living into a time beyond time...

As Christmastide moves into its closing days (I refuse to surrender to the culture's insistence that Christmas ends on New Year's Day; not stridently or judgmentally, mind you, just quietly as I look towards the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6) I have turned again to Centering Prayer. There is a reason why the parable of the prodigal child in St. Luke's 15th chapter remains a favorite: besides my multiple other wanderings, my adult life seems to revolve around returning home time and again to the stillness of grace after a season or so of distractions and distress. The Psalmist cuts to the chase: Lord, make me know your ways. Lord, teach me your paths. Make me walk in your truth, and teach me: for you are God my savior. (Psalm 25)

For those who would like to try - or return to - Centering Prayer let me suggest Cynthia Bourgeault's website: The Contemplative Society. You may find it here @ https://www.contemplative.org/cynthia-bourgeault/) Under the banner go to "Contemplative Practices" and scroll down to Centering Prayer. She writes: 

Most faith traditions have some form of meditation or contemplation. Virtually all methods of meditation have a goal of expanding, or deepening, the consciousness of the practitioner. The details vary. The Contemplative Society focuses on Centering Prayer, a surrender method of meditation, or contemplative prayer, that reaches back to the early days of Christianity.

There is also a concise "how to do centering prayer" that will get you started. NOTE: I was grateful to find a reference to an app available from Contemplative Outreach for use on a smart phone that offers an overview, opening chimes, prayers and a timer. Go to your App Store and search for it there or copy this link: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/centering-prayer-mobile-app. It is are truly helpful use of technology!

After a few days I am aware of how lively my "monkey mind" really is, and, how wonderful it is to begin practicing being beyond time. The late Henri Nouwen and others have written that when our journey through this life is over, and we enter being with the holy beyond time, we shall be at peace. In a way, Centering Prayer is a foretaste of life beyond life and certainly beyond time. It is also a way to learn how to live into the wisdom of our feelings without being enslaved to them. In another section of Bourgeault's website, "Welcoming Practice," she writes: 

The Welcoming Practice takes the core of Centering Prayer out into daily life; that is, the witnessing component which is one of the most transformative of the Christian spiritual practices. According to Cynthia Bourgeault, it is important to identify this as a practice and not a prayer, maintaining the emphasis on the action of letting go as opposed to passive acquiescence to external circumstances. The practice was developed by Mary Mrozowski in the early 1980s, drawing on her work with biofeedback training, Jean Pierre de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence, and her integration of Thomas Keating’s teachings on the “false-self system”. It is intended to cultivate surrender to our deeper Self in times when attachment is tempting: difficult feelings and situations, feelings of inflation (eg. smugness, pride, vainglory), and even the “highs” (eg. “I don’t want this to end!”).

It is the practice of living as a non-anxious presence in a world obsessed and addicted to anxiety. Earlier in the day I came upon this stunning poem from the heart of the poet Karen An-hwei Lee. (find out more about her @ https://karen anhweilee.com/about/) I heard it on the January 1, 2020 podcast of "The Slowdown" @ https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2020/01/01/288-on-the-turning-of-the-year. What a perfect way to be grounded in the start of this new year even as Christmastide subsides" "On the Turning of the Year."

To witness five seventeen-year cicada
cycles in a lifetime—To hear an entomologist refer to cycles
as blooms—

To say a metallic clicking noise repels the crows in our apple
orchard—To say cicada blooms explain the crashing
bird populations—

To list reasons why I wish to murmur injunctions of praise
in the ellipses of fireflies—to wonder if a funicular monikered angel flight,

rusted out-of-commission on a city hill,
a mourning dove over beds of grass-licked cloud, hovers—

To ponder the alpha and omega of eating
salmon roe—To sing the floating syllables of winter suns—
trilling rose-fire of melisma—

To arrange stargazer lilies on a console so a day
brightens—To seek an equivalent for nonexistence
not absence—

To pray until we vanish together, in sum—
To say, without song, hosanna—at the turning of the year