Bringing back Christian meditation: An interview with Reverend Glenda Meakin.
For most of us, the best way to talk to God is through prayer. However, for an increasing number of people, Eastern techniques of meditation are proving equally, if not more attractive. Meditators report feeling calmer and more at peace with themselves and the world around them. For Buddhists and Hindus, meditating has always been seen as a key way to reach spiritual fulfillment. Do Christians who seek this same inner peace need to choose between prayer and meditation?The Turning spoke to the Reverend Glenda Meakin. She teaches a form of Christian meditation which was once a daily part of worship among early Christians. In this interview, Reverend Meakin speaks about what Chrsitian meditation is, why it was forgotten, and how it is now coming back.
THE TURNING: I think for most Christians, the royal road to communicating with God is prayer - words. Meditation is something most Christians associate with Eastern religions, but isn’t much of the Western tradition. Why is that? Did Christians once have meditation and then gave it up?
MEAKIN: Exactly. Meditation is a universal practice, and it is only in the last forty years, that Eastern meditation has become prominent in the Western world. But it has been very much part of the Christian world, going back to the 3rd and 4th centuries, when the Desert Fathers taught this very simple form of prayer. But it did get lost, to ordinary Christians, in the sense that, as the monastic life began, principally with Benedict and other teachers, it began to be seen as a way of prayer that only monastic and religious people could do, but ordinary lay-folk really couldn’t do that. They didn’t have the time, and they somehow weren’t quite up to it. So it was lost to ordinary Christians until the late twentieth century, the 1960s, 1970s. Then a Benedictine monk, John Main, recovered this way of prayer and began to teach it.
THE TURNING: Can you tell us a bit about the Desert Fathers? Who were they, and why were they meditating?
MEAKIN: Well, the Desert Fathers and Mothers were people who went into the deserts of Egypt and were seeking a relationship with God, and also a return to what they understood Jesus was teaching us. As the church became politicized and organized around secular systems after Constantine in 323 A.D., when he declared Christianity the official religion of the empire , many Christians felt that they were losing the essence of what Jesus taught and lived for. And the Desert Fathers went off to the desert to seek a closer relationship with God and Christ.Being in these small communities they often lived solitary lives, and only met with others once in a while. But these were men and women who were seeking to return to what Jesus taught. And they attracted many, many people because of their holiness, because of their way of teaching and living. And it is from one of these principally that we trace the way of praying with a single phrase, what we call the poverty of the mantra, so that you clear a path to silence.
The difficulty for most of us is that we are always talking, internally as well as externally. And if we wish to come into and be much more attentive to the presence of God in our own heart, we need some simple tools, and John Cassian taught us the way to repeat a single phrase or word to enable us to come into the silence of our own heart, where the spirit of Christ is. And this way of prayer began to be taught. And Cassian , his writings , which are quite available, in a book called The Conferences of John Cassian, just teaches how to pray in this way.
A lot of Cassian’s teachings were picked up by Benedict as he formed what we call the basis of the Monastic movement. So it’s a very rich history and tradition that many Christians don’t know about. And it has great parallels in our time, when people really question how far the institutional church has strayed from what we’re supposed to be about. And so I think that this is one of the reasons why this very simple way of prayer has such a great attraction to people who are really seeking to follow Christ, to be his disciples, but often finding that the church is not very helpful that way.
THE TURNING: I think that’s very interesting. When most of us go to church we are encouraged to pray or listen to a prayer that is being given from the pulpit. We are not really asked to sit there and feel God’s presence in a silent way. Our religion now seems to be based on words. How< does silence invite God and Christ into our presence in a way that words do not?
MEAKIN: Well, words are always limited, because, being human beings, we are limited, finite, and our minds are limited. And we can never imagine God or picture God adequately, or talk about God adequately. So silence moves us out of words, it enables us to enter into the limitlessness of God or into the eternal, if you like.And the way silence does that, or how I understand that, is that we believe that Jesus’ spirit is within us. That is what we understand when Jesus said " I give you my spirit, I send you my spirit." It’s how we understand the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The spirit of Christ dwells in every human being. If you want to say it another way, we are infused with the breath of God, or the ‘ruoc’ as the Hebrew says of God within us. And that’s already there. And our difficulty with prayer is that we often see prayer like what I call the starter’s pistol, we are trying to get God going, on our behalf. Whereas with meditation, Jesus is already praying in your heart, he is showing you the way to God, he says ‘I am the way, I am the gate, I am the door’. We need to become silent and attentive to what is already going on within us, and in that way, if you like, we are entering into what is already going on within us, not having to make it happen.
