14. God in All Things

I have been thinking more about my last blog, 'If at First You Don't Succeed' and how the Franciscans Saint Bonaventure and Jacopone da Todi both encouraged us to pray using our five physical senses. I don't know how you understand prayer, but I grew up learning prayer was something said, whether it be prayers around the breakfast table, or from a book in Church or the prayers I learnt to say at night beside my bed.

The first time I learnt to 'pray' using my physical senses was at a 3-month Buddhist Retreat in 2003 – a strange place to learn to pray, you may think! However, I found it very helpful, because it taught me how to be present, so I could contemplate the Divine Presence.

At the beginning of the retreat, we were told that the word 'contemplation' contains two words: 'con' meaning 'with'; and 'template' offering 'a space to be moulded into a new shape'. Our five physical senses and our mind being our sixth sense, all provide a natural way for this moulding to occur as we learn to sit mindfully at the centre of the mandala of our senses. This we learn to do consciously and deliberately by being aware of all that we are experiencing through each of our senses, by focusing on one sense at a time.

For example, as I sat on the old couch on the porch and watching the dawn light up the valley, I became aware of the sensation of,

seeing (with either open or closed eyes)
hearing (as I became conscious of the sounds around me)
smelling (as I focused on the fragrances carried by air)
tasting (the remnants of my last cup of coffee)
touching (the seat and air temperature with my body).

I then heard the first bellbird call of the morning. I immediately identified it, and by naming it, I lost the moment – and the experience. I was now thinking, judging, remembering because I had moved from the 'sense door' of hearing to the 'sense door' of my mind with its memories, judgements and opinions. I might later reflect upon 'Why is it that I automatically want to own the experience by naming it?' for example. Or, 'Why do I want to escape from experiencing each burst of music echoing across the valley, and retreat to the safety of my mind?'

How readily and easily it is to surrender the gift of the moment and become lost in a repetitive cycle of internal chatter! How easy it is to stop listening to another person because we are preoccupied with our endless concerns and agendas! Yet mastering the art of contemplation with awareness has a profound effect on the way we live. If we can learn to look deeply into the way we perceive and know things, we will find we can live more easily in the present moment, and be awake to all that each moment holds – which is the only time and place we will ever find and experience the Divine Presence we call God.

In my last blog, I mentioned the joy-filled and awe-inspiring wonder and union with God Bonaventure and Jacopone da Toli experienced in prayer. Another Franciscan mystic, Blessed Angela of Foligno, also mastered the art of being aware of the present moment and she expressed a very similar experience,

Everywhere she looked

she saw the created universe resplendent with God's presence
and herself one with it...
In a vision, she could see nothing except the divine power
so that marvelling she cried aloud:
'This whole world is pregnant with God...
the world is so charged with the grandeur of God'.
Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of creation...

but the power of God fills it all to overflowing (1)

Kia mau te rongo me te pai ki a koe i to haerenga

May you find peace and goodwill on your journey.

Phil

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(1) Lachance O.F.M., Paul. The Mystical Journey of Angela of Foligno in Vox Benedictina: A Journal of Translations from Monastic Sources 4.1 (1987): 9-39

Dyer Phil, Be Still & Know: A 14 Day Retreat Programme with the Christian Mystics, Tawera Press, 2020.

Hearn, Tarchin, Coming to Your Senses. Available from https://greendharmatreasury.org/writings/e-books/