Disciplining the Soul

While still thinking about sacred spaces, I am reminded that so much work toward changing what is around us begins with what is inside of us. If I truly want to answer the question, "How can I create sacred space around me?" then my first question must be, "How can I create sacred space inside of me?"

My spiritual director, likely unknowingly, asked me to address the question through meditation. I am terrible at meditation. For me, focus on one thing seems impossible unless I am filtering out alternative inputs. I am challenged to find stillness in my life anyway - not only is life busy with church and family, but I live in the same world you live in - with radio in my car, TVs playing at the gas station or grocery line (during the rare occasions that it is me and not my husband doing the shopping), email and even games available on my phone, and constant tailored-for-me input on my computer. In the midst of so much activity and invitation, I have a hard time turning off, tuning out, and focusing on anything. By the time I get everything turned off and I tune out, I have difficulty staying awake!

So while prayer is a natural part of my day-to-day life, my prayer life fits well into my busy lifestyle. God listens while I drive; I listen while music plays; God listens while I do laundry; I listen while I read the Bible and prepare a sermon; God listens while I nurse my infant; I listen while I shower... and on and on and on. Certainly, I would be blessed by more contemplative prayer time (an offering of our midweek Lenten services at St. James this year), but I still experience my prayer life as vibrant. Meditation, though, is different. Meditation is an invitation to stop, to invite quiet, stillness, peace. It is an invitation to focus on one thing (in this case) or even no thing. Meditation invites me to

STOP.




And in the outside quiet, I discover inner discord. Anxiety about what else I "should be" or "could be" doing in this moment. Anxiety over whether I am doing right by my congregation. Anxiety about my call and my relationship to God and my next steps. Anxiety about who I am and how I am. I find I am spending quite a long time noticing these anxieties and trying to let them go -- asking God to hear them, heal them, take them -- before I can ever move on to the task on which my spiritual director set me.

"Walk with Jesus," she said to me "this Lent. Walk with him to the cross. Hold his hand, if you can. See what happens. You have as much comfort to offer him as he has to offer you." Envision this. Meditate on this. Take this journey, together.

It was a completely new thought to me that I might have something to offer Jesus in the walk toward the cross. There is profound insight there, and no doubt an important journey. But I cannot even begin this journey until I can find a place of stillness, a place where anxieties can be laid aside, a place where I can be embraced fully as the whole person I am - foibles and all - within myself.

And so, I am working to discipline my soul. Through contemplative prayer during my Lenten services, through a meditative journey with Jesus. I am working to find safe, sacred space within myself. And each moment where I find safety, I seek to expand it. Each day that God successfully wrests from me my anxieties long enough to find Jesus, I take a step forward.

I am committed to making this sacred space a living, embodied reality. Within. Without. For me. And for others.

And, again, I believe that every child of God, every person in this world, needs and deserves to find this sacred space.