On prayer...that is, on meditating...

...neat book!

Reading this morning, came across this writing, which is very helpful, as one thinks of prayer in silence, as one thinks of meditation: what is it and how does one do it, after all is said and done? This came to the 'rescue' just in time! Allow me to share these two paragraphs from Finley's book, "Christian Meditation", pp. 123-4. Enjoy!

"This  is the approach to meditation that I am encouraging you to try as well. Sitting still in meditation, learn to settle into the ungraspable immediacy of your bodily stillness. Sitting still and straight, settle into a deep meditative awareness of each life-sustaining breath. Learn to listen so deeply to your breathing that your very consciousness begins to take on the primordial, life-sustaining  texture of your breathing. If you are tired as you meditate, learn to settle into a deep, reverential attentiveness to your bodily fatigue. If you are rested as you meditate, learn to listen and become one with the sense of bodily well-being that being rested brings, If there is pain in your back, or legs, or if your stomach is upset, or if the room is hot or cold - learn to listen deeply to the intimate texture of these and all aspects of your bodily being. Be meditatively attentive to, but do not get caught up in, the urges within you, both those that are fleeting and those that linger. Learn to be present, open, and awake to all that your bodily being reveals itself to be. Without clinging to all that is pleasant, without rejecting all that is unpleasant, let your bodily being be - in a restful, open awareness of all it so unthinkably is. Sitting in this way, you will learn, little by little, to neither abandon nor  invade the graced mystery of your bodily being. 

Scripture says, "The word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). As we sit in meditation, we realize that these words are revelations, not just of the historical Christ but of ourselves as well. We sit in meditation pondering, breath by breath, the Word becoming flesh in the breath of us, in the very bodily being of who we simply are, we sit listening to God bodying himself forth in and as our bodily being. We listen to each breath, realizing, in some obscure manner, that we are listening to God breathing into us the gift of life. We realize, in ways we cannot explain, that each breath is carrying us all the way home into God, from whom each breath comes."

Now, excuse me. I am going 'breathing'; won't you?

Happy New Year!