Last week I read the chapter on Meditation from Foster's book Celebration of Discipline several times. This is my third trip through this little book, but every time something surprises me. For a strongly extroverted guy (though over the last few years this seems to have been tempered a bit...wisdom maybe?) meditation is one of the disciplines that I have to really stay after. The art of driving deeper into the thoughts of God is at once fulfilling and frightening. But this time around the word that kept popping into my mind was "wonder."
Wonder is a word that eases the competition of what God is thinking. It is less trying to pry it out of the mind of God and more letting the revelation come to me. I have mentioned "thought strings" and I think this is the result of spiritual wondering. If you see God in a particular way, then what does it mean to pursue his take on events, on creation as we now move through it, what is the final destination and what does it look, feel, smell like? Can I be at ease about events around me? Does this discernment then drive me to any particular conclusions?
The quick answer is, I don't know. The longer answer is that discernment is not training, not skill, it is simply taking the time to sit and listen and wonder. But here is the problem in our society (even church society) we do not want to take the time. We prefer answers to realization. We prefer programs and process to enlightenment. Wisdom comes through time and a constant bending of our ear to God's quiet voice. Time wondering about God can't be scheduled, it can't be programed, and it certainly can't be fitted into a Day Timer.
Our world conspires to keep us from this moment. Our church world conspires to keep us from this moment. Deep, discerning people frighten even our church leaders. They simply don't know what to do with the "mystics" amongst us. To speak as one who has spent long moments with God is like loading down the conversation with enormous weight. Weight that slows the conversation and frustrates those who simply want to rush ahead and get things done. God does not work like that, his words, spoken in a quiet voice of conviction exposes agendas, motives, false thinking. It moves the conversation from project to providence. Have you ever noticed that when this happens, it is often not very many words? but words that each hit the very core of the moment?
This week is about prayer. The articulation of our wondering about God.
Godspeed to all the mystics out there.
Don
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