THE TURNING: Jesus makes reference in the gospels a few times that we should pray in private, and he obviously went out into the desert himself. Where did the Desert Fathers get the idea that a silent form of meditation would be the way to invite Christ in? Did the practice already exist among early Christians?
MEAKIN: Well, certainly in their interpretation of Jesus’ words, "Go into your room and shut the door", we understand that as go into your heart. And that prayer is a very personal, interior activity. That doesn’t mean that we don’t pray out loud or with other people, but when Jesus says that in the gospel according to Matthew, the Desert teachers understood that as go inside your self, that it is an interior activity.
THE TURNING: You have referred to that as silence, also as the "poverty of the mantra". Can you talk about when you sit down to meditate, what is going on in your mind, are you thinking of a phrase in your mind?
MEAKIN: Well, the idea is that, as John Main taught us, when he recovered this way of prayer, you think about nothing. That’s why the word ‘poverty’ is so important. You let go of all words, all images, all ideas about God, all thoughts. You replace all that, because if we don’t have some way to move into silence, we will constantly have these thought and images going on. It’s what John Maine calls the monkey chatter. That inside our minds is like a jungle with the monkey swinging from tree to tree, just chattering. So, in order to move into silence, we need some tool or way to do that. So a prayer word, the one we suggest to people is an Aramaic word, found in First Corinthians 15, and also in the Book of Revelations, is ‘maranatha’, it means ‘Come Lord.’ But when you repeat that word, you don’t even think about what it means, you simply repeat it silently, over and over.
There’s nothing magic about it, it clears a space, it puts the monkey chatter and all your thoughts to one side.
And all meditators will tell you that this is an ongoing fact that the monkey chatter keeps intruding, and John Maine always taught you don’t fight it, you simply return to your word, nor do you evaluate your time of prayer at the end, saying "oh! It’s all monkey chatter", you just don’t do that. You take two periods a day, of sitting still, you just still your body, sit in an upright position, because this is not meant to be what is sometimes called holy floating or semi-awake. It is to be very awake to the spirit of Christ within. All that mantra or word does is to clear a space so you can come into the silence of your own heart.
THE TURNING: Do you feel have feelings of bliss, or calm?
MEAKIN: Oh, no, John Main was always quite wonderful when teaching about that. He said that if you have very holy thoughts or great visions, you probably have indigestion. Nothing happens when you meditate. What does happen is that year by year, doing it twice a day, and John Main was very clear about that, you know you’re not really serious about it unless you’re willing to put aside two half hour periods a day. And when people say, "I just can’t do that, I’m too busy", he tried to encourage people to see it as such a gift. God is inviting us into this relationship, and God is providing a way for us to be attentive, a relationship with God through Christ, and don’t see it as an add-on, but see it as something just to be open to.So, when you’re meditating, you don’t have anything going on in your mind, because you don’t want to be thinking. Certainly, most people will tell you after they have been practicing for a short time that they have a feeling of inner peace. But I would say that key thing is , after practicing for almost twenty years this way of prayer, what you begin to realize is how God is shaping your life. So much of our prayer is trying to shape God into what we want. And Christian meditation does just this incredible metanoia, or turn around, that says, ‘God has a wonderful life for you, how are you going to be open to it, and allow God to shape you into the person that God made you to become?’ It is quite a turn around, and of course it is all done on faith, because I will tell you, that after twenty years, you are very aware of the ways in which you are not allowing God to shape your life. And, you know it is a discipline, there is no way to get around it. And John Main always said, it is a very simple of way of prayer, but it is not an easy way.
THE TURNING: Now, it sounds very similar to what Transcendental Meditation was talking about forty years ago it first came out, and we know that Tibetans and the Buddhists meditate, and they say this practice is the core to their route to the divine. Is there a difference? Or are we all hooking into the same thing?
