Readings and Meditation
Reading
from When Atheism Becomes Religion by
Chris Hedges
In
her novel The Song of the Lark, Willa
Cather writes that the Native Americans of the Southwest made pottery to house
water once they had housed themselves.
All their customs and ceremonies and their religion went back to water,
which [is] one of the essential elements of life…[in her novel, the story]
continues: “When Thea took her bath at the bottom of the canyon, in the sunny
pool behind the screen of cottonwoods, she sometimes felt as if the water must
have sovereign qualities, from having been the object of so much service and
desire. That stream was the only living
thing left of the drama that had been played out in the canyon centuries
ago. In the rapid, restless heart of it,
flowing swifter than the rest, there was a continuity of life that reached back
into the old time. The glittering thread
of current had a kind of lightly worn, loosely knit personality, graceful and
laughing. Thea’s bath came to have a
ceremonial gravity. The atmosphere of
the canyon was ritualistic.
One morning, as she was standing
upright in the pool, splashing water between her shoulder-blades with a big
sponge, something flashed through her mind that made her draw herself up and
stand still until the water had dried upon her flushed skin. The stream and the broken pottery: what was
any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mold in which to imprison for a
moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself—life hurrying past us
and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?”
Prayer/Meditation
You
may wish to do this with a partner and read to one another:
Sit
comfortably in your chair and let your eyelids rest closed. Now take a few deeper breaths and let go a
little bit more on each out breath.
Allow
your breathing to settle and find its own natural rhythm, letting the breath
breathe itself. Try not to interfere with this process, and notice how the body
moves in response to the breath: the chest expanding and relaxing, the belly
rising and falling. If your breath is affected in any way by illness or pain,
then just note this with a kindly, gentle awareness. Try to let go of any ideas
about how you think it ought to be, and just rest with an awareness of how
things actually are for you in each moment.
[Pause]
Sometimes
it can help to include an image with a sense of the breath: you can imagine a
wave flowing up the beach, turning, and flowing back out to sea again, noticing
how the movement of the breath has a rhythm very like this. Or you might have
another image that you find calming. Use your imagination in your own way to
help the mind and the body settle around the breath.
[Pause]
Notice
any pain or discomfort in your body. Very often we resist feelings of pain or
discomfort, and this just leads to more tension, more pain and more discomfort.
Use the breath to help soften the hard edges around the pain and allow a
tender, gentle awareness to permeate the in- and the out-breaths. As you use
the breath to soften resistance to the pain or discomfort, you may notice how
the experience of pain is in fact a constantly changing mass of different
sensations. Experience how it comes into being and passes away moment by
moment.
[Pause]
Now
you can broaden out your experience even more to invite in the pleasurable
dimensions in your body. They might be very subtle, such as tingling in the
fingers, some sort of pleasure around your breath, or maybe the feeling of the
gentle breeze from the overhead fans brushing against your skin. In your own
way scanning through your whole experience and noticing little moments of
pleasure, no matter how fleeting – arising and falling with each moment.
[Pause]
You
may notice that each moment of life contains elements that are painful and
elements which are pleasurable. This is the way things are in this world for
everyone. Notice the tendency to harden against pain and to grasp after
pleasure, and in the noticing relax back to let them both go. And bring your
attention back to your breathing.
[Pause]
Remember
what you learned about yourself, your breathing, your body, pain and
pleasure. And come back to this time,
this place and this room.
Blessings,
Rev.
Tom
