Sacred Text for "Centering Down" Reflection

How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one's self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.

With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;
A direction, a strong pure purpose that will structure our confusion
and bring meaning in our chaos.
We look at ourselves in this waiting moment - the kinds of people we are.

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives? -
What are the motives that order our day?
What is the end in our doings? Where are we trying to go?
Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused?
For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

Over and over the questions beat in the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind –
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!

From Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman.

Reflection: Inspiration

Sacred Text: "Be Your Note"

I have this habit of getting a bit grumpy, that I can feel distant from God too often. After a long day of working with data, I schlep home and feel tired. The spirit is not there, I am un-inspired.

The theme for tonight, was imagination, until I accidentally wrote a reflection about inspiration. Now tonight’s theme is inspiration. Breaking apart words can give shades of their meaning. Inspiration comes from the Latin word “to breathe”, and spiritus is the same word for breath as for spirit. Similarly in Hebrew, ruach. Thus the passage at the beginning of Genesis can be read “The spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters, or the breath of God, or the wind of God was moving of the face of the waters.”

This is why I love the Rumi poem: it has such vivid imagery of the spirit, the breath of God blowing through us.

I like the metaphor that God’s inspiration brings us alive. “God picks up the reed-flute world and blows”.

There’s mutuality in the metaphor: the flute/ the world makes no sound unless God blows through and resonates, setting us alive with sound. But so too for God: without us, the breath of God can blow this way and that and yet make no sound.

Rumi’s metaphor also points to a deeper truth about God. Many understandings of God seem to locate God outside of creation, as though God were watching the play that is humanity, and dipping in now and again to intervene in the plot. There are certainly voices in the Bible that promote this, but this vision of God is inadequate for me.

I need to be reminded of God’s mystical presence in the world: that the world is inspired by God. The presence of God is very much here—if I stop, if I look, if I listen, listen for the symphony—or is it cacophony—around me.

And if God is the breath that makes my note, then it is not a God that forces rules on me (do this/don’t do that) from afar: rather, the way I should live is a question about how I should be “be my note”, how to be the kind of person, the kind of community filled with the spirit of God. How to capture the breath of God and turn it into beautiful music.

Prayer is too is no longer begging someone— God— to intervene and fix things (Through who wouldn’t want that, it just doesn’t seem to happen). This Rumi helps me to think of prayer as getting in tune with God. In prayer, I come close to the spirit, bringing my needs to God, listening for God’s response. I try to let the breath of God keep flowing through me, “not trying to end it”.

And so, go up on the roof at night, go out into your yards or onto the streets. Sing your note, attend to the beauty of God flowing through you. Honor that spirit. Be your note, and God will show you how it is enough. And then listen to the singing around, the wonderful harmony of God setting each of us alive.

Amen.