We long for God’s presence. We lament God’s absence. But what do we mean by this? We often speak of wanting God to be with us, to comfort, protect, guide, or calm us. We pray for this, in words and silence. But what if we turn this inside out, the way Martin Buber does when he says, “There is no Presence for those who are not present”? Instead of imagining God coming to be present with us, imagine our being present to the Presence in which we live and move and have our being. This requires its own kind of discipline—removing the veils and masks our egos and minds and hearts throw up that obstruct our experience of the Presence. When we carefully, patiently strip away these obstructions, we are able to breathe spirit freely, and we are released into a new way of being—being present to the Presence. For Buber, being present to the Presence is the definition of prayer. For many Native American tribes it is as well; they call it “paying attention.”
When you leave behind the demands of your ego, your concepts and self-consciousness, and your passions, you experience the calm and calming liberation of entering a place far greater than yourself, your family, your community, your country, or your culture or race or gender—a place where you belong with and among all, but where you are not the center or even a focal point. Here there is rest and joy and freedom. You never want to leave this place. (The Place, HaMakom, was one of the names the rabbis of the Talmud used for God. It is a rich image—one I’ll return to in a later post.)
You can practice being present to the Presence as you move through every moment of each day, You’ll probably slip out of this presence back into your narrower world of self, but you can always slip back into it. The goal is to be fully present to the Presence that is All, that is Whole, more and more of your life. The Navajo call it “walking in beauty.”
May we all practice being present to the Presence, breathe spirit freely, walk in beauty.
No comments:
Post a Comment