RETURNING TO HEART

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” November 14, 2023

I have about an hour before I’m off to cardiac rehab. Why I ever chose the early morning session is beyond me, except that I’ve always thought of myself as a morning person. And that is true, however good mornings are for writing, reading, praying, not, I have learned, for sweating on the stepper and the elliptical followed by stretching. I know this is good for me, but I now think it would be just as good at 3 p.m. as at 7:15 a.m. I have been very faithful to rehab, but I must admit some frustration. I have not felt the surge of energy everyone told me I would get following surgery and exercise. I am tired much of the time. Fortunately (I think), it has been discovered that I have some kind of chronic anemia. No explanation for it yet. But I am getting iron infusions and that seems to help.

I am doing what I can to stay awake and hopeful. Recently I decided to begin a meditation practice I have engaged in occasionally on and off for many years. I’d been drawn by the Centering Prayer method made accessible some time ago by the late Fr. Thomas Keating. He advised two twenty minute silent sessions a day, aided by a “sacred word” to keep one from fully engaging in the thoughts that incessantly pop up when unbidden. Honestly, I’ve never been very good at it. I find that I have a penchant for arguing with the sacred word, never mind the unending thoughts! If I could only find the right one that doesn’t rile me in some way!

You may ask, why not try something else? After all, there are many fine methods of meditation drawn from Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. The thing is, I would probably bring the same arugumentative me into any single one of them! This time I want to try patience, and to learn something about the person who in the midst of silent prayer finds herself arguing with sacred words! Another form might have me questioning an image or analyzing the breath instead of surrendering to the process. I’ve never been one to accept things as given. So, why go back to this meditation thing at all?

There are a few things I know. Silence reveals. Silence grasps and teaches me all the time. Silence brings me directly into the present moment which is a vast and spacious place. I’ve had the suspicion lately that silence will lead me straight to my heart which is longing for something right now.

So. I am going back to meditation to encounter the silence. As I do, I am rereading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice. Perhaps if I wrestle with the words while reading, I will experience more space inside the meditation. I am kind of excited to learn once again (only now it feels more real to me) that when Cynthia is writing about the heart of centering prayer, she is talking about the actual physical organ, the one that has gone through so much in my body this past year. I know I will be reading and meditating with a new depth of perception. A new modicum of stillness.