Dear friends,
Welcome to this meditation on trusting in Providence,
The idea of having hope for the future and facing the future with confidence.
We begin by allowing ourselves a few moments to become present,
So we won't be jumping in at an attempt at meditation without first quieting our minds.
I invite you to close your eyes and see if you can bring yourself to a place of relaxation.
If there is something going on in your mind just now,
Tell it to wait.
You can use words such as I will attend to you later.
And take a few moments to notice yourself sitting in whatever place you are in just now.
And now that you are settled,
Just notice you're breathing in and you're breathing out.
As you breathe in and out mindfully,
See if you can notice the sounds around you,
Beginning with the louder sounds if there are any,
And then listening out for the quieter sounds,
The more distant sounds,
And just relax into this present moment.
Let's pause for a minute now to enjoy the fact that we have slowed down,
That we are at rest for a change.
Welcome back.
The title of this meditation is Trusting in Providence as Life Unfolds.
I'm sure you have often been encouraged to trust in divine providence.
Providence as I see it doesn't mean the intervention of God in the sense of God as a larger-than-life version of ourselves.
You know the idea,
Someone up there in the sky watching what is going on down here below.
Now some people have no difficulty with that idea,
They find it helpful,
And who knows maybe they are right.
I don't have any insight as a finite being to attempt to describe the infinite.
According to that view,
God sets up situations,
God sets up interactions,
And provides people to enter our lives just when we happen to need them most.
And we can see that situations like this can happen in real life.
In his book Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence,
Father Jean-Pierre de Cassade describes how surrendering our will to God is the key to attaining peace and holiness in this life.
We are told that Father de Cassade's teachings were influenced by Saint Francis de Sales and Saint John of the Cross.
Father de Cassade tells us that the perfection God expects from us consists mainly in our 1.
Purifying the little actions that occur in the course of every day.
2.
Paying attention to every detail of our lives.
And 3.
Acceptance of the lot God has chosen for us.
This mention of purifying our daily actions and paying attention to the details is in a sense reminiscent of what we are encouraged to do in practising mindfulness.
It demonstrates how all the fundamental recommendations of the great religions,
The philosophy of humanism also,
They lead us in the same direction,
The direction of being aware and paying real attention as we go through life,
And of course not doing to other people what we wouldn't like done to ourselves.
But beautiful as those thoughts of self-abandonment are,
They seem to be making out God-to-be just a larger-than-life version of ourselves,
A God-with-a-superman-type mind,
An intellect that is no more than a more powerful version of the minds we all have.
Many people have difficulty in looking at providence like this,
Especially when you consider the fact that all of us have incompatible needs and deserves.
They ask how could we expect even an all-knowing and all-powerful God to give each of us all we want in the way in which we look for it.
And that approach is also troubled by the fact that some people never get to have the good life that we would all wish to have.
If we approach things in that way,
And we don't get what we want,
There is a tendency to blame God for our misfortune.
That leads us to the argument that God cannot be all-knowing,
All-powerful and all-good.
When you look at the world,
You notice that everything is not as everyone would wish it to be,
And you ask how could God be all-knowing,
All-powerful and all-good?
Yes we can exclude man-made troubles from our list of complaints.
People are to blame for these and we cannot blame God.
But what about natural disasters?
That is a big problem that everyone finds it difficult to understand.
Let's have a one-minute pause now for reflection before we move on.
Welcome back.
I'm more inclined to think that providence is a more normal and everyday thing,
Rather than some extraordinary intervention from outside.
How many times have each of us found ourselves seeking a certain outcome,
Working long and hard for a certain result,
Failing to achieve it,
And then finding that the actual outcome was far more useful to us than what we had planned ourselves?
This sort of thing has happened to me,
And I'm sure it's happened to you as well.
It reminds me of the lyric,
Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.
Remember that one?
These situations suggest to me that we can rely on providence to see us through,
Provided we react positively to the circumstances that life offers us.
This belief in providence,
The belief that most of the time,
And for most of us,
Everything will be seen to be for the best in the end,
This gives us reason for hope.
And when we have hope,
We are inclined to act in a way that helps providence along.
Providence and hope go hand in hand.
I have three quotes for you on the subject of hope.
The first is from Julie Donner Anderson.
Hope is a beautiful thing.
It gives us peace and strength,
And keeps us going when all seems lost.
Accepting what you cannot change doesn't mean you have given up on hope.
It just means you have to focus your hope on more humanly tangible and attainable goals.
That's from Julie Donner Anderson.
And from Robert Smith we have this.
Hope can be seen out in the garden,
In a plant that grows from a tiny seed.
At first it struggles through the soil,
But it persists and continues to go on,
Until it becomes an imposing tree,
And then it starts bearing fruit.
Quote number three is from Rick Warren.
Rick says hope isn't the same as optimism.
It isn't the belief that something bad will turn out well.
It's the absolute confidence that every part of your life ultimately makes sense,
Regardless of how it turns out this side of eternity.
