Welcome to the second episode of Christian Meditation with Anita Mathias.
Let's close our eyes and detach from the world and begin to enter the inner sanctuary of the soul.
The best way of calming down is focusing on our breath.
Breathe in to the count of five,
Breathe out again.
The Hebrew word for God was Yahweh,
Which is the sound of breath I've read.
Breathe Yah on the in-breath,
Weh on the out-breath.
Continue to enter your body.
Raise your shoulders to your ears,
Rotate them clockwise,
Anticlockwise,
Repeat.
Sit straight,
Get comfortable,
Cross your legs if you're comfortable with that.
Tense and wriggle your fingers and your toes.
The prophet Isaiah was granted an ecstatic vision of God.
He writes,
I saw the Lord,
High and exalted,
Seated on a throne.
And a train of His robe filled the temple.
Above Him was seraphim flying,
And they were calling to one another,
Holy,
Holy,
Holy is the Lord God Almighty.
The whole earth is full of His glory.
That is one sentence,
The one sentence to take from this meditation,
To tuck into your heart and mind and spirit and memory and carry with you for your whole life.
The whole earth is full of God's glory.
Life comes to each of us in waves,
Ups and downs.
At times we are floating,
At times sadness or depression,
Which feels like something heavy lodged in our body seizes us.
At those times,
Movement helps.
And also,
To as far as possible,
In the words of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians,
Rejoice always,
Pray continually,
And give thanks in all circumstances.
And one way to start being grateful for the gift of our lives is by gratefully observing the natural world.
The movements of clouds in the sky,
The ever-changing canvas,
The singing birds which at dusk make it sound as if the trees are singing,
The trees themselves which grow and change in their ancient silent dignity,
The green plants and the flowers each unique.
This is a created universe,
A made universe,
Imagined and invented and given to us by God and the whole world is full of God's glory.
If it's night or if you're in an institution and cannot look out at God's sky,
Use your memories of the natural world,
God's holy earth,
With what the poet William Wordsworth calls the inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.
This is our Father's world and the whole earth is full of His glory.
God stalks this world invisibly as Christ in the flesh walked the hills of Galilee.
And here's an excerpt from a poem by Coventry Patmore,
In No Strange Land.
The angels keep their ancient places,
Turn but a stone and start a wing.
Tis ye,
Tis your stranged faces that miss the many-splendored thing.
But when so sad thou canst not sadder,
You weep.
Then shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder,
Pitched between heaven and chair and cross.
In the night my soul cry,
Clinging to heaven by the hens.
And lo,
Christ walking on the water,
Not of Gennesaret,
But Thames.
Christ is everywhere,
Stalking the world,
Walking on the waters not just of Gennesaret but the Thames,
Which flows minutes from my own house in England.
As we spend time in the natural world,
We realise that we live in a God-haunted world in which the wind and trees and storms cry,
Holy,
Holy,
Holy.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.
Thank you.
