelings. Tired, lonely, putting on the 'face', giving to others from the bottom of my spiritual 'gas tank', in a demanding ministry where I could not relieve the pain and tragedy of others. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I was ready, again, to do it.

In future posts I'll say more.

But we need to start with how we "hurt enough to need to".

Please share in a general way in the comments what has brought you to the desire to start, begin again or change your spiritual practice.

What convinces you that you 'need' to change, in order to live?

Blessings,

Bill

today's reflection

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen - Anthem

One of the results of the initial Spiritual Practice Challenge was some folks from Squamish United joined in. The second result was this year we made an advent calendar of spiritual practice.

The feedback from the congregation has been encouraging. Several have reflected that they are engaging in advent in a way they never before. Suddenly when John the Baptist showed up this week people had a bit of an idea of what "Preparing the way" might look like.

In the advent calendar Some days the practice may be something as simple as take notice...

This Sunday one of the practice options was "Go for a walk to notice life in the cold winter season. Notice the salmon, the eagles, the fall leaves, the mountains, the snow(?)...."

That morning as Carol and Wilf looked out there window this is what they saw. Then they came to church and heard the a reading and message from Isaiah 11.

Wow!

Silence sought, and found!

In an article titled “These days, silence is truly golden (ie. rare and expensive)” (Globe and Mail, 27 November 2010), columnist Katrina Onstad notes:

“This Remembrance Day, the Royal British Legion released a charity single with Thom Yorke from Radiohead, though he didn’t contribute any music. The song cost $1.29 in Canada on iTunes and is called Two Minutes of Silence, which is exactly what it is. The anti-song song landed in Britain’s Top 20. ... This is what it’s come to: Silence is a novelty, and a product.”

Returning as I was from co-leading an 8 day silent retreat (see http://www.naramatacentre.net/programs-fallwinterspring.asp?wp_id=698), I was struck by both the accuracy and the irony of her observations. I guess it’s no surprise that a culture that can stick an ad on a banana can also commercialize a psychic space that is universally present but rendered scarce and precious by a world of unrelenting sound and fury.

Onstad goes on to point out that “the English word ‘noise’ comes from the Latin ‘nausea’, as in disgust” or, more accurately, sea-sickness (from the Greek root naus meaning “ship”). Indeed, noise is a sickness that penetrates into the soul. My experience has been that the cacophony of the external world is often matched by the riotousness of my inner self. By stepping across a sonic threshold into silence we may leave external noise behind only to be met by the deafening roar of our own inner voice, “chattering like a tree full of monkeys, swinging from branch to branch” as it was once described to me. Silence does not immediately quell this noise within; au contraire, the contrast makes our inner turmoil all the more apparent.

Thus is set the challenge: to invite Silence to penetrate and permeate our Being, to allow our selves to be absorbed into quiet, to abandon our personality and be moved into something much deeper than our own noisy world. It happened for me in the chapel at Naramata Centre during Vigils, shortly after 3:00 AM, on the 7th day of retreat. We were observing the old monastic Hours (as interpreted by Macrina Wiederkehr in her book Seven Sacred Pauses [Notre Dame, Ind: Sorin Books, 2008]) when, deep in contemplation, I gently became aware of a thin fissure of indigo in the floor of my consciousness, an abyss of silence which beckoned me down (or did it reach up to envelop me?), unprotesting, into a truly primordial stillness. The memory of that moment (that minute? that hour?) carries me even now and is indelibly stamped, in dark ink, upon the reaches of my soul.

Though quietness has been driven almost to extinction in the hurly burly of the post-modern world, Silence, like Grace, remains abundant and free. Though hidden and even commodified in a busy age, we have only to avail ourselves of the opportunity to engage it and Silence will come to us, full and deep, to dwell as a Presence within and among us.

Turning Point

The spiritual care network team agreed that we might post some of our posts from our original practice challenge. This posted at the beginning of the first challenge and it was a turning point for me which reminded me of what it means to take time with God.

"I am finally getting to the post I wanted to give yesterday. And that is a piece of the story. I know I won't shock most of you when I explain my day started with prep for an important meeting at 6am and ended with book study at 9pm. All day I was thinking oh no I have to do a spiritual practice. Oh no I have to blog...oh no I am going to fail at this already. And then I remembered the sermon I preached just a couple days before.

I spoke on reverence and gratitude (it was thanksgiving after all). I found a beautiful reflection by Joyce Rupp which included a quote from Merton and so I preached "We experience deep gratitude as we take notice of that which is beyond us. With Merton on this thanksgiving day “I am going to put aside my ‘when it happens’ and my ‘if only this could be’ and my ‘when things get better’ and my ‘as soon as I have this.’ I am going to harvest what I now have, gather all the many gifts that are already mine. I am going to observe what has been placed in the granary of my heart and marvel at the abundance. I will stand before this heap of blessings and take a long, grateful look. I will say farewell to my ‘when’ and be thankful for what is."

And so I discovered in the clutter of my day that I perhaps might refocus some of the activities I already had in my schedule. As I rushed into my Yoga class I discovered this was exactly the spiritual practice I needed for the day. Just like when people come to me after a sermon and say "Where you speaking to me today?" I sometimes think the same thing of my Yoga instructor. She began class with meditation (she never begins class with meditation). She asked us first to ground ourselves. Be aware of our breath and then let go of the clutter, the rush, the things we can't accomplish.... Within two minutes I felt my squeezing in of Yoga was somehow Devine intervention. I found myself in a place of releasing the dissatisfaction, and embracing the abundance I already have.

I know that this isn't what I had desired to do. I wanted to pick up something new - be a superstar spiritual practicer instead I found myself in gratitude for what I already have. Namaste." Karen