Beginner

So much to do, so little time. 

To live the contemplative life amidst all the pressure and challenges of daily living is no mean feat. From experience I know that paradoxically, the busier my life becomes, the quieter I need to be. The moment the pace picks up is exactly the time to listen to the still, small voice. It is not so much frantic activity that provides the solution as entering into the silence. Then it is very important not to neglect my meditation practice. The latter helps especially in discerning what is important and how to go about in planning my day. It centres me and guides me in finding my place once again within the wider order of things.

I constantly forget that. I become anxious and frantic and tend to follow another rule:

When in darkness or in doubt

Run in circles, scream and shout

It does not help. It drains me and leaves me empty.

Ever so gently I am returning to my breathing and the quiet and the listening. In the process I find counsel in the words of Thomas Merton once again

“We do not want to be beginners. 

But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!”

The Rule of St Benedict breathes the same wisdom: “Always we begin again.”

I have all day.


George