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jenny_islanderIn this post I am relying on both the main text and the study guide.
Right away in the study guide I run across this:
Meditation is a more passive Discipline. It is characterized more by reflecting than by studying, more by listening than by thinking, more by releasing than by grabbing. In the Discipline of meditation we are not so much acting as we are opening ourselves to be acted upon.
Hence my fright, after the experience I described in my previous post, and my flight. It was not humanly possible for me to have known about that lost item on my own. If that was the fruit of one afternoon's meditation, then what else might God have me do? Rereading Foster and following up on the saints whom he quotes, I could see the deeps ahead, so I turned and swam like Hell for the shore--like a seal pup convinced that its natural home is the beach!
Of course, we do return to the shore, and swim out again, because the shore and the sea are both part of the entire real world in which we live. Foster does not draw firm boundaries, by the way, between Christian experiences of the entire real world and others. He takes for granted that "astro-travel and... other rather exotic forms of meditation" exist. He does not decry them as evil--this is important! Always Foster is more interested in practicality and spiritual renewal than in performative purity. But he finds them irrelevant to Christian life, while admitting that "perhaps that reflects my own prejudices."
But this post is supposed to be about the process of actually meditating. So here we go.
"For all the devotional masters, the meditatio Scripturarum, the meditation upon Scripture, is the central reference point by which all other forms of meditation are kept in proper perspective." It is important, he says, not to confuse meditation with analysis. He quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "...just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did. That is all. That is meditation." Bonhoeffer scheduled a daily half hour for the practice.
But isn't it silly to accept so uncritically? Isn't that how people get used? Aren't we supposed to first prove, then believe? To this I answer what I have learned in my own life: Human reason has limits. I could fill this post with examples, but Michael Goldenberg sums it up beautifully in Contact, in which a believer asks a strict materialist if she loved her late father. "Yes," the materialist asserts. "Very much." We know that she is truthful because we saw her past, but the believer just met her. And he gently responds, "Prove it."
So you either believe that Scripture reflects the entire real world, as encountered by millions of people over thousands of years, or you don't.
Here's a sketch of the way to meditate on Scripture. First, keep your selection short. Foster suggests "a single event, or a parable, or a few verses, or even a single word." Second, allow yourself to become immersed in the imagined context of that selection. Third, recognize that God is present, and allow yourself to feel whatever you feel. Finally, ask what direction God may have for you. It may be simply "Let's sit together for a while." It may be religious ecstasy. It may be "Go down that street and look in that spot," as it was for me. Or it may be plain directions about some ordinary matter of your life. Remember, God is deeply interested in our lives, which are made of moments.
A second method of Christian meditation was called "re-collection" in the European Middle Ages; Foster's upbringing in the Society of Friends presented it to him as "centering down." You silently bring to mind whatever troubles you, and you release that trouble into God's care. Allow some time to pass as you contemplate this surrender. Then ask the Lord for whatever you need in connection to your troubles. Then sit in silence. "Allow the Lord to communicate with you, to love you. If impressions or directions come, fine; if not, fine." Foster suggests turning the palms of your hands down while you meditate, as if allowing your troubles to fall away, then up, as if to receive.
A third method is "meditation upon the creation." This means to look, with the receptive attention of a child. First you must believe that everything in the unmanufactured world points in some way to its ultimate Creator. Then choose a flower, a grove of trees, some busy insects, or whatever else you can find to contemplate. Clouds are also suitable. "Sometimes God reaches us profoundly in these simple ways if we will quiet ourselves to listen."
The fourth method Foster mentions is "to meditate upon the events of our time and to seek to perceive their significance." The danger here is to be caught up in helpless anger, apocalyptic fervor, or conspiratorial embroidery. Always our focus is to be on what is set before us. So find the best source of news that you can; read it; meditate on it; and ask God what the future outcome of these events is to be and what you should do with what you have where you are.
Remember as you practice meditation that you are practicing. Even seals must learn how to swim. Or think of sea otters, who cannot dive when they are very young, although the sea is their home. Instead, they bob helplessly on the surface. As they practice being sea creatures, they slowly learn how to turn to the depths, and dive. So give yourself time and grace. Meditation will become first a skill, then a habit, then part of your being.
This post is already long, so I will leave Foster's suggested readings on meditation for the next one.
