Stumbling Blocks

For awhile accepting meditation as a practice fit for a Christian was a challenge for me; there were some things about meditation I needed to “unlearn”.

Unlearning is an essential skill set in recovery. Times have certainly changed but when I was young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, meditation was spoken of in harsh tones and veiled threats of damnation should a Christian dare to consider actually meditating. I NEVER bought into that fear-mongering but it certainly gave me pause when handed my first materials on the twelve steps to see the “m” word right there in the 11th step for all to see.

It seemed to me then and seems to me now that when Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray that’s as close as an endorsement for meditation as I can find short of a Super Bowl commercial bought by God himself. I know some folks still cringe at the word meditation; it’s kind of like having spiritual PTSD after all those years of unwarranted suspicion. When we host meditation workshops I still get emails asking me if I am afraid that I am going to ruin someone's life encouraging such blasphemy. How could I? What kind of pastor are you? Well, all this vitriol may be the result of meditation gone wrong, I don’t know. Perhaps there are other kinds of meditation that are not helpful?

Again, I do not know. Meditation. Listening. Seeking God only for the purpose of conscious contact and the gifts that his presence and care for us brings. This is what we teach about meditation. It’s not created to turn us into zombies or wipe out our memory banks. Its purpose is to allow us to sit quietly for some period of time as a way to acknowledge that there is a God and we are not God. We breathe. We listen. We notice. We are quiet and still enough to notice our own beating hearts and ragged breaths and leaves bursting forth in Spring for all the world to see.

And we hope. We hope that God sees us and hears our silent cry for his healing.

How can that be bad for us?