Buechner: Meditation as a Spiritual Practice
“If you compare the mind to a balloon, meditation as a religious technique is the process of inflating it with a single thought to the point where the balloon finally bursts and there is no longer even the thinnest skin between what is inside it and what is outside it.”—Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking (HarperOne revised 1993)
Our mind is always busy. I compare it to the noisy committee talking in my head with multiple voices, all talking simultaneously and struggling to be heard. In meditation, especially Lectio Divina, we focus on a single word or phrase from our reading. Buechner describes that word as a balloon that we blow bigger and bigger in our mind. The enlarging balloon quiets those voices until only that balloon with the word within fills our mind. That one word now better connects us to the God of our understanding. We carry that word with us for the rest of the day. We become aware of the presence of God within us through that word. We can hear God now in the silence on only one word. When we recognize and hear God within us, that presence now attempts to connect us to God’s presence in others we meet. With some people, that presence easily emerges. With others, it is almost invisible. This is our only commandant from God. To love ourselves, God, and our neighbor. This is one way to learn how to love like that.
Joanna joannaseibert.com