An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, Letter Twelve, WEB OF SILENCE (London: DLT, 1996), pp. 140-41.
Meditation is a way of faith and love. By passing through its stages we learn that faith is more than belief . . . .Too much emphasis on dogmatic orthodoxy actually reduces faith. Faith is essentially the personal commitment to relationship, so we talk about faithful marriages and friends. Faith is developed only through time, yet its growth reveals a union of love which is stronger than death, the lord of time.
If meditation changes our life it is not through magic, but in faith. The mantra becomes a sacrament of faith, a sacrament of relationship and union. By learning to be faithful in small things, such as the saying of the mantra, we learn to be faithful in all the relationships of life. It is, as Jesus said, a narrow road, but it expands beyond the zero point of letting go into the infinite expansion of being we are called to in God.
After meditation: Another Sarah, Anne Porter, LIVING THINGS: Collected Poems (Hanover: Zoland Books, 2006), p. 166.
ANOTHER SARAH
for Christopher Smart
When winter was half over
God sent three angels to the apple tree
Who said to her
Be glad, you little rack
Of empty sticks,
Because you have been chosen.
In May you will become
A wave of living sweetness
A nation of white petals
A dynasty of apples.
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