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jenny_islanderMeditation, like communism or chili, is a word of many meanings. In today's reading, Foster digs deeper into what meditation is for a Christian.
In meditation we are growing into what Thomas à Kempis calls "a familiar friendship with Jesus." We are sinking down into the light and life of Christ and becoming comfortable in that posture. The perpetual presence of the Lord (omnipresence, as we say) moves from a theological dogma into a radiant reality. "He walks with me and he talks with me" ceases to be pious jargon and instead becomes a straightforward description of daily life.
Please understand me: I am not speaking of some mushy, giddy, buddy-buddy relationship...No, I am speaking of a reality more akin to what the disciples felt in the upper room when they experienced both intense intimacy and awful reverence.
I note that the first thing the disciples heard in that upper room was a wind so strong it felt violent; the first thing they saw was fire coming for each one of them--and how were they to know, as it touched them, that it would not burn? (Acts 2)
But the answer to my question in the previous post is, "Yes, the One who set the cosmos into motion, to whom deep time is as an ornamental pond, nevertheless takes a strong personal interest in me and every one of us, and values us as individuals, and wants to converse with us like people meeting in a garden on a fine evening."
Christian meditation is best understood as a way to build something like that garden and open its door. Foster observes that Revelation 3:20 is directed to believers: "Pay attention! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and take supper with that person, and they with me." Again, this is about much more than the pictures of nice Jesus knocking on the door. It's much more than the boilerplate phrase "inviting Jesus into your heart." People who spend time with Jesus in this way are changed. Back to quoting:
We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us. He desires a perpetual Eucharistic feast, in the inner sanctuary of the heart. [I note here that the word translated "take supper with" in the above verse refers to a meal for which people are welcomed into one's home in order to have fellowship, discuss things, leave the business of the day, and stay a while. Reference: Strong's Concordance.] Meditation opens the door...[i]t is a portable sanctuary that is brought into all we are and do.
Inward fellowship of this kind transforms the inner personality. We cannot burn the eternal flame of the inner sanctuary and remain the same, for the Divine Fire will consume everything that is impure...Everything that is foreign to [Christ's] way we will have to let go. No, not "have to" but "want to," for our desires and aspirations will be more and more conformed to his way. Increasingly, everything within us will swing like a needle to the polestar of the Spirit.
Aside: I earnestly beg readers of this post not to fall into the trap of assuming that when Foster talks about impure desires and aspirations he means unapproved fucking.
Anyway, on to "Understandable Misconceptions." Foster sharply distinguishes between Christian meditation and "the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions." This definition is certainly too broad, but he does have a point that emptying the mind, detaching from the world, and/or surrendering personal identity are not goals for Christians. Of course, to hear the voice of God we first hush the myriad voices of our chattering thoughts, to live in the world we need to sometimes lean back and rest from it, and to become ourselves we have to hand ourselves over to the One who knows us best. But that is not where it ends. There is no end. We are to fill our minds, as a dry land to which the rains have come. We are to live fully in the real world, which surrounds, overshadows, and includes the material, temporal world. And the end of our striving, though we may lose everything we are, is to find ourselves again.
Foster also denies that meditation is complicated. It may be difficult when pain is shouting at you all day or people always need you. But it is not innately complicated. The only apparatus you need is your body, your mind, and grace.
He further warns against assuming that meditation makes a person "so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good" (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.). Foster is a member of the Society of Friends, in which ordinary churchgoers practice meditation as a matter of course. The word so heard may be directions on a thoroughly mundane question of interest to only a few. God is keenly interested in our small doings and understands that they are in fact very important--as any parent should. Or there may be a time of mystic ecstasy. You never know until you ask.
Finally, he cautions against deciding that because meditation has measurable physical benefits, such as reduced blood pressure, it must therefore be only "a religious form of psychological manipulation." "Often I have discovered," he says, "that those who so freely debunk the spiritual world have never taken ten minutes to investigate whether or not such a world really exists."
