Saturday, April 30, 2011

Divine Ocean



GREAT STILLNESS


Bitter cold winter – long –

a break!

Welcome – January thaw!

Ride to the seashore – full

sunshine today – gentle

breeze from the south – warmer air.

Sun baths all – nature rests

in winter’s sleep –

a few gulls flying looking for a hand out.

Deep silence – quiet reigns over all –

cold put nature to rest –

sunshine is silent too.

Stillness of the seashore echoes

deep within me –

I feel – hear slow beats at

my center – still point –

echoes of the loneliness of life.

My breathing – in and out – feels it –

presence deep within me.

Mystery – I can feel it

but not grasp it.

Yet it fills me – grasps me –

lets me know – my life in the city is not all.

Something lacking –

I need to come to the sea – feel

stillness – sunshine – winter’s emptiness.

There I meet my anchor – compass –

companion.

Despite my running around – doing many things –

hopefully good -

I touch deeper ground –

presence – felt in silence – quiet.

God speaks in silence.

Someone has loved me –

chased me through the years – never

let me go –

held on to me.

Someone cared!

I will continue my life in the city –

busy – running back and forth.

Once in a while – I come

to the seashore –

my true lover meets me – touches me –

fills a hole – infinite –

only God can fill.
Robert Trabold

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OCEAN OF GOD


Robert Trabold



            John Main, the founder of the John Main Meditation Movement, states that we have to be courageous and launch out through meditation and contemplation into the ocean of God. It is journey in which we encounter the presence of God at our center and still point. In this trip, we get away from ourselves and go beyond our life of self interest to which we can be enslaved.  Humans are very attached to themselves and are constantly working to enhance their position in the world. This is how we see life and deal with people.  This goal is very immediate to us and the challenge of meditation is to help us to get beyond it. In one sense, we are to leave behind the superficial and very obvious appearances of life, like our self interest, and arrive at a new depth and vision of things which only God can give us.

            The Lord gives us this new and deeper understanding of ourselves and life in meditation. We have to launch out into contemplation and be faithful to the discipline of silence daily. One of the new bases of our lives is the two periods of twenty minutes of meditation in which we encounter the divine. Ironically, we are not called to do many things and actions but in contemplation, we are invited to enter into the stillness of the Spirit. In the quiet and seemly doing nothing in meditation, the transcendent reveals itself to us and enters into our life as our new center; The divine touches us and invites us to enter into a relationship of love. This new dimension of our life then replaces our efforts to aggrandize ourselves and self interest.  It is pushed to the side and we have now a new way of seeing things. We have launched ourselves into the ocean of God and we have to discern where we are being lead. 

            On our part, we are challenged to be faithful to the discipline of silence and our daily meditation.  We do not abandon the use of the mantra but say it diligently in our journey to encounter God. This is not easy because our meditation will go through periods of dryness and emptiness and we wonder whether this inward journey is really worthwhile.  This is compounded by the fact that God is transcendent and beyond us; so this relationship is completely different from our normal human relationships of life. The divine is vast like the ocean and we have to have confidence that despite the darkness at times, that we are being lead by someone who loves us and draws closer to us. In meditation, we leave words and images behind and enter into the naked presence of Jesus, our Beloved. The mysterious thing about this is that it is done in silence which on the surface, seems to be empty but really is full of meaning and launches us into a new dimension of living. We have pierced the superficiality of life of just tending to our self interest and see the world in a different fashion. God becomes our anchor and gives us a new way of living in the world and handling its challenges. We are on a new trip and God is the rudder.  When we are on a ship and look at the sea, it is dark and mysterious.  So too is this journey into God through meditation and contemplation. There are many currents in our life but the divine is there and offers to us a new way of being beyond the superficialities of human living. We have found a new lover who walks with us through the years and will welcome us into the beyond at death.