Month: September 2015

I was once part of a consultation team for the BBC to do with religious broadcasting. One particular morning we were supposed to begin our meeting with a meditation led by a Dominican friar, Father Simon Tugwell. Somewhere outside the building there was the sound of the Beatles’ song, Let it be! At once Father Simon stopped the meditation and said we could not proceed until someone located the transistor radio and had it switched off. I thought then, and still do, what a missed opportunity that was, for the lyrics of the song provide a perfect beginning to a meditation: Let it be. Let it be. Whisper words of wisdom. Let it be.

Sometimes in summer our group will sit in the back garden to meditate. There is the sound of children playing in the park, the sound of birds, of passing ambulances, or an aeroplane overhead. We don’t try to ignore these but simply acknowledge children, birds, cars, aeroplanes, and even to include them in the meditation.

I recall how on one of my birthdays in Wales, my dear priest friend John Hencher was celebrating, as part of my 50^th birthday celebrations, a special Eucharist in my study where about ten of us sat in a circle. During the consecration prayer the phone in the other room began to ring incessantly. John at once wove this interruption into what he was saying, observing that this was the outside world wanting to break in, and rather than exclude it, to hold in our thoughts whoever it was trying to make contact.

I have written elsewhere of the occasion when I was celebrating a Eucharist in a small country church in Herefordshire when, during the prayer of Consecration, little Becky, who was somewhat retarded, suddenly began to call out ‘Amen! Amen!’ Rather than ignore her or tell her to be quiet, I looked up, saw her shining face and joined in with her, saying over and over the words ‘Amen! Amen! Amen, Becky!’ The faces of all the others lit up with smiles. It was a moment of epiphany.

Today I am thinking about some of the people whose writings have had most impact on me.

One is Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, the Sufi master who is in charge of the Sufi Golden Centre in San Francisco. In his book, Catching the Thread, he writes:

For each seeker the spiritual path will be different, because each of us is different. Every lover makes his own unique pilgrimage within the heart. And He loves us for our own individual self. He loves the fact that we are different because He made us different. In this love affair there can be neither comparison nor competition. We each must find our own way of loving Him, of being with Him.

Many people have difficulty grasping the concept of God, perhaps because of the tendency to think of God anthropomorphically. But Father Timothy Radcliffe, the former Provincial of the Dominican Order in England, reminds us: ‘God is not another person. God is the deepest interior of one’s self’.

Father Bede Griffiths founded a Christian ashram in India where he integrated the spiritual teachings of the Upanishads with those of Christianity. My final quotation comes from him:

I believe that each one of us has an inner light, an inner guide, which will lead us through the shadows and illusions by which we are surrounded, and open our minds to the truth. It may come through poetry or art, or philosophy or science, or more commonly through encounter with people and events day by day.

Personally I find that meditation, morning and evening every day, is the best and most direct method of getting in touch with reality. In meditation I let go of everything of the outer world of the senses, of the inner world of thoughts, and listen to the inner voice of the Word, which comes in the silence. Then, in the silence, I become aware of the presence of God, and I try to keep this awareness throughout the day.