Participation: Week 1
Summary: Sunday, April 3-Friday, April 8, 2016
Contemplation can help us to know by participation in a Larger Knowing that many of us call God. (Sunday)
The motivation, meaning, and inherent energy of any action come from its ultimate source, which is a person’s foundational and core vantage point. (Monday)
Religion’s primary and irreplaceable job is to bring the foundational truth of our shared identity in God to full and grateful consciousness. (Tuesday)
Growth in salvation is growth in liberation from the separate self and falling into our first nature, which is our “foundational holiness” or original, ontological union with God. (Wednesday)
Being “in Christ” will eventually lead us to join in the universal pattern of death and resurrection that Christ went through. (Thursday)
We, in our corporate wholeness, are the glory of God, the goodness of God, the presence of God. As an individual, I participate in that wholeness, and that is holiness. (Friday)
Practice: The YHWH Prayer
A rabbi taught this prayer to me many years ago. I write about it in the second chapter of my book The Naked Now. The Jews did not speak God’s name, but breathed it with an open mouth and throat: inhale—Yah; exhale—weh. By our very breathing we are speaking the name of God and participating in God’s breath. This is our first and our last word as we enter and leave the world.
Breathe the syllables with open mouth and lips, relaxed tongue:
Inhale—Yah
Exhale—weh
During a period of meditation, perhaps twenty minutes, use this breath as a touchstone. Begin by connecting with your intention, your desire to be present to God. Breathe naturally, slowly, and deeply, inhaling and exhaling Yah-weh. Let your focus on the syllables soften and fall away into silence. If a thought, emotion, or sensation arises, observe but don’t latch on to it. Simply return to breathing.
You may be distracted numerous times. And perhaps your entire practice will be full of sensations clamoring for attention. Contemplation is truly an exercise in humility! But each interruption is yet another opportunity to return to Presence, to conscious participation in God’s life.
Gateway to Silence:
Remain in my love. —John 15:9
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (CD)
