Many people think that other people meditate in order to find inner peace, to be calm. And that's true. But it's not all--and it sounds too passive. A lot of people meditate in order to bring peace, too--a very, very active process.
I love the story of Jesus and "The Woman Caught in Adultery." It's a wonderful glimpse into active awareness.
Many of you know the story--but don't let that stop you from hearing for the first time!
Jesus is doing his thing, moving from town to town, trying to show people what the realm, the territory of God looks like by actually embodying that realm wherever he is.
But he's unorthodox--stretches accepted mores--breaks some of the rules that religious leaders consider inviolate--and just generally gets up the noises of by-the-book people. And these by-the-book people want to show others just how unorthodox and unacceptable Jesus really is.
So they 'catch' a woman in the act of adultery, drag her out of her house, bring her to where Jesus is teaching, drop her between Jesus and his 'audience' and then say--"Teacher, we just caught this woman committing adultery. The Law says she must be stoned. What do you say?"
So...here's a moment for Active Awareness. It's a moment for us to consider and savor how Jesus worked with hard stuff. It's a put up or shut up kind of moment. A so very public opportunity for Jesus to show how the realm of God works--how love gets embodied wisely and effectively in the world.
Jesus doesn't answer at first. This seems to me as important as anything in this story. He doesn't answer. He moves instead into a Sacred Pause. He literally doodles in the dirt.
The prophet Jeremiah said that a time would come when we would know God's way not from reading the law carved in stone but from actually experiencing God's finger writing on our hearts. I think this is what Jesus is inviting, expecting, and pausing to create.
I imagine him exhaling, whew, and thinking something along the lines of "Holy crap."
Then I imagine him taking stock. A woman's life is at stake, this woman's life who's kneeling here in front of me in the same dirt I'm writing on.
Wisdom itself is at stake--how these people in this town will come to understand God's way.
I think Jesus has come to trust the process of God's finger writing on his heart. I like to think that Jesus's finger writing in the dirt is a kind of parallel expression of this trust--as well as a very practical process: ALLOWING TIME for 'wisdom' to happen. Allowing space for the prayer "What might I say and do?" to be answered. Allowing time for God's finger to write on his heart.
In this space there is the kind of peace that people associate with contemplation. Jesus regularly took retreats in quiet places. He's taking one now, in this moment. The quiet place is a moment of 'the peace that passes understanding.' It's a place reached by pausing. Because he's found it often before alone and in unhurried ways, it can happen now in a crowd, under pressure, and in the time it takes to doodle in the dirt.
As Jesus returns to the outer reality, he says (rather memorably, don't you think?) "Let those who've never sinned throw the first stones."
Wonderfully, there's another pause. God's finger is apparently writing on other hearts. Then there's the sound of stones falling to the ground, and people walking away. And then the long, grateful sigh of one woman.
Every day finds us in places where love might be embodied wisely right where we are. Often in ways we don't yet know how to embody. We'll sense possibility--and then perplexity. This glimpse of possibility and this sense of perplexity can be ignored or welcomed. To welcome it all we need do is to invoke a Sacred Pause. To ask, to wait, to hope, to trust, to experiment with allowing God's finger to write on our hearts.
In my experience, the 'Way' is never as clear in me as it was for Jesus--yet it's always more than it would have been if I hadn't given it a try.
The connection between the peace we find in contemplative practices and the peace we intend to share in the workaday world is potent. The world is often dropping stuff in front of us and saying in one way and another, "This is just how it is!" And the world is right. It is how it usually is.
But it's not how it might be. And sometimes can be.
