Meditation as Prayer & Joining the Associates

Today was our "Retreat Day" where we were to stay silent before God and listen.  We had a brief "School of Prayer" lesson on "Meditation as Prayer" where Br. James taught us the concept and practice behind Centering Prayer.  Basically you find a quiet place to be with God, acknowledge and welcome the distractions, invite God to be with you, and then use a simple word as needed to help keep you "centered" on God's presence.  We are to do two 20 minute sessions of this during our silence today.

Also Today, during Eucharist, I "joined" the monastery as an associate, becoming a part of the extended monastery family.  As part of this I wrote my own "rule of life", agree to live according to the associates rule, and declared my intent in a small portion of the Eucharist service.  I received a simple wood cross to wear while I'm at the monastery.

So for the day in silence part, I spent some extra time in the Chapel before Diurnum and Vespers trying the centering prayer, and then spent the bulk of the day sitting on my favorite Adirondack chair - reading and thinking while watching the trains move up and down along the Hudson river. 

Sitting for too long is hard on, um, well its hard, so I got up mid afternoon and did a quick walk along the driveway to check out more of the wildflowers.

At the end of the day we had another debriefing session with Brs. James and Scott.  We all experienced similar difficulty in the second session of our centering prayers, which they said was actually normal.  We also shared a lot on the problems we have quieting our minds during the silent meditation.  Without going into all the details, it was a helpful discussion and I was particularly thankful for Br. Scott's thoughts on Myers-Briggs types and meditation and prayer.  He noted that most prayer books are written by NF types so those who are ST types may have to adapt.  The discussion was much more involved in that, but was very helpful in thinking through the fact that we might be a different type than the person who created the particular way of praying we were studying.  That doesn't make it good or bad, but is something to keep in mind when pondering and choosing how we want to approach God. 

(It might also begin to explain why I seem to pray best when I'm holding a camera...)