So we can see from what Rick says that trusting in providence,
We can have the absolute confidence that every part of our life ultimately makes sense,
Regardless of how it turns out this side of eternity.
Rick gives us an invitation to approach life positively and with hope.
This attitude of hope makes all the difference.
We can't expect everything to work out as we plan every time,
But we can adjust our sights to take into account changing circumstances as they arise.
Let's take another one minute pause.
Welcome back again.
Some of us are inclined to see the glass as half full.
Others have the habit of looking upon the glass as half empty.
The contents of the glass are the same in both cases.
But notice the difference it makes if we approach life with a positive attitude.
Life is unfolding all the time.
We don't have what you might describe as total control,
But we are very seldom powerless as life unfolds.
All right,
Occasionally we will meet a setback.
And very occasionally we will have to just grin and bear it.
But most of the time,
Most of us can turn even a bad situation around by adjusting our response to it.
People who see the glass as half empty tend to approach existence as if life is threatening them,
As if life is a constant uphill struggle.
If you approach it that way,
That is what life will offer you.
But at its worst,
Surely life must be seen to be neutral.
It wouldn't be reasonable to look upon life as particularly threatening us with trouble.
Why should we believe that?
If we can offer Providence a little help as the journey proceeds,
We might find that we attract more positive energy into our lives.
Which brings us to the idea of the Law of Attraction.
The Law of Attraction is an approach to life which tells us that positive thoughts bring positive results into our lives,
And that negative thoughts bring about negative outcomes.
The Law of Attraction is based on the idea that our thoughts are a form of energy.
One simple theory is that positive energy attracts positive results,
Whereas negative energy attracts the opposite.
One thing that we can be certain of is that we all exist in a vast energy field.
At the fundamental level,
We know from science that our bodies are made up of swirling clouds of atoms and subatomic particles.
In the space between us,
The air between us is made up of the same.
Our bodies are each locations of just greater concentrations of atoms,
To the point where we can be seen,
Whereas the air between us generally goes unnoticed.
We don't exist in a vacuum.
And so it is easy to imagine the unbroken connections of energy that unite us all.
That reality gives support to the idea of the Law of Attraction.
And in life we know we find ourselves attracted to people who tend to have similar interests and views as ourselves.
Positive people encourage one another in bringing about positive results.
This is all very practical.
We have all experienced the encouragement we get from meeting someone who is positive and upbeat.
People like that encourage us to face life as it presents itself.
We love to meet these people.
They help us to make the best of any situation.
Positive people like that encourage providence along.
Whereas on the other hand,
People who approach life with a negative attitude,
They feed on the negative attitudes of other people.
People who approach life in a pessimistic type of way.
For negative people,
Everything is bad news.
Bad news is what they hear,
They listen out for it.
Bad news is what they spread.
Hope is absent and providence is not encouraged.
People who associate with positive people encourage us to associate with positive people as well.
People who will reinforce our own good intentions and help us to bring our plans and hopes to fruition.
Positive people operate on the principle that the present moment is simply that.
The present moment,
A moment that is open to opportunity.
They see the present circumstances as simply that.
The present circumstances.
And the present circumstances are always open to possibility as well.
In all situations,
What counts?
What counts is our attitude.
We can each have the determination to make the best of the situation in which we find ourselves.
Let's have another one minute pause now.
Welcome back.
So believe we can trust in providence,
But remember too that we need to help it along.
We need an attitude of hope.
We need a belief in possibility,
A sense of hopefulness and confidence that things will work out well.
An attitude of expecting the best possible outcome.
And this is not just wishful thinking.
Deepak Chopra says,
The true definition of an optimist is someone who is very aware and mindful of all the setbacks and roadblocks and less than ideal things that happen in their life.
The caveat is that they are just aware that these things are temporary and they have the ability to overcome them.
Words of wisdom there from Deepak Chopra.
And this optimistic attitude has proven positive effects.
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine have found that individuals with greater optimism are more likely to live longer and achieve exceptional longevity,
Which they describe as living to age 85 or older.
They use the definition,
Optimism refers to a general expectation that good things will happen or believing that the future will be favourable because,
Why?
Because we can control important outcomes.
Dr Heather Craig of Monash University writes,
Optimism,
Broadly speaking,
Refers to an individual's hopefulness and or their belief that something positive or desirable will happen.
Anticipating good and having a positive view of the past,
Whilst a pessimist expects the worst.
So the message of this reflection is,
Trust in providence as life unfolds.
Help providence along by having an attitude of hopefulness.
Belief that all will be well and work to allow for the possibility that all will be well.
Remembering the words of Mother Julian of Norwich,
All shall be well,
And all shall be well,
And all manner of things shall be well.
Our final thought for today comes from Sharon Salzberg.
Sharon tells us,
Fate is the capacity of the heart that allows us to draw close to the present and find there the underlying thread connecting the moment's experience to the fabric of all life.
It opens us to a bigger sense of who we are and what we are capable of doing.
Namaste.
