The Stillpoint Within
The Stillpoint Within
Tuesday after the Resurrection – April 14, 2020
We are challenged, currently, to be creative, to find different ways to love people.
Often, since we have been distanced from one another by the coronavirus threat, we have been told that for right now, we best love people by staying away from them. (And all the introverts say, “I’ve been telling you this for years!”)
We make phone calls . . . we use FaceTime . . . try to serve, while maintaining proper distancing.
And we pray. We pray for people, if only by whispering the names of those we know who are in need . . . speaking aloud the names of hospitals . . . saying the names of cities and towns that are overwhelmed . . .
We meditate . . . we find some contemplative practice to keep us centered and anchored . . . we quietly write poetry . . . we take out a sketchpad and draw or use pastels to doodle or splash some watercolors on a page . . . we regularly drop anchor through a meditative prayer practice (Centering Prayer or meditation or a breath prayer).
Evelyn Underhill talks about loving and serving the world, but rightly says that we have to allow God to shape us as the kind of persons who can truly love and serve. Loving and serving move outward from a life that is being shaped inwardly through stillness, simplicity, and openness.
We may not be able to love in typical ways right now, but we can tend the inner life . . . and we can find creative ways to reach out to the world from the stillpoint within.
Read this excerpt from Evelyn Underhill:
Seen on its largest scale in the saints, real growth is towards a life of service penetrated by and utterly united with a life of prayer. Thus it is also a life of peace and power. Of course it is impossible to serve well without perfect contact with those whom we serve. Therefore, those who work for God must attend to Him.
Have you realized the extent to which the Christian life of prayer is also a life of service? Have your recognized the actual, though invisible work done in prayer for God and for souls? Thus intercession, which many people find difficult, is really love acting and serving in the atmosphere of prayer, using for others its spiritual power, reaching out to and affecting other souls within its atmosphere. Such action seems a part of the mysterious economy of the spiritual life. It is a feeble copy of the way in which the divine energy reaches out to act upon us, both secretly within the soul and outwardly by persons and events.
When we think of what the greatest spiritual personality we have ever known did for us in re-harmonizing us, bringing us to God, and compelling us to feel reality, it gives us a hint of the workings of the Spirit in and through human beings. It suggests a new meaning for the word “atonement.” Spiritual work costs those who do it much. It is not done at all unless they love God and His deep mysterious interests better than their own and are willing to lose everything for Him, even their own spiritual peace.
[Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit, edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame, (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2001).]
For Reflection:
o To what inward, anchoring practices am I drawn in this season of life?
o To what creative expressions of love am I drawn during these days?
o The foundation of Benedictine spirituality and practice is expressed by the Latin phrase “ora et labora,” that is, “prayer and work.”
o The daily rhythm in a Benedictine monastery consists of several periods of prayer at set times throughout the day. Community members also engage in some kind of work between the prayer periods. At the appointed hour for prayer the bell tolls, calling persons in the community to drop their work and gather for prayer. After prayer, they return to their work.
o For Benedictines, prayer is their work. Their work is transformed into prayer.
o The rhythm of prayer and work in a monastery models a pattern for prayer and work that may be practiced in any setting.
Tuesday after the Resurrection – April 14, 2020
We are challenged, currently, to be creative, to find different ways to love people.
Often, since we have been distanced from one another by the coronavirus threat, we have been told that for right now, we best love people by staying away from them. (And all the introverts say, “I’ve been telling you this for years!”)
We make phone calls . . . we use FaceTime . . . try to serve, while maintaining proper distancing.
And we pray. We pray for people, if only by whispering the names of those we know who are in need . . . speaking aloud the names of hospitals . . . saying the names of cities and towns that are overwhelmed . . .
We meditate . . . we find some contemplative practice to keep us centered and anchored . . . we quietly write poetry . . . we take out a sketchpad and draw or use pastels to doodle or splash some watercolors on a page . . . we regularly drop anchor through a meditative prayer practice (Centering Prayer or meditation or a breath prayer).
Evelyn Underhill talks about loving and serving the world, but rightly says that we have to allow God to shape us as the kind of persons who can truly love and serve. Loving and serving move outward from a life that is being shaped inwardly through stillness, simplicity, and openness.
We may not be able to love in typical ways right now, but we can tend the inner life . . . and we can find creative ways to reach out to the world from the stillpoint within.
Read this excerpt from Evelyn Underhill:
Seen on its largest scale in the saints, real growth is towards a life of service penetrated by and utterly united with a life of prayer. Thus it is also a life of peace and power. Of course it is impossible to serve well without perfect contact with those whom we serve. Therefore, those who work for God must attend to Him.
Have you realized the extent to which the Christian life of prayer is also a life of service? Have your recognized the actual, though invisible work done in prayer for God and for souls? Thus intercession, which many people find difficult, is really love acting and serving in the atmosphere of prayer, using for others its spiritual power, reaching out to and affecting other souls within its atmosphere. Such action seems a part of the mysterious economy of the spiritual life. It is a feeble copy of the way in which the divine energy reaches out to act upon us, both secretly within the soul and outwardly by persons and events.
When we think of what the greatest spiritual personality we have ever known did for us in re-harmonizing us, bringing us to God, and compelling us to feel reality, it gives us a hint of the workings of the Spirit in and through human beings. It suggests a new meaning for the word “atonement.” Spiritual work costs those who do it much. It is not done at all unless they love God and His deep mysterious interests better than their own and are willing to lose everything for Him, even their own spiritual peace.
[Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit, edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame, (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2001).]
For Reflection:
o To what inward, anchoring practices am I drawn in this season of life?
o To what creative expressions of love am I drawn during these days?
o The foundation of Benedictine spirituality and practice is expressed by the Latin phrase “ora et labora,” that is, “prayer and work.”
o The daily rhythm in a Benedictine monastery consists of several periods of prayer at set times throughout the day. Community members also engage in some kind of work between the prayer periods. At the appointed hour for prayer the bell tolls, calling persons in the community to drop their work and gather for prayer. After prayer, they return to their work.
o For Benedictines, prayer is their work. Their work is transformed into prayer.
o The rhythm of prayer and work in a monastery models a pattern for prayer and work that may be practiced in any setting.
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