(The Nationalist, 29 December 2005)
Most of us live lives that are hurried, hassled and harried. We don’t have much time to stop and think. And it isn’t just time. Even if we can make or find time, we may not have a disposition for reflection because we have been robbed of it by the pressure of activities. Buddhists have a phrase for that: they call it “the monkey mind”, scampering from one thing to another without thinking.
We sometimes have a sense that God is absent from our prayer, that it has become like talking to a wall. But maybe it’s nearer the truth to say that we are absent from our prayer. Even while we say the words, our minds and hearts are miles away. In our world, things have got faster, and they are getting faster faster. The cost of that is often pressured lives and superficial relationships.
There’s a phrase in the Gospel about Mary, the mother of Jesus. It says that she treasured the things of God and pondered them in her heart. That’s a good description of Christian prayer. To ponder means to weigh up; it implies thinking deeply, looking below the surface of things, reflecting in depth. Maybe we have forgotten how to reflect in an age of instant everything – sound bites, computers, guzzle-and-go meals. Yet we could save ourselves much time and trouble if we engaged in it. Put simply, it means Stop and Think.
This won’t happen by itself. If we are waiting for the opportunity to present itself, we may have spent our life waiting and then find that it hasn’t come. We need to create the opportunity, and the disposition for using it. It can be done – after all, we create time for meals, don’t we? That’s because we regard them as a priority. What could be more important than sorting ourselves out, getting some sense and meaning in our lives? We need to take time to sit down and work out how to do it. Instead of passing or killing time, why not make and use time – to our own benefit, by reflecting quietly instead of running away from ourselves?
The main obstacle to our doing this is fear, the fear of coming face to face with ourselves, of what we might find in ourselves if we stopped running. That fear is the ultimate folly. It blocks the road to integrity and wholeness. And wholeness is holiness.
For those in a hurry: ‘The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place is to be at home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless’. (Elizabeth O’Connor)