Hi There!
So, greetings from Washington, D.C.
Am visiting family, soaking up cultural excellence, and being treated to some fine dining.
Being on holiday, I will be a bit short this time round - just this one time!!
Washington is my favorite most city in all our wonderful U.S.A.
There are people from all across our land and from just about every land as well.
There are all sorts of neighborhoods, architectures, dinning adventures,
cultural centers and offerings, universities, museums,
libraries, monuments, government activities, religious centers.
There is a wonderful "buzz" to this lively and enlivening place.
I started coming here as an eleven year old, no, not when Lincoln was president.
Actually Dwight Eisenhower was just getting stated, though.
I stayed with my Aunt Dorothy. She took me out and about to the wonders of Washington.
I was hooked.
Years later I returned for three years of graduate study in Theology.
Then and now, my two center points in Washington are
The National Cathedral
and
The Mellon Art Gallery.
They are my spiritual and esthetic Mecca's.
Just spent the better part of a day at each.
These "center points" ground me in wonder.
I end up soulfully inebriated by the beauty of it all - a bit of God
reflected on canvas, arched in stone, etched in wood, glass and metal,
celebrated in rich ritual and lifting music.
For all the "buzz" and beauty of D.C., though.
I need quiet and an even deeper, an ultimate, center point.
We all have such a soul quest.
In the Bill Moyer's P.B.S. series "The Power of Myth,"
featuring Joseph Campbell, Campbell says the same
in his own marvelous, expansive manner.
He is plain and simple in stating that for all the "buzz" and beauty of life,
as well as all the pain and suffering of it,
we need to be still and go deep, as deep as deep gets.
We need a spot of place and stretch of time
each day to be moved beyond both.
Campbell urges an hour each day,
no 24/7 news noise, no attention to gas bills or politicians
(more than a bit of a correlation there for sure!),
no concern about what to ware to work tomorrow, or have for supper,
or how to deal with the in-laws' next visit.
He also advises that in the beginning the whole deal will be a bust.
We will feel as though "nothing s happening."
As we stay with it, though, there is a freeing from immediacy and its case load of concern.
Gradually we are ushered into a new realm, to our center, to our
STILL POINT
as William Johnson, S.J. names it.
It's where the essence, the mystery of who we are
is one with the Mystery we call God
( or, if you prefer, Reality, Love, Being, Existence ) -
WHAT IS
And IS Beyond Name Or Notion.
From there on it is a wordless, concept free immersion in
WHAT IS
down deep, deep as deep goes, and deep doesn't have a bottom.
Take the ten best love making moments of your life,
multiply by endless
and we are just getting started.
It is ecstatic rapture surging past itself.
Afterwards, returning to the immediacies
out here on the street of everyday living,
it's a lot easier to see them for what they are and are not,
how they flow from our Still Point,
or are static on surface stuff,
that which foxes us up
and by which we fox up other people and places.
Quite liberating!
Give it a go and be gotten,
as in begotten.
So, words stop here.
Invitation is wide open and beckons beyond its articulation:
"Be still and know that I am God."
Psalm 146: 10
Oh my, looks like I have forgotten how to be "short,"
except when I stand before the mirror of course!
All the best as we chill to Still.
Welcome to our new participants in France and Canada.
Thank you for joining in.
See you all next week.
Holding each and everyone of you in
God's Dear Love,
John Frank
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MEDITATION MARKERS
STILL POINT
- T.S. Elliott
Burnt Norton
II
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving.
Collected Poems, 1909- 1962
T.S. Elliott
1963
Harcourt Brace
- Still Point, William Johnson, S.J., 1970, Fordham University Press
A comparison of the principles and practices of Zen and
Christian mysticism.
Draws from both into an enlarging unity
- Stilling Prayer
In a quiet place and way,
breath slowly and deeply.
Let The Spirit speak you spirit
to wordless centering, to your
Still Point
starting with the words of Psalm 146:10.
"Be still and know I am God."
( generous pause )
"Be still and know that I am..."
( generous pause )
"Be still and know..."
( generous pause )
"Be still.."
( generous pause )
"Be..."
( generous pause )
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