Moment of Christ

To know ourselves, to understand ourselves. . .we simply must make contact with our spirit. All self-understanding arises from understanding ourselves as spiritual beings. It is only contact with the universal Holy Spirit that can give us the depth and the breadth to understand our own experience. The way to this is not difficult. It is very simple. But it does require serious commitment and serious involvement in our own existence.

The wonderful revelation that is there for all of us to discover, if only we will set out on the path with discipline, is that our spirit is rooted in God and that each of us has an eternal destiny and an eternal significance. That is the primary discovery for each of us to make, that the nature we possess has infinite potential for development and that development can only come if we undertake this pilgrimage to our own center. It is only there, in the depths of our own being, that we can discover ourselves rooted in God. Meditation is just this way of making contact with our own spirit and in that contact finding the way of integration, of finding everything in our experience coming into harmony, everything in our experience judged and aligned on God.

The way of meditation is very simple. All each of us has to do is to be as still as possible in body and in spirit. . . . Learning to meditate is learning to let go of your thoughts, ideas and imagination and to rest in the depths of your own being. Always remember that. Don’t think, don’t use any words other than your one word, don’t imagine anything. Just sound the word in the depths of your spirit and listen to it. Concentrate upon it with all your attention. Why is this so powerful? Basically, because it gives us the space that our spirit needs to breathe. It gives each of us the space to be ourselves. When you are meditating you don’t need to apologize for yourself and you don’t need to justify yourself. All you need to do is to be yourself. You need to accept from the hands of God the gift of your own being.

Meditate for 30 Minutes. . . Remember: Sit down. Sit still and upright. Close your eyes lightly. Sit relaxed but alert. Silently, interiorly, begin to say a single word. We recommend the prayer-phrase "Maranatha." Recite it as four syllables of equal length. Listen to it as you say it, gently, but continuously. Do not think or imagine anything—spiritual or otherwise. Thoughts and images will likely come, but let them pass. Just keep returning your attention—with humility and simplicity—to saying your word in faith, from the beginning to the end of your meditation.

-- John Main, OSB, MOMENT OF CHRIST

Finding God Everywhere

"As birds . . . find the air wherever they fly, and fish are surrounded by water wherever they swim, so wherever we go, we must find God everywhere."
-- Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton was born on this day in 1774.

Noon Day Sun

I see at least 100 shows a year, but rarely do I walk out of the theatre feeling as uplifted as I did after seeing this provocative, beautifully acted play Monday night. It was the rare experience of seeing a production that is first rate in every way. Noon Day Sun is theatre at its transforming best.

Cassandra Medley’s play, under the insightful direction of Victor Lirio, is involving from start to finish. It tells the story of Zena (Gin Hammond), a young Southern black woman with skin so light she was nicknamed Snow as a child. Filled with grief after the death of her infant twin daughters, she walked out on her alcoholic husband (Ron Cephas Jones) and boarded a train headed north. As she was ready to settle into the segregated car, the white conductor saw her and told her she was in the “nigger” car and offered to escort her to one for whites. She hesitated a moment before taking his outstretched arm.

We learn part of this at the start as she stands on stage considering the turn her life took that day 10 years earlier. The rest of her earlier life is enacted in flashbacks over four days in 1957. In her present day we see her the wife of a white man (Michael McGlone) whose ambition has carried him from the Irish Catholic tenement world into a promising career in Detroit’s auto industry. He adores her and she seems to love him too.

Her contrived world is shattered on a "white hot day in August” when she encounters her first husband, to whom she is still legally married, working as a janitor in the hotel where she and her husband are staying on a business trip. She also learns that despite having been told she would never have any more children, she is pregnant.

Medley has written characters that are fully dimensional so we don’t judge Zena for the choice she made or the other characters for their reactions. “It’s my responsibility to get myself a better life,” was how she rationalized her decision. The characters are believable and their situations all too human.

Hammond is compelling as Zena, as is the entire cast, which is rounded out by Melanie Nicholls-King, Penelope Darcel, David Newer and Nino Spallacci.

Set and lighting designer Maruti Evans does a fabulous job of creating this world, doing marvels with only a couple chairs and tables. He presents past and present opposite each other through lighting that heightens the atmosphere of shadow and ambiguity central to the play.

Noon Day Sun gives human faces and human hearts to the issues of racism and the search for identity. My only regret is that it’s closing Saturday. I strongly urge you to catch this production at The Beckett Theatre in these last few days. Tickets are only $18 and can be purchased via Ticket Central at www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200.
 