MEAKIN: Well, I think there is a different language that we use, and so much of that is culture, isn’t it? As Christians, we don’t talk about moving into an altered state of consciousness, we talk about becoming fully awake. Jesus is always telling us to wake up, stay awake, be alert. So, because we all share that same breath of God, every human being, I like to think that the way God speaks to us is always in a way we can apprehend and receive, and naturally that is through our culture and our tradition. I would say that as a Christian, one way I articulate it differently from a Buddhist or a Hindu, would be that I understand the spirit of Christ within me. My understanding is that Buddhists don’t try to talk about God at all, because of the impossibility. And we certainly share that, when we enter into the silence, we say that we cannot capture God in words, or in thoughts anyway. But I think it is very good, when we can meditate together with other faith groups. The groups are ecumenical, and because of that, and there’s no discussion of differences, there’s an incredible sense of our connectness as humans, and our belonging together. You know, once you let go of the words and talking about ‘ you say it this way, we say it that way’, or ‘ we believe this, and you believe that’, you come down to your essential understanding of the Creator who created everything, all of us, and that that same breath of the creator is in all of us.
THE TURNING: For most of us going to church, a service is about hearing the Reverend or the priest pronounce lots of prayers, lots of word-based prayers. When you were serving as a priest, were you blending meditation with traditional prayer?
MEAKIN: Well, I certainly tried to build in silences during the liturgy, during the service, for instance after every reading of the scripture, to let that sit. And to not feel like we had to jump from one thing to the next, not to watch the clock. I introduced Christian meditation to people in the parish. But I was very aware of the need to move into that in a way that people could hear it, since it is so foreign to our churches. Of course to so many people, they may say ‘ that’s Eastern, I’m not going to have anything to do with that.’
So, it’s a long slow process. I was in that parish for four years, and I used every opportunity I had to talk about Christian meditation, but also, I think the way to encourage people to Christian meditation, is by living it. People want to know how to be more centered, how to be more connected, how to sort out all that is coming at them, discernment, I think that they often see something in meditators, something that attracts them. I think it is like any kind of discipleship, what attracts people is when you live out what you believe.
So I think it is a slow process, and most of the time, we always have to remember that it is up to the Holy Spirit, how the Spirit is calling people. I would not suggest that this type of prayer suits everybody. And if you look at the demographics right now, it has lots to do with people coming to a certain point in life, and saying, ‘hey this is pretty crazy, what am I doing here?’ Not to say that this isn’t very attractive to young people, as well. But I do think that it is a whole process. It’s not simply ‘hey I want to tell you about Christian meditation’ and then you’ll do it. It’s much more like witnessing, if you want to use an old-fashioned term, by your own life, the ways in which it is transforming your heart by that twice daily encounter, and hopefully it makes you more aware of God during the day.THE TURNING: And does it help you see God in others, as well as deal with situations that are stressful, and perhaps in a more balanced way?
MEAKIN: Very much so. I would say that it has tempered my quick response, and deepened my compassion towards people. When you begin to realize how deeply loved you are by God, and that’s what mediation brings you, into that love, then you begin to understand that that other person who is , ‘sandpapering you’ at that particular moment, rubbing you the wrong way for whatever reason, you’re very much aware that they also have within them the spirit. And, if at that moment they are not aware of that, and you are, then you temper the way you respond.
THE TURNING: And how often do you advise people to meditate like this?
MEAKIN: One of the ways that the Christian meditation community helps individuals to stay on the path is through weekly groups. We encourage people to belong to weekly groups, you simply go to a place, to meditate together. We usually listen to a taped talk by our present teacher, Benedictine monk, Lawrence Freeman, who succeeded John Main, who died in 1982, and we listen to a talk, we meditate together and a prayer, and those weekly groups encourage people to stay faithful.
Further Reading and Links about Christian Meditation:
Conferences (from The Classics of Western Spirituality
series), Paulist Press (see especially conferences 10&11)
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, translated by Benedicta Ward, Mowbray
The Cloud of Unknowing, edited by William Johnston, An Image book published
by Doubleday.
Roberta Bondi:
To Pray and To Love:Conversations on Prayer with the Early
Church, Fortress Press.
John Main:
Christian Meditation:The Gethsemani Talks
Word Into Silence
The Way of Unknowing
Laurence Freeman:
The Selfless Self
Jesus, The Teacher Within
*The books by John Main and Laurence Freeman are available from the
Christian Meditation Resource Centre at PO Box 552, Station NGD, Montreal,
QC , H4A 3P9 or by emailing: meditatio@sympatico.ca
People can also get general information about the Christian Meditation
Community in Canada by going to www.meditatio.ca
