So lent has truly begun...

One of the practices I am making time for this Lent is "centering prayer" ~ an old friend who has returned at just the right time ~ both because there are some in my community that want/need to practice this form of grace-filled prayer and because my soul is hungry, too.  Small wonder, then, that I've been spending time reading Henri Nouwen who once wrote:  The paradox is that hospitality asks for the creation of an empty space so that the guest can find his/her own soul.

That is, as my calling as a pastor ripens this season I realize my own need for nourishment and solitude in order to respond with hospitality and integrity.  Centering prayer as described by Fr. Thomas Keating is the most grace-filled form of contemplative prayer because it is all about quiet intention.  Thinking prayers "tend to reinforce our addictive process ~ our frenzy to 'get something' from the outer world to fuel our compulsions or mask our pain ~ but not so with centering prayer... for if we can (learn) to rest on a regular basis for twenty to thirty minutes without thinking, we begin to see that we are not our thoughts.  We have thoughts, but we are not our thoughts.  Most people suffer because they think that they are their thoughts and if their thoughts are upsetting, distressing or evil, they are stuck with them.  If they just stopped thinking for a while every day as a discipline, they would begin to see that they do not have to be dominated by their thoughts."

In a word, we could be filled and nourished simply by resting in God's grace as Christ promised.  This Lent as I try to live in gratitude, Nouwen's words about hospitality speak to me, too:  "Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and open our houses to the stranger with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveller."  In order to be present ~ and rested ~ to greet these travellers, I have recognized my own need for extended solitude.

A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share the gifts of life... I am deeply convinced that gentleness, tenderness, peacefulness and the inner freedom to move closer to one another, or to withdraw from one another, are nurtured in solitude.  Without solitude, we cling to each other; we begin to worry about what we think and feel about each other; we quickly become suspicious of one another or irritated with each others; and we begin, often in unconscious ways, to scrutinise each other with a tiring hypersensitivity.

Without solitude shallow conflicts easily grow deep and cause painful wounds... but with solitude we learn to depend more on God.

Nouwen observes that such an awareness is never permanent.  Rather, they work as polarities where we find ourselves moving between hostility and hospitality in each hour and every day. For whatever reason, we are moving towards a deeper awareness of this strange journey ~ and that has awakened me to just how important solitude is in nourishing this commitment.  And so the Lenten fast has truly begun...