Meditation

Wanted to share with you this Guideposts article by Jessica C. Kraft. I meditate twice a day and meet with a meditation group once a month at St. Bart’s. It really does change your life.

The Kinko's in San Francisco's financial district feels like an emergency room. Every day, 800 customers hurry into the store, in a panic to get their copies made and reports finished. Even staff members can succumb to the stress. But not branch manager Jesper Jorgensen. He keeps his cool, no matter what difficulties arise. Decades of daily meditation practice have taught him how to stay centered and focused in the copy-shop hothouse. "The controlled environment of formal meditation builds clarity and stability, and I'm able to just let the stress bounce off of me," he says. "I choose to stay calm and peaceful."

Practitioners of different meditation traditions experience these same effects: mental clarity, improved concentration, an ability to withstand and repel the stresses of everyday life. And scientists have recently uncovered the physical benefits of regular meditation.

Rajendra Sharma, M.D., medical director of The Diagnostic Clinic in London, has studied the physiological effects of meditation. "People who meditate automatically counteract stress chemicals, and so reduce stress-related illnesses such as ulcers and recurrent flu and colds," he says. "Meditators feel better, heal quicker and have less illness."

In a recent study, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers scanned the brains of 20 people who regularly meditated and compared them to people who never had. The frontal cortex, which processes higher functions like memory and decision-making, was thicker (indicating more capacity) and had aged much less in the meditators.

Researchers at Harvard found that people in deep meditative states exhale more nitric oxide, a process that relaxes arteries and helps blood flow, thereby lowering blood pressure.

Meditating for 40 minutes does more to refresh you than taking caffeine or spending the same amount of time napping or exercising. Studies at the University of Kentucky showed that the meditating helped people perform best on tests of alertness and reaction time.

The benefits are clear. Meditating can bring inner calm and radiant health. But how exactly is it done?

It's not about closing your eyes and napping while sitting up. Nor is it blanking out in a trance. Lama Ole Nydahl, who teaches Tibetan meditation, says it is "not about getting to emptiness, but rather, meditation is the space where everything happens and you are fully aware and happy."

If you've ever worked intently on a cross-stitch piece, swum a half-mile without stopping or prayed with unswerving attention, you have some idea what meditation is like. It's a feeling of complete absorption in what you're doing. As Lesley Garner writes in Everything I've Ever Done That Worked, meditation "is an intense mental discipline." It's a deep state of concentration and focus that is aligned with your breathing.

Breathing is fundamental to meditation. Why? Aryeh Kaplan, author of Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide,  explains that because breathing occurs unconsciously, when we focus on it, we make a connection with our unconscious mind. "By learning how to concentrate on and control your breath you can go on to learn how to control the unconscious mind," Kaplan says.

Most religions include ritual meditation. While the most popular meditation methods are derived from Buddhist and Hindu traditions, there are also Christian, Jewish and Muslim varieties. And some types of meditative practice are not religious at all—they are focused on deep breathing and relaxation.

The Reverend Lesley Adams, a college chaplain in Geneva, New York, uses guided meditation to build bridges between students of different faiths. She has her students gather and sit comfortably with eyes closed while she talks them through the process of quieting the mind. "We begin with attention to breathing and relaxation of the body. This can work for simply learning to calm and center oneself," she says. Chaplain Adams has also used the ancient meditative practice of labyrinth-walking to re-engage students with Christian worship.

Walking meditation is a good choice for those who find sitting meditation too relaxing. Meditators do focused perambulation around a large room or out in the open. Mitchell Ratner, Ph.D., the senior teacher at Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center in Takoma Park, Maryland, says meditation is not necessarily about ceasing activity. "When you are walking, you can breathe in with one step, and out with the next. You should be aware of where you are going, but always be coming back to your breath and your feet." Even on the elliptical machine at the gym, you can be more aware of what is going on around you, and focus on the moment.

Remember Transcendental Meditation, popularized by the Beatles in the 1960s? The TM technique involves a twice-daily 20-minute sitting meditation practice during which a single individualized phrase, or mantra, is repeated over and over. The chanting and concentration on breathing creates a deepened state of awareness with many benefits. According to a 2006 analysis in the American Journal of Cardiology, TM improves blood pressure and sleep patterns and increases life span. Researchers documented a 23 percent decrease in death rates among practitioners compared to nonpractitioners of the same age.

