With fear mongering talk of a national security emergency from our Prime Minister, perhaps we need practices which help us engage our reality with gratitude rather than fear.
We speak of health of mind and body as we are increasingly conscious of the mental health challenges we face as a community. Amidst the unrelenting busyness and worry of our days, the merits of pausing in silence are becoming clearer.
Let us imagine for a moment that our lives see us each as sailors, sharing sailing boats. Onto the high seas we go, seeking education, meaningful work, close relationships, and ultimately, peace.
At the end of each day, we pull up anchor, hopefully at port, where we can share a meal. We regale each other with tales of the particularities of what we experienced at sea. Sleep helps us prepare for the fresh day that awaits us.
If we stay on the high seas for too long without returning to the reassurance of land, we may burn out and lose motivation, closing in on ourselves. We may overreact to the storms that come and go. We may not appreciate our coworkers, chief among them the Spirit with whom we cooperate in living full lives.
One gift we all need from time to time is the listening ear of another – friends, family member, colleague, counsellor, spiritual director or health professional. It is in being listened to that we speak the words we might otherwise keep inside. In being listened to, we learn to listen to the deeper soundings of our own and others’ experiences. With practice we begin to find meaning and insight there.
In the last few years, the practice of mindful meditation has gone vogue. There are apps such as Smiling Mind, there are classes, and psychology is on board too. What was previously dismissed as matter for eastern gurus has come to the aid of a seafaring west. Whether this meditation focuses on breath, thoughts or emotions, each seeks to calm the mind and centre oneself in the present moment.
How easy it is to forget that pausing in silence is part of our western inheritance. As writer and Benedictine monk Thomas Merton wrote, ‘Christianity is a religion of the Word. The Word is Love. But we sometimes forget that the Word emerges first of all from silence.’
If we attend to the silence, we can appreciate the Word spoken into it. Listening to the quiet rest beats allows us to savour the music which rises out of it. Let us enjoy the quiet breeze, in order to prepare for the challenges of the storm.
We also need to be able to discern when to put up our sails and when to use the motor. This calls for a sensitivity to the weather, to the helpful breeze and the harsh sun, to the radar and the movements of the birds.
Silence in mindfulness and listening to loud music while exercising are two interesting parallel experiences in our society. There’s a key question here about whether in our moments of silence or music listening we are seeking to forget our day or rest in gratitude for it. Are your thoughts and emotions distractions or precious gifts worth pondering?
Here the varying mindfulness traditions offer different types of responses. Popular today is eastern mindful meditation which may return one’s attention to the breath, for instance. For Christians there are the practices of the awareness examen in the Ignatian tradition, or the Christian Meditation of the late John Main now taught by his Benedictine confrere Laurence Freeman.
These have us resting mindfully in God’s presence. The first seeks to engage with the content of one’s day by remembering all that has happened in a spirit of gratitude, attending to the movements within. The second seeks to focus one’s attention on a mantra, returning always to a word or phrase chosen by the meditator. Examples include the Aramaic ‘Maranatha’ popularised by the Australian Christian Meditation Community, or the ‘Jesus Prayer’ (which former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams practises).
These diverse traditions of mindfulness can assist us to introduce a rhythm to our days. They can help us gather the spiritual sustenance we need to live full lives. They can be like an anchor on life’s sea of joys and anxieties in this age of increased ‘national security’ tension in our community and world in general.
For the Christian, there’s rest in Word and Sacrament. But full engagement is linked to the extent to which we place habits of being into our days. To recall Merton, ‘we sometimes forget that the Word emerges first of all from silence.’ Whoever we are, no matter how busy, it may be time to find a comfortable place, stop, and receive sustenance for the onward voyage on the high seas. Imagine that.
--
James O'Brien is studying English Literature at the University of Sydney.