Category: Blog

I came across a Jewish story the other day. A man was down on his luck, everything had gone wrong for him, and he was now down to his last ounce of tea, his last slice of bread and a pat of butter. So he thought, ‘I might as well make myself a last cup of tea and have a slice of toast.’ As he buttered the toast it fell onto the floor. But it fell with the buttered side up. ‘That must be an omen!’ he cried. ‘It must mean things are going to change for the better!’

He raced through the village and knocked on the door of the Rabbi’s house and told him the story. ‘It’s a sign, don’t you agree?’ he exclaimed. The Rabbi told him he must deliberate on the matter and that in the meantime the man should go home and come back the next morning.

Very early the next day the man was back. ‘I have deliberated all night with the other Rabbis,’ said the Rabbi, ‘and we have come to the conclusion that you buttered the toast on the wrong side.’

In his journal, Markings, Dag Hammarskjöld, former Secretary-General of the United Nations wrote, ‘Now. When I have overcome my fears­­ –of others, of myself, of the underlying darkness at the frontier of the unheard-of. Here ends the known. But from a source beyond it, something fills my being with its possibilities ­– at the frontier.’

At this time of the year many, especially the elderly, find the long darkness of winter difficult. As one woman wrote to me, ‘This is always a bad time of the year for me. I seem to go down as the darkness descends and only pick up a bit when it starts to get light again.’ It is no wonder, therefore, that our ancestors in the West grew fearful at this time of the year, and lit beseeching fires that the Sun might not die but recover. And each year, with the coming of the Winter Solstice, they regarded with wonder the rebirth of the Sun, as light began to return, redeeming the darkness. The old Celtic spirituality was deeply rooted in Nature, and it is from Nature that we learn the ultimate lesson: that at the moment of deepest darkness light returns – at midnight noon is born.

The material world about is visible to us. What we can see with our own eyes, touch with our own hands, we can verify. But the invisible world, the reality beyond the present reality, which we cannot physically touch or see – how to verify that?  There is no way, scientifically or intellectually, that we can come by such knowledge, for it is knowledge of another order. No one can be argued into a knowledge of God. Truth remains a revelation. No one can be talked into falling in love. Love remains an experience. And in the silence of meditation there will come a knowledge that has nothing to do with questionnaires or encyclopedias, a knowledge that cannot be proved scientifically or even pinned down into words ­– and yet it is a knowledge of unshaken and unshakable surety.

‘Our real journey,’ wrote Thomas Merton, ‘is interior. It is a matter of growth, deepening and of an ever-greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.  I pray that we may all do so.’

So many people today hunger for the things of the spirit which all too often they do not find within our churches or synagogues. And yet the treasure that is beyond all price is waiting there for us, as Teilhard de Chardin discovered:

And so, for the first time in my life perhaps – although I am supposed to meditate every day!- I took the lamp and leaving the zone of every day preoccupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I felt that my power of action emanates… but I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me… And when I had tostop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless pit at my feet, and out of it came – arising I know not where – the current which I dare to call my life.

Last year Zuleika Books published Older, a day by day journal of my 91^st year. The reason for mentioning it is that often people say to me, ‘I am old!’ and I reply, ‘No: you are older.’ The word ‘old’ with its final ‘d’ is like a heavy door slamming, whereas the word ‘older’ more accurately reminds us that life is a journey of continual learning. As T.S. Eliot wrote (and had he been writing in prose he would also have added ‘women’) ‘Old men should be explorers still.’

The practice of meditation should not make us complacent but, rather, deepen our awareness of others and enable us to listen in depth to what is often a sub-text: they are talking about one thing but we sense there is something else they are wanting to say and if we listen, we shall eventually hear it.

This is why in the summer I sometimes invite our meditation group, which meets once a month, to sit in a circle outside in the garden, and, rather than try to shut out all the sounds, to be aware of them. We hear an aeroplane, an ambulance going by, children playing, birds singing, and we slowly become aware of the sap rising in plants and trees. We don’t try and shut all this out, but rest in a deep inner silence.  

In my bedroom hang two brush and ink drawings given to me by an American-Chinese artist. The first is of a Buddhist monk with a tall staff setting off on his journey into a thick wall of mist. This is an image of our journey in meditation. Day in, month in, patiently we persevere in this cloud of unknowing. The second picture shows the same monk seated cross-legged on a precipice, looking down at a storm raging in the valley below. And so, at times when we are meditating, hidden resentments, jealousies, lusts, distractions may assail us. Our task is not to try and repress them but to look them steadily in the face and then continue our silent meditation. Meditation is about letting go, emptying ourselves so that we may be filled with silence and all the richness that arises from our unconscious.

Christians make the sign of the cross, thinking in terms of the Trinity, but this sign, this meeting of the opposites, is to be found in many cultures throughout history. We reach upwards for strength and draw it down deep into us. Having done that, we then make a horizontal line, from left to right, cutting across the vertical. And it is at the centre of this tension that we unite the opposites within us.

As Carl Jung wrote, ‘Collectively we cannot do anything; the only place where we can do anything is in ourselves.’ If we are in the place where all opposites are united, it has an inexplicable effect upon our surroundings. It is in this sense that I make the sign of the cross before meditating.

Just as we clutter our lives with many possessions so, when we meditate, distractions assail us as we go round and round this and that. Yet we have to learn how to let go and be an empty vessel that can be filled. Be still and know!