In contrast to traditional ways of living, modernity relies on what we can consciously think about and talk about, what we can demonstrate or exhibit in the public arena. We moderns need to be in control. That is our strength. But it is also our weakness, because we dare not trust those aspects of our life that elude our control, our rational understanding. We become insensitive to them, even sometimes denying their very existence.
Oh, that ye might inwardly know these things! Turn in, turn in. Mind what stirs in your hearts; what moves against sin, what moves towards sin. The one is the Son’s life, the Son’s grace, the Son’s Spirit; the other is the spirit and nature which is contrary thereto. If ye could come but to the sense of this, and come to a true inward silence, and waiting, and turning at the reproofs of heavenly wisdom, and know the heavenly drawings into that which is holy and living, ye would soon find the Lord working in your hearts.
When your heart is wandering and distracted, bring it back quickly to its point, restore it tenderly to its Master’s side, and if you did nothing else the whole of your hour but bring back your heart patiently and put it near our Lord again, and every time you put it back it turned away again, your hour would be well-employed.
The silence we value is not the mere outward silence of the lips. It is a deep quietness of heart and mind, a laying aside of all preoccupation with passing things — yes, even with the workings of our own minds; a resolute fixing of the heart upon that which is unchangeable and eternal.
The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.
“In 1987 I first came across the fourteenth century text and foundational text for Centering Prayer, The Cloud of Unknowing and I knew then that I’d found something I was looking for – a way to enter the sacred, a direct approach to God, and something that I believed would deepen my experience of meeting for worship:
‘Do not pray with words unless you feel you really must’ and ‘…look that nothing remains in your conscious mind but a naked intent stretching unto God, not clothed in any particular thought about God – what he is like in himself or in any of his works – but only that he is as he is.’”
To clear your mind and become ‘spiritually focused,’ you have to learn to concentrate what George Fox called “thy wandering mind.” Unfortunately, many Quaker writings don’t specify a way to develop this concentration.
But concentration is a central part of mindfulness, and the literature on mindfulness contains a lot of advice about learning to concentrate. Most of it boils down to repeatedly focusing your attention on your breath or some other aspect of your experience.
“I discovered the way to the interior side of my life, at the deep center of which I knew that I was not alone, but was held by a love that passes all understanding.
This love was mediated to me, in the first place, by those with whom I worshiped. For my journey was not solitary, but one undertaken with my friends as we moved towards each other and together traveled inwards.”
When I sit down in meeting I recall whatever may have struck me freshly during the past week. This is in part, initially at least, a voluntary and outward act… It means that the will is given up to service; and it is quite possible to stop everything by taking an opposite attitude. So thoughts suggest themselves – a text that has smitten one during the week – new light on a phrase – a verse of poetry – some incident, private or public. These pass before the door whence shines the heavenly light.
“Leave yourself out / to soften. / Assume you’ll be needed / today.
Assume you’ll need / to be soft / and ready.”
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