 Meditation room provided, but few take advantage of it By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Online Wednesday, May 28, 2003
"It" is a meditation room that was set up for people attending the 215th General Assembly to take a break from the hectic business schedule. Located down a hallway off the main corridors of the Colorado Convention Center, the room is sparsely furnished with chairs and pillows scattered about and separated by plenty of open space. Bibles, some books, candles, some statues and plants complete the décor. In 10 visits during the first three days of the assembly, only two other people were in the room. Apparently, very few people had accepted the invitation printed in a brochure to take advantage of a "still, safe, sacred space" and "withdraw, as Jesus did, to be still, centered, to read, to pray, to listen." The brochure, citing Psalm 46:10, encourages people to "'be still and know that I am God …' God may bless with presence, speak with insight and guide with a love not our own. 'Be still' can be translated literally to let your hands fall limp, inviting one's whole being to stop, to let go and to let much greater hands work." Visitors – if, in fact, any others have taken advantage of the room – are encouraged "to read the psalms, pray the prayers of others, put into God's hands the lives of others, the issues before you, the life of this Assembly or simply your own life, or take up the vocation of emptiness and simply be still before God." An aid to meditation was provided in the room and the sheet, called "Reading with the Heart," states: Lectio Divina St. John of the Cross's paraphrase of a verse from St. Luke's Gospel (11:9) provides us with an outline of the four steps of Lectio. Seek in READING And you will find in MEDITATION Knock in PRAYER and it will be opened to you in CONTEMPLATION … The experience of this movement is not a programmed or automatic 1-2-3-4 progression … Prayer is always a gift. Lectio is an attempt not to fabricate it, but to enable us to respond to the gift from its first invitation, and to dispose ourselves for its development. We can bring no "timetable" of our own to the process. 1. Reading: lectio Quiet the body and mind. Choose a text – preferably a short one – and read it slowly, listening to it interiorly with full attention. Personalize the words as God speaking to you, now. 2. Meditation: meditatio Respond by receiving the reading at a deeper level. Move into it in faith. Dwell on and in it with imagination or intellect. Let it move you. 3. Prayer: oratio This is not something to do, but a spontaneous movement of the heart in response to the leading of the Spirit. In oratio, the heart takes over, longs and calls out for God. 4. Contemplation: contemplatio In the three other phases, activity has remained a dominant factor. As we move more deeply into relation with God, God takes over more and more by 'closing down' natural facilities of reason and imagination. We experience a kind of drying up of devotion and feeling, an inability to meditate as before. We are driven to solitary prayer, attentive and loving, but obscure, a 'passive attention.' |
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