(The Nationalist, 8 July 2005)
Many people today live lives of tension and stress. Work is often pressured, and the daily round of commuting takes its toll on people’s energy and enjoyment of life. There may also be family problems adding to the burden.
Against that background it can be almost impossible for people to pray or to have a spiritual life that includes an encounter with God. At the same time, the pressure of these problems makes a real inner life an even greater necessity if the person is not to become burned out or reduced to the level of a soulless functionary. What about the inner self? What about nourishing the hungry soul that needs sustenance? We all need to build up our inner resources. That inner world is more real than the mad rush, the competitiveness and the pressure of what we sometimes think of as “the real world”.
Can we do anything about this? Yes. We can create a quiet time and space for ourselves each day. It is a matter of creating it, because it won’t come by itself. We make time for meals, don’t we? It could be a matter of sitting in a quiet room, or walking in a park, or going to a church, and then gradually and gently calming down.
Relax the body first; then let your emotions and mind calm down. Spend most of the time calming down. That includes recognizing without anxiety the sources of your tension and letting them be. This is not a time for solving problems. (Maybe keep a pencil and paper handy to jot down anything important; then put it aside.)
Recognize that you are in the presence of God. You don’t have to put yourself in it; you couldn’t not be in it. Come to this quiet space without an agenda or even expectations. Just be quiet and receptive. (This isn’t complicated, but it’s not easy.) Let God lead you in his own way, perhaps enabling you to become aware of yourself, to discover what has been staring you in the face for years. The challenge is to learn to listen to what our heart says to us in silence, that silence which is not simply the absence of noise, but an inner stillness.
Be prepared for surprises. The first may be that you like this and want to have it every day. Another could be learning to appreciate the present moment. The present, this time and place, is a present from God. It is in the present that we begin to experience the Presence of God, in a way that is intuitive and indirect, but always gentle, freeing, and sometimes even funny.
For those in a hurry: ‘Find the key to your heart; you will see that this key also opens the door to the Kingdom of God’. (Saint John Chrysostom)