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[15
June 2008]
When asked how they imagined God most people who
responded to a recent survey said in one way or other that God was an old
man with a beard up in the sky. This
old man image has been a dominant one in children’s minds and in
European art for the past 1000 years, but we have now traveled up there
into space and discovered that heaven isn’t just above the clouds.
Yuri Gagarin the first cosmonaut to circle the earth proudly
proclaimed he hadn’t seen God up there and like him most of the
respondents in the survey about God who said he was an old man in the sky
said they didn’t believe in him either.
Hopefully people like us can see that these images of God are
simply that – images to help us understand and make sense of something
that is much greater than we are.
Of course I bet you like me will sometimes raise your
eyes heavenward when you think of God, or as you pray to God you will
imagine God is way above us. I
think these images have some helpful parts to them.
God is bigger than us, and God is more powerful than us.
God stands over and under our lives.
As
St Paul
wrote in think a more helpful way, “in God we live and move and have our
being.” God, according
to Paul, is more of a sea
around us, and as the hymn writer George Matheson says, “in your ocean
depths the flow [of my life] may richer fuller be.”
But there is another image of God that has often been
neglected by our churches. This
is the image if God not up there or out there, but God deep within us. Meister
Eckhart a great mystic from the early Middle Ages spoke of a light in our
soul that is uncreated and uncreatable.
In other words God is in the inner core of our being and to
discover the presence of God we don’t go looking above the clouds, but
we need to look within ourselves. We
need to listen in stillness to what comes from deep inside.
I think this is one reason why Jesus was so insistent when telling
his disciples how to pray or discover God that they need to go to a still
place where they could be quiet in private and listen.
George Fox the Englishman who founded the Society of
Friends or Quakers as they are sometimes known, discovered that when you
quiet the clamour of the mind and still the activity in our lives and look
deep within you discover what he called an inner witness or true self that
he said was immortal and divine. Some
of us would call this the soul place. Fox called this the inner light and
identified it with the Spirit of Christ.
Connecting with this inner presence of God, your deathless soul,
your higher spiritual self, is one of the purposes of prayer.
But of course the prayer that helps us touch base with god within
will usually be different to many prayers we may be used to in church
which are vocalized and where we imagine our words going off to God who is
above us. Discovering the
inner presence of God is not so much about talking and asking God to do
things, but is about sensing and listening and getting in touch with our
authentic self.
When people tell me they found an inner strength to
face something I think it usually comes from deep within, the inner self
or God space within. The
disciples on the lake that had become a swirling and dangerous place with
waves threatening to swamp them found in Jesus a deep peace.
You don’t have to be on a lake to find this peace and the
presence that can bring it can be deep within. When people make decisions
in their lives because of some inner conviction again in some way they
have listened to this inner self. As
I have said before I think Ed Hillary was someone who was well in touch
with his inner self and light and that’s why people warmed to him.
You don’t have to be super religious to find this authentic self
within, but you do need time to reflect and contemplate on your life. You
need quiet and reflective times where you can be alone with your inner
self. You need courage to
trust the inner voice.
Christian poet Rainer Maria Rilke had a young man
come to him one day for advice as to whether he should also become a poet.
The young man had sent his poems to many people asking if they were good
enough for publication. Rilke
told the young man to stop seeking the praise or criticism of others.
Instead he said look inside. “search
for the reason that bids you write, and find out whether it is spreading
its roots into the deepest places of your heart.
Acknowledge to yourself whether you should have to die if it were
denied to you to write. This
above all ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night – must I write?
Delve within yourself for a deep answer.”
How we listen to the deep places within ourself is of
course something we need to discover for ourselves.
Most quiet activities like spending time in our garden or going for
a walk or gentle run allow us to connect with our inner self.
Quietly sitting and reflecting in stillness or with some meditative
music playing will often allow us to listen to the inner light.
A gentle conversation with a friend who is a good listener may
enable to inner voice to speak. Reading
scripture meditatively and watching for the words that seem to strike a
chord within is a traditional way of letting the inner light shine. Going
on retreat is becoming a popular spiritual exercise again, and it is good
to see the Sister Evelyn Retreat House at Sumner being expanded and
renovated to accommodate regular retreats in this area.
I was interested to be asked by an unknown young woman this last
week whether she could come into the church during the day and pray.
Researcher Dorothy Butler Bass who has been looking
at why some mainline churches are growing tells us that growing churches
practice contemplative prayer. In
our noisy over busy world people are learning to meditate and practice
quiet prayer of listening to the God place within.
While some churches are very noisy places silence is common in
growing mainline churches. In
the silence people listen. People are also finding their own way to listen
and to reflect. It doesn’t
mean such churches are full of saintly silent types, but people in their
own way are learning of the value of discovering the deep place within
each one of them where God dwells and where there are secret messages
about the uniqueness of their own life.
People are saying you know I think I was put on this earth to this
or that or to be this or that. People
are becoming more authentically themselves instead of being shaped by all
the pressures of others. People
are finding a deep inner strength to face the storms in their lives and
not be swamped by the rush and bustle of the superficial busyness life has
become. These things are not
for some spiritual elite but are things each one of us can discover for
ourselves. We just need to
trust the silence and listen.
Dugald Wilson
15 June 2008
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