Much Needed Meditation

Every weekend for the last month or so, I've been spending some time reading Richard Foster's "Celebration of Discipline" in hopes of rekindling a lull...a numbness within my 'self'. While I've only paged through the first 40 of his marvellously crafted pages, Foster's chapter on meditation leaves both a significant impression and fuels within the very topic of concentration he writes about.

"Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them," writes Foster, a trend I too commonly have fallen upon. Regardless of the circumstance or mood, it's just easier to base one's spiritual "status" on the ebb and flow of the common work week. In doing so, I have not only dug for myself a detrimental ditch of complacency and superficiality in terms of my intimate relationship with God. but have allowed by Sunday participation in church to fulfill that advocating Foster references in the aforementioned quote. Foster's book, however, reminds me of the importance of mediation, its many forms and varieties, and the lasting effect of a contemplative heart.

Key points from the chapter:

• In a section called Understandable Misconceptions, Foster writes, "Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind." He continues to point out that meditation is not about detachment, but attachment.

• Otium Sanctum..."holy leisure". "This refers to a sense of balance in life, an ability to be at peace through the activities of the day, an ability to rest and take time to enjoy beauty, an ability to pace ourselves." What a great thing to be able to cultivate and procure!

• Foster encourages one to consider their posture during mediation, suggesting a designated place instead of a different location each day, and sitting while place the hands on one's knees in a gesture of receptivity.

• He speaks of the need to meditate on scripture, to meditate in an attempt of the old Quaker practice of "centering down", to meditate on nature and creation, and finally the need to meditate on the events of society. Foster quotes Thomas Merton, who said that the person "...who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but as not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time."

These nuggets, along with many others, all boil down to encourage the "self" to not only reach the goal of meditation, but to experience a love for both the practice and the reward. "Regardless of how it's done, the aim is to center the attention of the body, the emotions, the mind, and the spirit upon 'the glory of God in the face of Christ' (2 Cor. 4:6)."