STILLNESS AND QUIET
Robert Trabold
Hardly anything moves – no wind
neither bushes nor trees swaying
– surprising
for a winter’s day at the
seashore.
Everything is in suspended
animation
blinding sunshine gives same
impression
even its gentle warmth is
motionless.
Vast blue sky does not move
no clouds to break it up
all is still!
Not even vastness of the sky
disturbs silence.
Is this why I came to the sea?
I leave behind my hectic life
house cleaning – garden pruning –
e-mails
anti-war demonstrations –
neighborhood meetings.
Am I looking for something else?
Is someone pulling me to the
seashore?
Stillness - emptiness
start fires burning within me.
I am waiting – catch my breath
my eyes are straining – Absolute
overwhelms me.
My Beloved is knocking at my
inner most door
a door He can only knock at.
No one else can enter so deeply
within me.
Fire burns – my heart beats
faster
my breathing speeds up
my whole body trembles.
My Beloved is touching me –
wooing me
to love
I lay back my head - rest in
ecstasy.
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JOURNEY THROUGH
LENT TO EASTER
Robert Trabold
We entered the month of March and
continue our journey through Lent and reach Holy Week and feast of Easter. This is a rich time in our Christian life
because it brings us to important events of our faith. During Lent, we take time for prayer and
fasting or other penances to remind us that we are pilgrims on earth and we
constantly have to take stock of our life so that we follow the way of Jesus
more and so reach our eternal destiny. In Holy Week, we are reminded of the
momentous events in the life of Jesus - His suffering and death and ultimate
victory on Easter Sunday. In this journey through Lent to Holy Week, our
faithfulness to meditation can help us enter into these Christian mysteries. In our daily contemplative prayer, we take 20
minutes, twice a day to sit in silence in an attempt to encounter the Divine. We
do not try to think about God and solve deep theological questions. Rather it is an attempt by us to touch God’s
presence present at our center and still point. This journey to our center in
silence is a capsule of our spiritual journey through Lent. We discover in a
deep way to meet the Lord without many words and thoughts but touch someone who
loves us and want us to reciprocate this love.
In one sense, our daily
contemplation is a journey to the ground of our being, to our origin, to the
point from where we come. We leave behind our thoughts, desires and plans and
sit in silence. It is a silence of love
where we meet the Beloved who wants to walk with us on earth and lead us to
eternal life. In contemplation, we attempt to orientate ourselves completely to
God. We want Him/Her to be the center of our human journey and desire to
orientate all our values and activities as Jesus wants us to do. We enter into
an area of simplicity in our life in which all other things find their place.
We are not overwhelmed by the complexity of all the movements of the world but put
them in perspective. We see things as Jesus saw them and not have the things of
the world dominate us.
To reach this point, we have to
focus our attention and do this by reciting faithfully our mantra. The mantra
helps us put aside all thoughts, words and images and so that we can touch the
Divine around whom we want to orientate our life and respond to the love with
which the Lord showers us. We are not torn in many ways with which the world
tempts us. Our journey in daily contemplation is a capsule of what our journey
through Lent to Easter Sunday should be. During the weeks of Lent with our
extra prayer, penances and other good practices, we want to refocus our life.
The world has many things and movements which can and do pull us in many directions.
The concentrated and simple experience we have of Jesus in contemplation helps
us find this good focus of our life. For twenty minutes, twice a day, we
attempt to be in God’s presence and put other things aside. This simple
experience can be a model of the refocusing of our life during Lent in our
journey to Easter Sunday.
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