Weekly Soul: Week 21 - Change
Today's meditation from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Dr. Frederic Craigie.
-21-
In
a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too
obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with
the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters
is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk. You do not need to
know precisely what is happening or exactly where it is all going. What you
need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present
moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas
Merton
A family physician tells the story of a
frightening event in the practice’s waiting room. A
burly and disheveled man had become agitated and began to scream in an angry
and threatening way. Other patients and staff scurried for cover. As the man
continued his angry-eyed screaming, the one remaining patient, a short and
frail elderly woman, walked up to the man, embraced him, and said “Oh, you
poor, poor man.” The man dissolved in tears, and the crisis was immediately
defused.
Stories abound about people who make instant,
heroic decisions without forethought to consequences. Your local newspaper,
like mine, reports people who charge into burning buildings or dive into
freezing rivers to save somebody. Uniformly, they later deny their heroism and
say that “anybody would have done the same thing.”
The present moment, as we have suggested,
offers redress for past or future suffering and offers the opportunity to grow
that part of our lives to which we direct our attention and heart. But there is
more. The present moment is alive with possibilities. We choose not only where
we’re going to attend but also how we’re going to live.
As Merton says, you don’t know where your
choice might lead. What matters is openness and courage, and they are sustained
by faith. The key question of mindful action in this present moment is, “Who am
I, right now, and what can I do that would honor the way I want to be living my
life?”
I realize that’s a mouthful, and that the
exigencies of the situations in which we need to make these decisions usually
don’t allow thoughtful and calm self-reflection. But that is the question that
anchors mindful action in the present moments of your life.
How are you going to respond to the angry
person that you encounter? How are you going to respond to the destitute person
you walk by on the street (or the person with the cardboard sign at the
stoplight)? What are you going to do when a colleague tells an off-color joke? How
forthright are you going to be about your strongly-held minority opinion with
other people? How would it feel to express a clear “yes” or “no” to a request for
your time about which you’re ambivalent? Can you see yourself striking up a
curious and open-hearted conversation with someone who holds very different
social or political views?
There you are, as these moments present
themselves to you. The grounding of your mindful action is mindful awareness
and attention to who you are. You don’t know how the consequences of your
action will unfold, and, in fact, the more you wait for some sign of certainty,
the more opportunities pass you by. The only assurances are that there is
energy and aliveness in being faithful to who you are, and that there will be
additional present moments of possibility to come.
Reflection
- When has there been a time
when you did something meaningful on the spur of the moment without regard
for the consequences? What was this like for you? What did you learn—or what
was affirmed—in this experience?
- My examples above are of
challenging and emotionally-charged situations, but there’s another side
of the coin. Think of a time when you have put yourself out there publicly—expressing
humor, being creative, exploring something new, or otherwise being
vulnerable—in a positive way. Same questions; what was this like, and what
did you bring away from this experience?
- In the coming week, be aware
of meaningful choice points. Notice, and then reflect on, how you respond.
Author
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was an American monk, scholar, mystic and social activist. He was born in France to artist parents and made his way to Columbia University, where he was received into the Catholic church. After a short period of teaching English, he arrived in 1941 at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), which was to be his home for the remaining 27 years of his life. Along with being a gentle and incisive observer of the spiritual life, Merton was actively engaged in issues of social justice, particularly the 1960s peace movement and the nonviolent civil rights movement. In his later years, he also became committed to interfaith dialogue, meeting with world spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, and publishing books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Among his several dozen other books are his bestselling 1948 autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, and his 1949 spiritual classic, Seeds of Contemplation. The quotation comes Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image, 1968).
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