Meditation

When we do what's called "African Bible Study" we read the appointed passage from three translations. After each reading, there's a different response. The first go-round, you simply repeat a word or short phrase that pinged for you during the reading. (If nothing pinged, you make up something.) The second time is more of a current events question: How does this passage relate to you in the world today? Then lastly: What are you called to do (or think about) based on the passage and discussion? Easy enough. Except the things that pop into my head at the time, are almost never the things I wind up with at the end of the day. I've only begun to notice that. Life at Melrose was often so busy that once Bible study was done, I was done, and on to the next activity. Here it carries with me throughout the day. My life is more solitary in the city. I have larger chunks of time alone in my cell, to work on design projects, my Lincoln Center file conversions, my own blog. All that quiet is conducive to deeper (if erratic) thought.

My spiritual director asked about my prayer life, my meditation... how was that going? She wanted to know if I counted my blog as meditation. Well, no. Not exactly. I would, she said. Really? Cool.

Well of course it's a form of meditation. I think, I write what I think, I revise what I write, and in the process think of something else. And I do write for an audience, so I can't just blather on, naming names and asking God to "fix it" like I might do in a private journal. (Like I always did in my private journal.) No this seems much more adult to me. I have to redeem my own situations a lot of the time. Isn't that also what co-creating with God is about? I think so.