“Meditation—by different names, underpinnings of belief, and formats—is a central practice in all of the world’s major religions: Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity.”
AdventWord combines word and image, hashtag and meditation in a 24-day digital journey through Advent, sharing out an official reflection each day in three languages
… abiding in Christ is never simply a quiet, restful experience. It is always a dying to be reborn, a deep delving and rooting so that new, green shoots appear.
Sometimes, when looking at the ceiling of the cathedral, I wonder if those slight marks are smudges left by our angel wings. I wonder what soars up there, like an upside-down water fall, as we pray together. I wonder if the tips of our wings brush the stone. I think they do.
I wonder about the use of the word “my” before the word “peace.” It seems that just leaving us with “peace” would have been a good gesture in advance of Jesus’ lift-off. But Jesus seems to own the brand. Jesus has a kind of peace that is not like the peace offered by “the world.” And what we know about the term “The world” in John’s gospel and in the early church writings is that “world” does not refer to the planet on which we live, but to the noise in which we live.
The first chapter reminds us to member our conversion, be it a moment, a season or a slow dawning over many years. What was your first and primary “yes” to God or have you simply been going with a flow? Remember your “yes.”
We spend a lot of our time thinking, we humans do. And much of our thinking is fear-based, shame-based and anxiety-producing causing sleepless nights and cancer. So our Rule of Life needs to have some chapters that help to remind us of how we want to be in relationship with our thoughts – what our own thought-boundaries are, or what we hope them to one day become.
Is mindfulness an appropriate practice, removed from Buddhist tradition? Is it appropriative? Do you practice it and benefit?