Hello,
My name is Yamima.
Welcome to another reflection from the WCCM Young Channel.
Here we share teachings from John Mayne,
Lawrence Freeman,
And the Christian Contemplative Tradition.
Today I will be reading a reflection from The Experience of Being,
Written by Lawrence Freeman.
Part 6.
Be still and know that I am God.
Quote,
The verse,
Be still and know that I am God,
Is not an escape from the problems of the world,
But the answer to the problems of the world.
End quote.
Psalm 46.
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Though the earth should change,
Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city,
It shall not be moved.
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar,
The kingdoms stutter.
He utters his voice,
The earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us,
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come,
Behold the works of the Lord,
See what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth,
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
He burns the shield with fire.
Be still and know that I am God,
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us,
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
The verse,
Be still and know that I am God,
Is not an escape from the problems of the world,
But it is the answer to the problems of the world.
Because the stillness and knowledge of God is the most powerful central reality,
It is a city,
It cannot be moved.
It is the most central reality of the world,
And the fact that the world is in turmoil with terrorism,
With craziness,
With hate,
With self-centered militaristic politics,
Despite all those horrific aspects of the world,
The stillness and the knowledge of God are central.
And this stillness and knowledge is greater than the turmoil,
Greater than the violence,
Greater than the hatred.
And nothing describes more directly the connection between our meditation and the needs of the world.
If we are doing this work of stillness,
This work of silence,
It is not just for ourselves,
It would be very one-sided if we ignored the larger ambient consciousness,
The need of the world around us.
The more deeply we go into this work and the work works on us,
The more you realize that we are part of this great work of God,
Which is raising the stillness and the knowledge at the heart of human society,
And of human history,
That we are part of this work.
We are doing the work,
But we are also part of it.
We are doing it for ourselves,
But we are also doing it for everyone else.
It is a universal work and it is the most personal work we could possibly do,
But no one can do it for us.
It's a universal and a personal work.
It connects us to the universe,
To the natural world and to other human beings.
Firstly to ourselves of course,
Because if we are not connected to ourselves,
We are not at home with ourselves.
Then we are disconnected from everything else around us.
And of course it connects us to God,
The ground of being,
To God who is the great spider who spins the web of reality that we belong to.
And nothing that exists,
Exists without coming into being in that web of reality.
I think human beings feel deeply uneasy,
Unhappy and frightened when we lose that sense of connectivity,
That sense of connection.
Some little glimmer of that might be our need to be online,
To be connected,
And we might feel anxious with good reason if we come offline.
We can't get online,
We can't connect.
And that is nothing compared with the existential dread and fear of sensing that we are not in the web of reality,
Or off the radar,
Off God's radar of the web of being.
So there is deep in the human being a longing to belong,
The fear embedded in this web of reality.
As John Mayne said,
Find our insertion point in the universe,
That little hole that we plug into,
And it's only if we fit into it,
Only my particular shape,
My particular mind,
My particular identity fits into that hole.
I was talking to a bishop in Los Angeles a couple of days ago.
He told me that when he speaks to young people,
He has worked with street gangs and disaffected youth,
He has a very great compassion for young people on the streets who at a very young age do fall into this illusion of disconnection.
They feel that they are not embedded in any reality.
Maybe the gang gives them some hope of belonging,
But not a very satisfying one.
So he has a very deep compassion for these young people.
He said that when they come to see him,
He asks them the question,
How close do you feel to Jesus?
Do you feel very close?
Do you feel a long way away?
And one of them said to him,
I am very far away.
And the bishop said,
Let's meditate.
So he told him how to meditate.
The boy was 16 and it was the first time he ever meditated.
So the bishop told him how to do it,
And they meditated for maybe two minutes,
Very quietly.
And when they finished,
The boy said to him,
Gee,
How did you do that?
So we shouldn't think of this work of silence as something that is ultra-sophisticated,
Ultra-reserved for an elite group of mystics and contemplatives.
And clearly what we are discovering in our world and our communities is that part of this work is to be able to bring this simple truth,
This simple awareness,
Simple experience to people like that.
16 years old,
Unhappy,
Disaffected,
Alienated,
Lonely,
Gang member.
And of course,
If a whole society falls into that experience of disconnection,
It falls into anarchy because there's nothing to hold it together.
There's no sense of belonging.
There's no sense of responsibility.
There's no sense of collaboration,
No awareness of compassion.
And in our affluent and stable society,
Many people like that young boy feel homeless at heart.
Even if we have a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood,
That feeling can be very intense and eat away at us.
Back to the psalm,
To the context of turmoil and turbulence and war and disruption of civic life that it's describing,
And of that wonderful vision,
That wonderful revelation of the stillness at the center of that city of God.
We are the city of God.
We are this amazing city.
We are embodied beings.
We are embodied and we are embedded.
Embedded in that community.
Embedded in the body of Christ.
That's the gift of awareness that we have to share with the world.
Not a doctrine,
Not as a dogma,
Not as an ideology,
But as a truth that we are discovering and able to share,
Like the bishop was at that moment.
So we may have a lot of turbulence and a lot of distraction and a lot of turmoil going on in our minds and in our hearts and in our feelings,
But that's okay.
That doesn't disturb that stillness that is at the center of our city,
In our heart.
And it is out of that stillness and that work of silence that the knowledge of God arises.
An ambiguous phrase,
Knowledge of God,
We might think it means our knowledge of God,
Which it does,
But equally and importantly,
It means God's knowledge of us.
Our knowledge of God is very small compared with God's knowledge of us.
Perhaps the most important basic kind of work of being human is that work of silence.
And everything falls into anarchy.
Everything falls into chaos if we lose that connection that comes through silence.
Excerpt of Psalm 46.
The nations are in uproar.
The kingdoms stutter.
He utters his voice.
The earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.
He makes war cease to the end of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.
He burns the shields with fire.
Be still and know that I am God.
I am exalted among the nations.
I am exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Thank you for joining me at the WCCM Young Channel.
Until next time,
But for now,
Peace be with you.
