Meditation as Prayer – 2 ways to get there

I haven’t read my Bible in over 6 months. I’ve dabbled in a few verses here and there but I haven’t actually cracked it open and studied it like I used to. And I stopped praying for a while. At least praying in the traditional sense: speaking thoughts out loud, writing prayers in my journal, whispering words to a being out there. I have friends and family who are wondering whether I’m still a believer at all. Can I really know God and Jesus if I’m not doing these things?

As I devoured books about christian mysticism, trying to figure out how to hold on to at least *some* elements of my faith, the practice of silence kept coming up. “God’s first language is silence,” declared St. John of the Cross. Thomas Keating added, “Everything else is a poor translation. In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God.” This is not easy. Thomas Merton (referencing St. Augustine) explains, “God seems to us to be hidden not merely because of His infinite distance from us but also because of His nearness to us. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves and that is why we do not notice Him.” Richard Rohr further elaborates, “We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What is absent is awareness…” All of these Christian mystics agree that awareness of God starts with being quiet and silent, finding His presence deep within ourselves. Kind of like trying to befriend the soul of our soul. If God’s first language is silence, that’s the best way to approach Him.

I have tried different forms of meditation in the past as essentially every self-help book of the last 20 years lamely cheats on their required word-count by including a chapter (or more) on the benefits of a meditative practice. Of course, my efforts were always compromised by the underlying evangelical/fundamentalist fear that there was some demonic element at work. I do not even know how many Christian articles I read about yoga and meditation being an invitation to let Satan into your life… But nothing I learned or experienced in those brief instances of meditation offered me anything like what I’ve been doing lately.

I think it was Richard Rohr, in his book Everything Belongs, who commented that, if one is going to do centering or contemplative prayer, one should sit in silence for at least 30 minutes. He said that the first 20 minutes are usually just the monkey brain desperately rattling off every worry and fear and question and idea it can think of, as though it will never get the opportunity again. It’s not until those first 20-25 minutes go by that you can actually get your mind to a place of peace and quiet. And even if all you get is 5 minutes of deep peace and internal silence, those 5 minutes can be life-altering. Cynthia Bourgeault describes, “Your own subjective experience of the prayer may be that nothing happened – except for the more-or-less continuous motion of letting go of thoughts. But in the depths of your being, in fact, plenty has been going on, and things are quietly but firmly being rearranged.”

The first time I tried just sitting in silence and letting go of thoughts, it was really hard. I used the Centering Prayer app and set the timer for 45 minutes. I must have repeated my sacred word “Peace” a thousand times as I tried to let go of the million thoughts that popped into my head. A few days later, I came across the idea of looking at thoughts as ships passing by on a river. This image made me think of our sailing trip.

One of my main jobs on the boat was setting the anchor. Matt would determine where we should drop it and position the boat. I would wait for his command and then drop the anchor from the bow. Our 70-pound anchor and 100+ pounds of chain (aka “rode”) would go hurtling into the sea. Once the anchor hit bottom, Matt would reverse the boat in an attempt to dig the anchor into the sand. Knowing that the anchor was well-set brought so much peace of mind. When the wind and waves would kick up, our first thought would be the anchor. Would it hold? Did we dig it in good enough? Was it going to drag? On those nights, I would anxiously check the GPS every few minutes to make sure our position wasn’t changing – an indicator that the anchor was drifting. A handful of times, we weren’t quite sure of our situation and we needed to confirm that the anchor was solid. Matt or Jon (a co-captain) would dive into the water and use the chain to pull themselves down to the anchor.

That is how I get into the deepest parts of myself now. That is how I think about centering prayer and the practice of silence – as pulling myself down the anchor rode chainlink by chainlink by chainlink.

For a long time, I loved the image – because I had experienced it! – of being on a boat that is getting tossed and thrown around by waves and yet having confidence that the anchor will hold. But when I heard about thoughts as ships passing by and considered our anchoring experiences, I decided – to heck with the ship!! I want to be where the anchor is.

So, now, when I sit down to be silent, I envision myself jumping off this crazy boat of my fear-filled and anxiety-ridden surface life and using the chain to pull myself down to the Anchor for my soul. Then, I sit with the Anchor. I am no longer being shaken up by my thoughts up there on the surface, but am instead settled in the stillness and clarity and ease of the deep.

This imagery draws me down inside myself. With every thought, I mentally reach for another chainlink, say “peace,” and go farther down. It allows me to release the stress and anxieties that daily threaten to consume me. I’ve heard other people think of it as descending a staircase. For me, the ocean picture presents a more beautiful experience because I have seen and known the way the sloshing foamy white mess of the surface so quickly gives way to a translucent, gloriously blue, quiet place of peace if you are willing to brave the depths.

Another method I sometimes use is that inspired by Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. He writes, “Look again at that dot {earth, as seen from space}. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

While Sagan doesn’t believe in a God, I think of this quote as I mentally “zoom” out from the earth, up into an exquisitely quiet and still space full of stars, where I can have a higher and distanced perspective on whatever is happening in life, and commune with the Creator of it all. Where the anchoring pulls me deep to the one who Anchors me, this space image lifts me up, far away from the pressures and anxieties of the world, into the same presence of the Great Mystery. Both practices lead me to the same place.

The more distance I put between my soul and my surface-self, whether in essence going “up” or going “deep,” the more peace there is. The more rest there is. This is not some woo-woo thing of believing that *I* am the source of everything, but rather this is my new way of experiencing the presence of the One who Is.