My next post will begin an exploration of the nuts and bolts of meditation.
In meditation we are growing into what Thomas à Kempis calls "a familiar friendship with Jesus." We are sinking down into the light and life of Christ and becoming comfortable in that posture. The perpetual presence of the Lord (omnipresence, as we say) moves from a theological dogma into a radiant reality. "He walks with me and he talks with me" ceases to be pious jargon and instead becomes a straightforward description of daily life.
Please understand me: I am not speaking of some mushy, giddy, buddy-buddy relationship...No, I am speaking of a reality more akin to what the disciples felt in the upper room when they experienced both intense intimacy and awful reverence.
I note that the first thing the disciples heard in that upper room was a wind so strong it felt violent; the first thing they saw was fire coming for each one of them--and how were they to know, as it touched them, that it would not burn? (Acts 2)
But the answer to my question in the previous post is, "Yes, the One who set the cosmos into motion, to whom deep time is as an ornamental pond, nevertheless takes a strong personal interest in me and every one of us, and values us as individuals, and wants to converse with us like people meeting in a garden on a fine evening."
Christian meditation is best understood as a way to build something like that garden and open its door. Foster observes that Revelation 3:20 is directed to believers: "Pay attention! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and take supper with that person, and they with me." Again, this is about much more than the pictures of nice Jesus knocking on the door. It's much more than the boilerplate phrase "inviting Jesus into your heart." People who spend time with Jesus in this way are changed. Back to quoting:
We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us. He desires a perpetual Eucharistic feast, in the inner sanctuary of the heart. [I note here that the word translated "take supper with" in the above verse refers to a meal for which people are welcomed into one's home in order to have fellowship, discuss things, leave the business of the day, and stay a while. Reference: Strong's Concordance.] Meditation opens the door...[i]t is a portable sanctuary that is brought into all we are and do.
Inward fellowship of this kind transforms the inner personality. We cannot burn the eternal flame of the inner sanctuary and remain the same, for the Divine Fire will consume everything that is impure...Everything that is foreign to [Christ's] way we will have to let go. No, not "have to" but "want to," for our desires and aspirations will be more and more conformed to his way. Increasingly, everything within us will swing like a needle to the polestar of the Spirit.
Aside: I earnestly beg readers of this post not to fall into the trap of assuming that when Foster talks about impure desires and aspirations he means unapproved fucking.
Anyway, on to "Understandable Misconceptions." Foster sharply distinguishes between Christian meditation and "the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions." This definition is certainly too broad, but he does have a point that emptying the mind, detaching from the world, and/or surrendering personal identity are not goals for Christians. Of course, to hear the voice of God we first hush the myriad voices of our chattering thoughts, to live in the world we need to sometimes lean back and rest from it, and to become ourselves we have to hand ourselves over to the One who knows us best. But that is not where it ends. There is no end. We are to fill our minds, as a dry land to which the rains have come. We are to live fully in the real world, which surrounds, overshadows, and includes the material, temporal world. And the end of our striving, though we may lose everything we are, is to find ourselves again.
Foster also denies that meditation is complicated. It may be difficult when pain is shouting at you all day or people always need you. But it is not innately complicated. The only apparatus you need is your body, your mind, and grace.
He further warns against assuming that meditation makes a person "so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good" (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.). Foster is a member of the Society of Friends, in which ordinary churchgoers practice meditation as a matter of course. The word so heard may be directions on a thoroughly mundane question of interest to only a few. God is keenly interested in our small doings and understands that they are in fact very important--as any parent should. Or there may be a time of mystic ecstasy. You never know until you ask.
Finally, he cautions against deciding that because meditation has measurable physical benefits, such as reduced blood pressure, it must therefore be only "a religious form of psychological manipulation." "Often I have discovered," he says, "that those who so freely debunk the spiritual world have never taken ten minutes to investigate whether or not such a world really exists."
My next post will begin an exploration of the nuts and bolts of meditation.