Right away in the study guide I run across this:
Meditation is a more passive Discipline. It is characterized more by reflecting than by studying, more by listening than by thinking, more by releasing than by grabbing. In the Discipline of meditation we are not so much acting as we are opening ourselves to be acted upon.
Hence my fright, after the experience I described in my previous post, and my flight. It was not humanly possible for me to have known about that lost item on my own. If that was the fruit of one afternoon's meditation, then what else might God have me do? Rereading Foster and following up on the saints whom he quotes, I could see the deeps ahead, so I turned and swam like Hell for the shore--like a seal pup convinced that its natural home is the beach!
Of course, we do return to the shore, and swim out again, because the shore and the sea are both part of the entire real world in which we live. Foster does not draw firm boundaries, by the way, between Christian experiences of the entire real world and others. He takes for granted that "astro-travel and... other rather exotic forms of meditation" exist. He does not decry them as evil--this is important! Always Foster is more interested in practicality and spiritual renewal than in performative purity. But he finds them irrelevant to Christian life, while admitting that "perhaps that reflects my own prejudices."
But this post is supposed to be about the process of actually meditating. So here we go.
"For all the devotional masters, the meditatio Scripturarum, the meditation upon Scripture, is the central reference point by which all other forms of meditation are kept in proper perspective." It is important, he says, not to confuse meditation with analysis. He quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "...just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did. That is all. That is meditation." Bonhoeffer scheduled a daily half hour for the practice.
But isn't it silly to accept so uncritically? Isn't that how people get used? Aren't we supposed to first prove, then believe? To this I answer what I have learned in my own life: Human reason has limits. I could fill this post with examples, but Michael Goldenberg sums it up beautifully in Contact, in which a believer asks a strict materialist if she loved her late father. "Yes," the materialist asserts. "Very much." We know that she is truthful because we saw her past, but the believer just met her. And he gently responds, "Prove it."
So you either believe that Scripture reflects the entire real world, as encountered by millions of people over thousands of years, or you don't.
Here's a sketch of the way to meditate on Scripture. First, keep your selection short. Foster suggests "a single event, or a parable, or a few verses, or even a single word." Second, allow yourself to become immersed in the imagined context of that selection. Third, recognize that God is present, and allow yourself to feel whatever you feel. Finally, ask what direction God may have for you. It may be simply "Let's sit together for a while." It may be religious ecstasy. It may be "Go down that street and look in that spot," as it was for me. Or it may be plain directions about some ordinary matter of your life. Remember, God is deeply interested in our lives, which are made of moments.
A second method of Christian meditation was called "re-collection" in the European Middle Ages; Foster's upbringing in the Society of Friends presented it to him as "centering down." You silently bring to mind whatever troubles you, and you release that trouble into God's care. Allow some time to pass as you contemplate this surrender. Then ask the Lord for whatever you need in connection to your troubles. Then sit in silence. "Allow the Lord to communicate with you, to love you. If impressions or directions come, fine; if not, fine." Foster suggests turning the palms of your hands down while you meditate, as if allowing your troubles to fall away, then up, as if to receive.
A third method is "meditation upon the creation." This means to look, with the receptive attention of a child. First you must believe that everything in the unmanufactured world points in some way to its ultimate Creator. Then choose a flower, a grove of trees, some busy insects, or whatever else you can find to contemplate. Clouds are also suitable. "Sometimes God reaches us profoundly in these simple ways if we will quiet ourselves to listen."
The fourth method Foster mentions is "to meditate upon the events of our time and to seek to perceive their significance." The danger here is to be caught up in helpless anger, apocalyptic fervor, or conspiratorial embroidery. Always our focus is to be on what is set before us. So find the best source of news that you can; read it; meditate on it; and ask God what the future outcome of these events is to be and what you should do with what you have where you are.
Remember as you practice meditation that you are practicing. Even seals must learn how to swim. Or think of sea otters, who cannot dive when they are very young, although the sea is their home. Instead, they bob helplessly on the surface. As they practice being sea creatures, they slowly learn how to turn to the depths, and dive. So give yourself time and grace. Meditation will become first a skill, then a habit, then part of your being.
This post is already long, so I will leave Foster's suggested readings on meditation for the next one.
