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We are called to practice stillness as a Spiritual Discipline. To feed slowly and deliberately in the green pastures. To expand organically from within; to ripen in the waiting. To linger trustingly in the soil of hibernation. To gaze with wonder upon creation taking place inside us and outside us. To rest in the Source, detached from material things, and to spend time loving Christ in the Quiet.
I often practice a meditation of loving openness, or loving awareness. This entails being still and quiet while receiving the sensory happenings around and within us. After body is relaxed and mind stilled, we open to whatever happens. Sensations on our body become present to awareness. We become aware of things like ticks of a clock, wind blowing outside, the bark of a distant dog, the humming of a refrigerator, the sound of air from an overhead vent, neighbors talking, a car passing by, … We do not experience these as disruptions of Silence. If the telephone rings, we appreciate its unique quality. The meditation invites us to enjoy retreat, even refugee from the usual movement and noise, strengthening muscles of loving detachment, or loving attention to the Word.
We violate our natures if living from addiction to busyness. We defy creation when forgetting the business of living is living. We betray the gift of Life if we anxiously trample the sacred ground of the present. We learn through stillness to be gentle in the moment.
In stillness we embrace the present as a present to us from the Creating One. We pour forth gratitude for it, sometimes words of thankfulness erupting from the Silence, sometimes simply expressing affectively the delicate joy of appreciation.
Spiritual Exercises
1. What is meant by “addiction to busyness”?
2. What is “loving detachment,” in contrast to only detachment?
3. How do we “anxiously trample the sacred ground of the present”?
4. What is the relationship between stillness, as a Spiritual Discipline, and trust in the Sacred Presence?
5. Do you practice stillness as a Spiritual Discipline? If not, would you like to? Would you, then, begin today with five to ten minutes of stillness?
6. Try the exercise of loving awareness, or loving openness, described above.
Prayer
Sacred Presence, I rest in you. Being still, I sense you near. I love you. I am here, waiting for you, my Love. I am here. Amen.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry,
An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors
The People of the
United Methodist Church
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