Meditation | Days 48-62

I've finally started asking questions about what meditation looks like to me personally instead of trying to fit to a template of discipline. It was good to have basic direction on where to begin and it was nice learning different practices to try when I'm at a loss of how to draw near to God in meditation. But I realized that my expectations and disappointments were my own and not God's. It has been very hard to try to find even a small amount of quiet time in my day. Though I think quietness is important, I believe God is wanting more than a chunk of my day.

At the beginning of this search I was motivated to get up in the morning...but mostly to do yoga. These last couple of weeks my lack of sleep has caught up with me. I'm lucky to get a shower in the morning because I'm so groggy I end up turning off my alarm without realizing it. I still do a small reflection on break at work with the Celtic Daily Office. I look forward to that pause. When I come home I am thrown into playing toys with Oliver, making changes on freelance projects, feeding Benjamin, and snuggles on the couch. I have been going to bed way too late as it is and fall asleep thinking, "maybe I have time to talk to God now..."

But this morning I'm letting go of my expectations (I kind of have to as I type this with Benjamin on my lap and Oliver squeezed into the chair with me). I'm going to attempt meditation in the now. I'm going to look for God in the activity in the day and practice awareness. If God gives me quietness, I'll relish it. But my life is packed with noise and I want to see what God is doing in the midst of it all. He's not sitting in a closet waiting for me to come visit Him. He's making dinner with me, showing me his ideas for the next design project, giving me words to encourage a friend, teaching me patience as I deal with conflict. I want to meditate in the moment and not try to find a moment before I meditate.

Mediation | Days 38-47

This discipline has passed the honeymoon stage and I'm back to meditating only when I feel like it. I've been finding moments here and there to read the Celtic prayers. But even then, I just read them and don't pause to reflect or let the words sink in. I'm getting lazy. But it's not like it should be easy. It's too bad that meditating doesn't come more naturally to me. I find myself wanting to withdraw to a place where I don't have to think. Every day is full of thinking and in the mornings, on my breaks and before bed I just want my brain to stop. I have it in my head that meditating is like thinking. But maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe it's just listening quietly, or allowing a word or image to float around my head. Even that doesn't sound like that much fun. I would rather my mind be filled without my having to think. I would rather read. Or browse online. Because it fills my mind and I hardly have to do a thing. But to just sit and let my head be empty or just partially full sounds uncomfortable to me. Or boring. There is my idol of occupation. Can I give it up? Is it too scary to let my mind sit empty in submission to God? What will He say to me? My fear is that He will say nothing and I will sit there unnoticed.

There it is.

My fear of being forgotten or ignored. It goes way back. I've been ignored. I am boring enough to just disappear into the background. I feel uninteresting and unimportant. I have found ways to get noticed in my life. They were temporarily satisfying.

Perhaps the reason I don't find meditating appealing is because I'm afraid nothing will come of it. That I won't receive a single moment of revelation or blessing. It's a selfish way to view meditation. Where is my desire to just be with God no matter what He gives me? It's a small desire, if I even have it. I've experienced that desire in fleeting moments of worship...and in the shower with tears of repentance.

Richard Foster has given me the advice before to ask for the desire to meditate. I'm going to keep on asking. "Ask and it shall be given."


On a side note: I would like to experience lent and give something up this year. Last year I gave up radio in the car (it was an obsession) and learned to be still and listen on my commute. It created in me a hesitation to turn it on, which is a miracle. Lord, what would you have me give up this year? Maybe there is a small way to give up my idol of occupation.

Meditation | Days 31-37

As I was reciting the Lord's Prayer, two thoughts came to mind that are unrelated to the prayer, but related to what was really occupying my mind. 1.) I want to see God's beauty in my work. I want my design to reflect him. 2.) How do super minor details in life have meaning? Does God care about minuscule issues that probably won't matter in a decade and really won't affect anyone? Perhaps he uses those little things in ways we won't ever know; particularly to change us.

I've been obsessing for some hours now about a color palette for the organization I work for, and I seriously need a good conclusion rather quickly. I can't keep obsessing. It's wasting precious time. I decided to pray instead of just staying frustrated and that's when I realized that this little thing may in some way have eternal value. Maybe this process I'm going through will somehow bring me closer to Christ's likeness. Maybe not. But I will stop caring completely about these colors and how I use them if I don't see some sort of purpose in even thinking about it. Why do I care??? Why does this really matter? I care because I want to do my job excellently. Even if I don't carry these colors with me to heaven, and they may not change anyone's life, I care because I don't want to stop caring about how I do the work that is set before me. I might obsess just a little more, but I will seek God in the conquest for the right way to accomplish this little task.

A couple lines from the Celtic Office Midday Prayer:

"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.
Establish Thou the work of our hands;
establish Thou the work of our hands."

"Let nothing disturb thee,
nothing affright thee;
all things are passing,
God never changeth!
Patient endurance attaineth to all things;
who God possesseth
in nothing is wanting;
alone God sufficeth."