Listen

It's been a long time since I have prayed.  

Oh, there's the communal prayer on Sundays, which is important, and the meal prayers through the day with my Sweetie.  There are the brief fits of prayer – the Anne Lamott-type prayers of "Help me Help me Help me!" and "Thank you thank you thank you!".  But I have strayed once again from the regular prayers that I wish could be like breathing – done always and every day.  And when I do include them in my daily routine, they ARE like breathing: refreshing, sustaining, life-giving. When I let them go, I wander, I flounder, I sink. 

So I sat this morning, for the first time in too long a time, to read something, anything, that would pique my spirit; and to be still, and to spiritually breathe.  The closest reading at hand was "Listen" – a publication of Spiritual Directors International.  The front page is always a short meditation.  "Good, this won't take long," my inner impatient self unconsciously assured me.  I was anxious to get on to other things that provide parts of my life, but which my heart knows are not as life giving as the breath of prayer.

I read Pegge Erkeneff's words in "Listen", trying honestly to listen, and came to the full stop of her suggested reflection:  "Pause and be still.  Listen to your heart beat.  What sensations, emotions, feelings, or thoughts are you present to, within your own body and skin, here and now?"  Seems so simple, yet there is a world of possibility here. 

"Pause and be still." 

I felt the discomfort of the chair.  I moved my hands and arms around, trying to assume a posture of peace, and quiet, and stillness.  I was distracted by objects on the table.  My spiritual kindergartner was hard at work, trying to make stillness.  I tried breathing exercises, and moved into trumpet breathing exercises, which brought up all the music I've practiced lately.  But it did finally calm me down enough to move to the next step.  Interesting how stillness can lead to movement, and vice versa... 

"Listen to your heart beat." 

I tried.  I tried to hear or feel it, just sitting in the stillness.  I could imagine I heard it, because I know my body, I know my heart, and I can replicate it's beat after all these years of listening to it.  But today, nothing.  I put my hand on my chest.  Nothing.  I put my left hand on my right one, to help in the search.  Not much – perhaps an imagined thread, a feeble cry from somewhere deep inside.  I tried for a pulse.  Faint, and sleepy.

Granted, I had just gotten out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, but this felt like something beyond sleepy heart.  This was a heart trying to get me to wake up, and it was glad I was finally paying attention.  This was a heart begging me to attend.  To it.  To life.  To sit still and listen and hear the beat.

"What sensations, emotions, feelings, or thoughts are you present to, within your own body and skin, here and now?"

First I felt sad for my own heart, trying to get my attention.  But crashing all around me and unshakable is the global bad news.  I had been to cnn.com too often, and read too many stories of mall shootings, school shootings, army base, navy yard, homes, churches, mosques, synagogues.  I knew this sadness was beyond my own individual heart.  This was the world's heart trying to get my attention.  But there must be feelings beyond sad and scared.  Otherwise we will all curl up in a fetal ball and whimper, of no use to ourselves, others, the earth, or God.

What can one heart do?

Maryknoll Sister Ita Ford wrote to her niece "I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you...something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for...something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead."

For most of us, that will not be as dramatic as it was for Ita Ford and the other church women killed in El Salvador many years ago now.  But it can be a guide for all of us – the search for that which gives life, even (especially) in the midst of so much death and sadness and lack of cooperative spirit.  I do find things that energize and enthuse me, and I am doing them.  Now how do I transform them to be life-giving for those around me?  That's my question for myself today.

And I rise from my sitting to see the sun rising quite brilliantly, glancing off the clouds and transforming them to gold.  I will go out into my ordinary day, which, as always, has the potential to be quite extraordinary.  It's all in the heartbeat.