I read a book in Seminary, the memoir of a young man who went to participate in the life and practice of a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan. The one bit that sticks in my memory was his recounting trying to achieve the proper seating positions for the meditative practices in jeans. Not an easy cultural crossover.
Meditation, the art and practice of emptying the mind, of focused breathing. It might include images of people sitting in the full lotus position, hands on knees, fingers pointed upward in a gentle pinched position, eyes closed, maybe mumbling a mantra or something. Something stereotypically Eastern in design and importation.
Mindfulness is a meditative practice, according to the Mayo Clinic website. But this last paragraph is what I think of as 'typical' meditation. And it has Christian antecedents, especially in the cloistered communities of the church. But it had its application in secular life as well. I remember reading -of a medieval practice of a young man engaging in an all-night vigil before they were knighted by their lord.
To sit in a meditative silence, calmly setting aside intrusive thoughts, focused on a pattern of breathing until it becomes muscle memory and we can just "be". As Christians, there we have the time to simply listen for God. I am not saying that God will present like an intrusive thought. Or a divine “Hi, how are you!” But in contra-distinction to the active prayer-life where we tend to monopolize the conversation, meditation allows an opportunity to offer the gift of awareness, to come powerfully into God's presence and to listen to the Divine.
Pastor Peter
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