Monday, October 6, 2014

Precisely nothing-and yet everything - huh?


Richard Rohr has been doing a series on silent prayer for his daily email devotionals. As always his insights are incredibly profound. I hope it's okay to share this and not too personal (I have heard that your sacred word is not necessarily something to share, oh well)... I have been practicing centering prayer for years now and my sacred word is "Nothing." Whenever I see something that talks about this word in a spiritual context it gets my attention because honestly, for years I had no idea what it meant!

I know it's a very unusual word to be a sacred word. It "came to me" one day while I was practicing centering prayer, and like I said, at the time I had no idea what it meant. I felt so compelled to use it that I have stuck with it ever since - it's probably been 12 or so years! I've learnt all kinds of things about the meaning and significance of the word "nothing" in a spiritual context that I won't go into right now.

Rohr's devotional added another little piece to the puzzle today. He is talking about using our breath as a way to pray and his concluding paragraph says, 

"...When considered in this way, God is suddenly as available and accessible as the very thing we all do constantly—breathe. Exactly as some teachers of prayer say, “Stay with the breath, attend to your breath”—the same breath that was breathed into Adam’s nostrils by this Yahweh (Genesis 2:7); the very breath “spirit” that Jesus handed over with trust on the cross (John19:30) and then breathed on us as shalom, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit all at once (John 20:21-23). And isn’t it wonderful that breath, wind, spirit, and air are precisely nothing—and yet everything?"

There is a life time of learning in this statement, just as I have found with my sacred word. 

For Rohr's devotional CLICK HERE

Thoughts, or comments?