Meditation is also an integral part of yoga practice, which is where a lot of people first learn about it. Emily Gallagher of Delmar, New York, started doing Hatha yoga 13 years ago, and particularly liked the final pose, sivasana, in which you lie on the floor for a few minutes of meditation. That led her into meditating for longer periods. Now she meditates every day to energize her spirit. "Some people have a cup of coffee. I do yoga and meditate," she says.

Some practitioners like to gather in a meditation group (called a sangha in the Buddhist tradition), for support and inspiration. Andrew Twaddle joined a sangha in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri, after a trip to Thailand led him to learn more about Buddhist meditation. He believes group meditation helps his spiritual growth. "The association with others in the practice leads to increased generosity and loving-kindness."

Mindfulness meditation is growing in popularity. The practice is about building upon what Ratner calls the "wordless awareness" developed in meditation, and applying it to everyday situations. Most of us live as if we have a stereo system in our heads that's constantly playing back our plans, concerns and worries. Mindfulness helps us experience the world without that soundtrack of anxiety. As Thich Nhat Hahn writes in The Miracle of Mindfulness, even the act of washing dishes can prompt a greater appreciation of life: "I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands."

Those who practice any kind of meditation know the benefits of clarity, concentration and relaxation improve the more regularly you meditate. Making it a daily habit is key. Experts recommend 20 to 30 minutes daily, but just five minutes does good for you. Even if you're in a rush to get to work, try to sit down for a few minutes to focus on your breathing—it might just make the difference between feeling stressed out and feeling stress-free.

Good advice

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
--M.K. Gandhi

Connect with God

by Gina Bridgeman

Thus says the Lord: 'Set your house in order...'
—Isaiah 38:1

You can see Camelback Mountain from all around Phoenix, Arizona (a bit of it even from my backyard), and it really does look like a camel lying on its stomach. But seeing its most interesting feature is a tougher trick. There’s a chunk of rock near the camel’s forehead that looks like a prayerful figure trudging up the mountain clothed in a dark brown robe.

Because of the surrounding rock formations, you can see the Praying Monk only from certain angles. Driving my son Ross home from school, I catch sight of the monk as I approach from the west, but within a few blocks he disappears as I face the camel head-on. More than once I’ve heard Ross’s frustration as he’s tried to show the monk to out-of-town visitors. "Wait," he’ll say, "you have to be in just the right spot to see him." And as promised, the monk suddenly pops into view.

Just the right spot to see him. Lately I’ve been thinking that’s a clue to what can go wrong in my spiritual life. When my days are hectic, with prayer and devotional time cut short or even cut out, I start to feel disconnected from God. I’m simply not in the right place to see God clearly. God’s always there, as steady as the familiar Praying Monk, but I’m driving down the road too busy with life’s distractions to notice.

It’s probably not a coincidence that this rock formation is a praying monk. When I spy the monk in prayer, he’s a perfect reminder of what I must do when my priorities slip. I need to slow down, pull off the road if necessary, and make time for the things that bring me closer to God, especially peaceful time alone to talk with Him. I need to get myself back in just the right spot to see God unmistakably before me every day.

Lord, help me put all distractions aside, to see and hear and be with only You.


The above devotional is excerpted from Daily Guideposts book of devotionals, now available on OurPrayer.

O Clap Your Hands

When this book arrived I immediately put on the accompanying CD by Gloriae Dei Cantores. I knew it would take me awhile to get to the text, but I wanted to hear the music right away. This choral groups has given me so much joy and comfort in the last year since I discovered their magnificent voices. I have several of their CDs and am always happy to receive another.

As always, their singing is uplifting and at times powerful. It’s also a great way to make the information in the book, by Gordon Giles, come to life. The subtitle is “A Musical Tour of Sacred Choral Works,” and that’s just what it is. Giles, vicar of St. Mary Magdalene Church in North London and a trained musician, offers the equivalent of a course in the sacred music of such masters as Rachmaninov, Palestrina, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Vaughan Williams. He presents the history behind beloved liturgical arrangements of “Kyrie,” “Gloria” and “Santus,” plus psalms and chants. He supplements the information with interesting facts about the composers and concludes with a prayer. Divided into 30 chapters, the book is a beautiful tool for a month of daily devotions. After learning about these works and prayerfully reflecting on their meaning, listening to the choir perform them is an inspired way to take the knowledge into the soul. What a brilliant idea!

I used Giles’ earlier devotional, O Come Emmanuel: A Musical Tour of Daily Readings for Advent and Christmas, last year and will do so again this December. I was deeply moved by that work, and it didn’t even have an accompanying CD. This latest is a double blessing.