Practicing Deeply
I recently came across this:
“If we want to go deep spiritually, we can’t go around and dig lots of little holes. We need to find one place and dig a deep hole. And so, as contemplatives, we need to find in our own experience what it is — what practice it is, what approach it is — that takes us deep in this way. So when I talk about commitment, I’m talking about commitment to practice, to engaging in direct experience.”
Judith Simmer-Brown, “Commitment and Openness: A Contemplative Approach to Pluralism” in Steven Glazer (ed.) The Heart of learning: Spirituality in Education (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 1999).
We have a simple Rule in Lindisfarne: to live a balanced life of prayer, study, work and rest. Each element is in itself a practice, and each practice has “sub-practices” which define the whole. It is at this level that we need to find the approach which is valuable to each of us and to “dig deep.”
Here is a suggestion for practice. Our community prayer is “that I may be as Christ to those I meet, that I might find Christ within them.” It is a simple prayer and may be repeated often during the day: on the way to work, during meditation, using prayer beads, during a difficult conversation, before sleep, while jogging. In its simplicity it is a profoundly deep well and encapsulates what is, for us, the purpose of life.
To dig deep takes time and patience. It is not a quick fix, a scratching the surface. Over time — measured in years, not days — there is a profoundly transforming effect. In the immediate, there is a deep sense of inner peace, of connection and of beauty.
Practice deeply,
In the Three of love and goodness,
+ Ab. Andrew
I recently came across this:
“If we want to go deep spiritually, we can’t go around and dig lots of little holes. We need to find one place and dig a deep hole. And so, as contemplatives, we need to find in our own experience what it is — what practice it is, what approach it is — that takes us deep in this way. So when I talk about commitment, I’m talking about commitment to practice, to engaging in direct experience.”
Judith Simmer-Brown, “Commitment and Openness: A Contemplative Approach to Pluralism” in Steven Glazer (ed.) The Heart of learning: Spirituality in Education (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 1999).
We have a simple Rule in Lindisfarne: to live a balanced life of prayer, study, work and rest. Each element is in itself a practice, and each practice has “sub-practices” which define the whole. It is at this level that we need to find the approach which is valuable to each of us and to “dig deep.”
Here is a suggestion for practice. Our community prayer is “that I may be as Christ to those I meet, that I might find Christ within them.” It is a simple prayer and may be repeated often during the day: on the way to work, during meditation, using prayer beads, during a difficult conversation, before sleep, while jogging. In its simplicity it is a profoundly deep well and encapsulates what is, for us, the purpose of life.
To dig deep takes time and patience. It is not a quick fix, a scratching the surface. Over time — measured in years, not days — there is a profoundly transforming effect. In the immediate, there is a deep sense of inner peace, of connection and of beauty.
Practice deeply,
In the Three of love and goodness,
+ Ab. Andrew