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.