Dear Group Leaders and Friends in Christian Meditation,
I had the good fortune to attend an Advent retreat at Bonnevaux Center for Peace. Bonnevaux is the physical center for our monastery without walls. A few days a week, the community at Bonnevaux, residents and visitors, come together to reflect on the Rule of St. Benedict. This time with the Rule is done as Lectio Divina, holy reading. We read a passage of the Rule two times in different translations. We went around in a circle and shared what words spoke to us. Then we went around again as we shared our thoughts around choosing the word in a non-judgmental way that led to great depth and vulnerability. The word that I picked was “reverence.” We were reading from chapter 50 of the Rule: Brothers Working At A Distance Or Traveling. A larger portion of the phrase that I was responding to was “…reverence for God.”
I believe we can all affirm we are striving for reverence for God. As Christians, reverence for God is fundamental to our lives of faith. I must admit that I picked the word reverence because in some ways, I feel some negativity in this word from my time in parish ministry. In the Catholic Tradition several years ago, the Roman Missal, the prayers of the Mass, were retranslated and became more literal translations from Latin than many of us had experienced in our lifetimes. There was much encouragement to be more reverent in our presiding during our Eucharistic celebrations. I found this meant a stiffness and uniformity which made me uncomfortable, and I found myself in a difficult position in living that out in my ministry. God has made each of us unique and this comes through in our lives of prayer and discipleship. God has called us each to follow him in our own ways. And yet, we are called to deeply reverence God.
Reverence calls us to a place deeper than we have ever imagined. I have experienced this in my own life through the gift of Christian meditation. As a meditator, I strive to reverence God in my twice a day daily meditation. I also seek to reverence God in the rest of my day. Now, my mother used to say talk is cheap. The challenges arise in reverence for our neighbor, particularly with the annoying coworker, relative, political opponent. To learn to reverence our neighbor is certainly an essential fruit of meditation. It is a necessary one as we grow in discipleship. Dorothy Day’s, the great soul and holy warrior, challenge echoes loudly today: “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” That punches me in the gut because I know people I just have a hard time loving. If we are honest, I think that we all have that list of people whom we don’t love or even like, some near and some far. Maybe this is part of the human condition. Here is where either Jesus gets in the way or shows us the way, depending on our mood or vantage point. We love God in loving our neighbor and love our neighbor in loving God. You can see where reverence for God caught my attention.
The great gift in meditation is attention. It has been said that we love what we pay attention to in our lives. As we sit still and silently say our mantra we are drawn into attention as we let go of our own thoughts, agendas, concerns and daydreams. To meditate is an act of love as we take the attention off ourselves and place our attention on our mantra which holds in it all of our prayers, our needs, our cares and our hopes for a better world. It even holds within it our own need for change into the reverent people we wish to be in our lives. No one said life as Christians would be easy, but it is the call of Jesus’ disciples to love God and neighbor. As we move along with Advent perhaps this time can deepen us in our compassionate response to life as we anticipate the Prince of Peace!
The World Community for Christian Meditation has several offerings that take place at Bonnevaux, https://bonnevauxwccm.org/programme/ and opportunities that take place online https://wccm.org/events/. It is well worth seeing what might interest us as meditators.
Fr. Laurence Freeman often asks those on retreat to write a haiku. I have always avoided the task. I have felt intimidated by the idea of writing anything poetic. On the first day of the retreat Fr. Laurence asked us to write a haiku for the next day. When the time came to share, he asked me to share my haiku. I had decided to nap instead of writing. The next day I came with my first haiku in hand!
Cold winter morning
The labyrinth with the cat
My mantra echoes
Happy Advent and an early Merry Christmas!
Much love, Kevin Maksym
