An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Dearest Friends,” The WCCM International Newsletter, December 1996.
In saying the mantra gently, we learn from him who is gentle and humble of heart. When the mantra leads us into the pure unbounded spaciousness of the mind of Christ, beyond our self-consciousness, into true silence, when the mantra has itself become silent, we will not be timing its duration or recording the experience for later analysis. We will be transformed. Our lives will, day by day, become the commentary on our prayer. Our prayer will then no longer consist in endlessly commenting on our lives. We will ourselves permanently have become prayer . . . [ . . . .]
[T]oday close to our remembering the birth of Jesus, we remember the day of death of one of his devoted disciples. We can remember it with gratitude for what it teaches us of the mysteries of accepting the amazing and at times painful punctuality of the Spirit in human affairs. We cannot separate the gift of meditation that has come into so many lives through Fr John’s teaching from the man himself. Nor can we identify it with him. What he taught was what the Spirit taught him. He shows us that the best way to receive a gift is to share it. This is the mystery of life which both birth and death teach us.
After meditation: “Altitude” by Lola Ridge (1873-1941), in the public domain; published in Poem-a-Day, December 12, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
Altitude
I wonder
how it would be here with you,
where the wind
that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
touches one cleanly,
as with a new-washed hand,
and pain
is as the remote hunger of droning things,
and anger
but a little silence
sinking into the great silence.
