What helps you see clearly? I was recently asked this question (via a blogpost by Mahan Siler--see link). Good question. My discipline of centering prayer is probably the most helpful practice I have for seeing clearly. Please don't believe for a minute that I am an expert at centering prayer and always have a deeply holy experience each day. I am guilty 100 times over of what the Buddhists call "monkey mind"--my mind hops and jumps and tumbles all over the place in those twenty to thirty minutes of intentional silence in the morning. But I show up. I set my phone timer with its little gong chime and I sit. In silence. In peace. Centering prayer helps me to stop and turn the world and worries away from my doorstep for a brief respite. Mahan uses the image (from Ronald Heifetz) of leaving the dance floor and going up onto the balcony. There are many ways to get to the balcony (and many situations that need that balcony perspective), but centering prayer is one of my stairways to the balcony and to seeing more clearly, to feeling more deeply the presence of God.
So what helps YOU see clearly?
4 comments:
Thank you, Jeanne. That is a helpful description of what I experience as I try to do some form of meditation. Mine keeps changing from Buddhist to Christian and back again. Not sure if that's the right way either. Thanks!
Ah, Maria..I know. I think meditation--whatever the form-- links all religions together--and all of us,too.
This is Diane/La Peregrina, from the RevGalBlogPals Meet & Greet today. Love your blog posts, sermons and non-sermon ones! And I'm happy to find another centering prayer practitioner (or at least someone else who begins with intent, regardless of whether our minds stay with that intent!). Thanks!
Thanks for your kind comments, Diane!
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