SUSTAINING THE FLOW

I had a good walk today.  After reading some more of Ilia Delio's Christ in Evolution, I was left with the deep sense I'm not at all in control of what's happening to me.  Christ is taking me on a journey whether I submit to it or not, though it may be more tolerable and effective if I do.  Christ is working to bring about the new, and this is always accompanied by stressors whose intensity is commensurate with the degree of emerging transformation.  A new coherence is coalescing within me, as my true, objective self in Christ. 

As I was walking, I was blessed with an insight about my meditation practice.  Each day I practice centering prayer while I sit in the morning or evening and mindfulness meditation during my daily walk.  I was prompted to consider what it might look like if these two practices merged into a meta-meditative state.  Centering prayer is diffusive, expansive, objectless, and receptive, while mindfulness is narrow, focused, object-oriented, and concentrative.  Synthesizing these approaches feels intuitively right, in that it embodies the feminine-masculine energy exchange so beautifully presented in the Trinity.  It feels coherent and has a simple elegance that mirrors both my theology and my practical sense of how life is actually lived, as continual quanta of inflowing and outflowing energy. 

This segues into a larger exploration of how meditation and life are related.  If life itself is to ever become a meditation, if I am to ever learn to pray without ceasing, the practice must integrate with the experiential flow of living.  In life, one can't take a sit during moments of dynamic interaction with either people or the environment.  Neither do most experiences need or even allow for a wholly bifurcated approach of either concentration or reception.  Most situations call for both, so can my practice take a both/and, rather than either/or approach?  I'm going to heed this prompting and explore where it leads.