A Prayer Exercise : the prayer in which i was transfigured
Remember a time you went through a very significant, and perhaps life changing, event. Remember the inner details and outer circumstance… savor the details… what difference did you notice within yourself as a result of this experience? Maureen Conroy
Counting myself among the scholars, heretics and others who stake their self in opposition to religion and all things ‘Bible,’ I am shocked when God, whose name I refuse to speak for decades, breaks into my meditation and transforms my blindness into scintillating light. This is what happened.
I have been diligent in my spiritual practices and disciplines, meditating, fasting, and cultivating self-awareness, studying the Inner Teaching of Taoism, the wisdom of Chuang Tzu, Krishnamurti, Da Free John, Thich Nhat Hanh, practicing Zazen as well as dabbling in Indigenous medicine practices, Sufi dancing and Native Drumming for more than twenty years. This is where it gets me — facing a wall — a wall of great height and who knows how thick and impenetrable. As best I can tell, I have achieved the aim. I can sit in open, empty nothingness. There is nothing disturbing the nothingness. It is bland, barren and frankly, boring. So I quit. Cold turkey. From four hours of meditation each day to none. I am done. But the story is not over.
Three days later a relatively new friend arrives for a visit. Her name is Drue. I am annoyed with myself for whining about my aborted meditation practice. Drue listens patiently then tells me about her prayer practice, something called Centering Prayer. She is so enthused about it that when Drue asks me to try it I say, “Sure. I can certainly meditate with you for twenty minutes.” Sitting on the terrace of my home in the foothills of the Sangre de Christo mountains (no kidding), we turn our backs to the sun. (It was years before I caught that irony!) Drue instructs me to settle myself, quiet my mind (no problem) and consent to God’s presence and action in me (what a curious idea!). Drue will signal the end of twenty minutes by saying a prayer aloud.
I close my eyes, get very still then while rolling my inner eyes with a fair share of skepticism, silently say, “OK God, I consent to your presence and action in me.” Immediately (and I do mean immediately) it is as if my heart explodes in an ocean of bubbling light. Every bit of my being is quivering — ablaze in phosphorescence. Twenty minutes pass in a flash and when, as agreed, Drue signals their end by praying, “Our Father, who art in heaven….” rivers of warm tears well over my chin. All I can weep is — “Oh my God, oh my God. I am so sorry I have forgotten you.”
Why did this deep-in detonation of light elicit the word “God?” ignite my weepy lament? How could this be? It is involuntary, instinctive, inspired. It contradicts what I, scientist, artist, heathen, say I stake my life on, yet these are the words that lavish my lips and turn my world upside down and inside out. “Oh my God, oh my God. I am so sorry I have forgotten you.”
Being consumed by who I think I am, where I think I am going and obcessed by what I think I am seeking, I have been blind to WHAT IS accompanying me every step of the way. I am astounded to discover, the very thing I most vehemently reject, the word “g-o-d” and any idea, language or concept to which that word refers, refuses to let go of me.
All of the years meditating, studying and cultivating what I experience as ‘nothingness’ are fulfilled and perfected in a flash when I consent to God‘s presence and action with me. Writing these words today makes me shake my head and rub my eyes as every cell and space in my body bows in light of this transfiguring moment. Awe and wonder are murmurs in the face of this discharging lightening bolt.
Much as the first son in Jesus’ parable (of two sons and the vineyard, Matthew 21.23–32) who replies with an unequivocal “No, I will not,” when his father approaches him instructing, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today,’ eventually changes his mind and decides to work in the vineyard , I change my mind about God. In truth, I do not do the changing. I am mysteriously changed and invited to consent to the transformation. I am given the opportunity to say “yes” to something I have unquestionably rejected (“God”). In the transubstantiating light of this prayer experience I see, there is “Something More” and it is not the old bearded guy doling out judgments from angel studded clouds that I rejected ever since I was a headstrong first child.
There is “Something More” that fills the open, empty darkness of the ground of my desire. And whether this “Something More” is called God, YHWY, Light, Mystery, One, Muhammad, Shekinah, Wisdom, Allah, I AM, Is-ness, Ultimate Reality or whatever, there is “Something More” that is unborn, unbound, undying and, at the same time, it is infused in and of, with and through all that is born, bound and dying, and thoroughly inhabits me. Although no single word can name it, my direct experience claims it with absolute certainty. And so I join my ancestors and consent to “God” with me. And, after another long time (because I am a recalcitrant learner) I change my “no” to “yes, I will go to work in the vineyard.” But, that is a story for another day.
Debra Asis
All words are generated by grace and the grit of this real human being.
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Maureen Conroy’s question is found in today’s selection in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney is a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things. And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.
Each day I read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.
INVITATION
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