onthly MeditationMeditation for February 2012
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Judith reads:
Contemplative Life of Nature
John O’Donahue, in his book Eternal Echoes, says: There is an ancient faithfulness in Nature. Mountains, fields, and shorelines are still to be found in the same places after thousands of years. …Landscape lives the contemplative life of silence, solitude, and stillness. …Until we allow some of Nature’s stillness to reclaim us, we will remain victims of the instant and never enter the heritage of our ancient belonging. Page 16/17
Is it possible for us, do you think, to live a contemplative life of silence, solitude, and stillness in which O’Donahue states that Nature exists?
In order to live such a contemplative life, we must come each morning to a time of silence, a place of solitude, and in an attitude of stillness.
Unlike Nature, which has no choice but to stay put in the place where she has been for thousands of years, we have a choice and can come or not, as we please, to that necessary place of silence that is needed to embrace God in the contemplative life where one is enabled to seek God and find Him.
This life of silence, solitude, and stillness, is the heritage of our ancient belonging, a place where our Christian and Hebrew ancestors came each day—even each moment—to find God and live in Him; to be God’s temple that God may dwell in us. For some who live in rural areas they abide within a precious place where Nature’s stillness can reclaim them and hold them in its contemplative embrace. For many of us who live in urban areas we will have to make our own place of quiet where we can be still and know God.
Wherever you live, hold yourself still and quiet for a space of time each morning; allow your body to be still and your breath to be quiet. Contemplate the Creator who makes all things; join with Nature in its daily, yearly, and seasonal round. Let go of instant and constant expectations; claim your heritage of God within you and you within God; be still and know your God.
© Judith Lawrence February 2012
My newest spiritual book, Highway of Holiness: Soul Journey, can now be purchased directly through my website here.
Also atAmazon.ca and at Wipf and Stock.
See also my weekly Wednesday blog, Contemplative without a Cloister
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