Faith Matters | It takes practice to ‘be still and know that I am God’

I had hoped to sleep in a bit. I had gotten up at 4:30 the previous morning to get the first of the two flights which would bring me back to Florida. But no, instead I was awakened about 4:30 by a crashing thunderstorm over the Gulf.

After listening to it for a while, I finally got up, knowing sleep was not returning. I followed my usual routine: made coffee, read the two daily devotionals I get emailed to me, and then set a timer (25 minutes) for my meditation time. The storm had cooled things down, so I decided it was comfortable to sit on our rear screened porch.

Genuine silence is always fleeting. So the key to meditation, contemplation, centering prayer (pick your favorite term) is having a method to mentally step back from the distractions and return to silence. I have one, but this morning a different method was provided for me.

Having just travelled halfway across the country, flying for the first time during the pandemic, my head was spinning with experiences and images from that trip. The storm was still going but that wasn’t really a problem, until I started wondering if it would ever really rain. Thus far it had been little more than a steady drizzle. I knew it hadn’t rained much while I was gone. All this light and noise ought to generate more rain than this. We need the rain. Why doesn’t it…?

Squeak.

It came from behind me, in the garden bed. A tiny frog. Not the deep RIBBIT of a cartoon frog. Just a little chirp. But it was enough to stop the chatter and bring me back to here and now.

And that’s the goal of prayer: to be genuinely present right where you are, at this moment. When you get involved in the conversation in your head, you’re not here, you’re somewhere else. And it’s not now because you’re either reexperiencing the past or imagining the future.

On a few occasions I began thinking about what would be happening later that day and later in the week, all the tasks I had to accomplish now that I was back.

Squeak.

On other occasions I began thinking about things that had happened during my weeks in New Mexico, what was happening there now, what I would do when I was there again.

Squeak.

I don’t remember how often it happened but again and again this little unseen frog became my prayer partner, simply and persistently bringing me back to sitting in this porch, in the dark, with the rain and the flashes and the rumbles, here and now. The time flew by (it doesn’t always) and it was remarkably refreshing because after all the hurry up and wait and getting my bearings back the day before, I now felt like I had genuinely arrived. I was here, now.

Thousands of books have been written about meditation, from every religious and spiritual perspective. Classes and seminars are taught. You can find YouTube videos. It can seem so daunting because we imagine it must be daunting. “Am I doing it right?” we ask ourselves. Many of the books and teachers can be genuinely helpful, but—as they usually admit—they’re really all saying the same thing: Just sit and be still.

Do whatever helps you to relax (experiment and eventually you’ll establish your own practice). When thoughts come (as they inevitably do) don’t pursue them or get into a fight with them. Just let them go—because they aren’t you. They’re like a fly on your arm; shake it and it will fly away. Yes, it will probably come back. Shake it again. Eventually it will give up.

Discovering that you are not your thoughts (they’ll go away, but you will still be here) is one the first and most important revelations of meditation, and an enormous liberation.

One of the consequences of the pandemic is that most of us have a lot of time on our hands. And we’re approaching half a year of this! We can’t fill all that time with puzzles and projects, hard as we might try. Perhaps one silver lining of this cloud we’re under is that we are being given an opportunity to establish a new relationship with time. And what that really means is creating a new relationship with ourselves and with our life.

We often don’t like being silent and alone. There are those voices! Don’t worry about them. Stare them down and they’ll go away. They chatter about the past, which you can’t do anything about. Or they chatter about the future, which hasn’t happened yet. Life only happens here and now. That’s where we need to be because that’s where we are! And that’s where God is, “the one in whom we live and move and have our being,” as Paul says in Acts.

“Be still and know that I am God,” the Psalms declare. It’s so simple, but it takes practice. So, since you’ve got the time, spend a little of it just sitting and being quiet. Practice being you, here, now. And if you think it will help, find yourself a frog.

Faith Matters is written by members of the Bradenton clerical community. Doug Kings is pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Holmes Beach.