{"id":6422,"date":"2012-01-24T16:06:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T23:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=6422"},"modified":"2012-01-24T16:06:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T23:06:33","slug":"why-meditate-when-i-could-be-sweeping-the-garage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/why-meditate-when-i-could-be-sweeping-the-garage\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Meditate — When I Could Be Sweeping the Garage?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"why-meditate\"
My husband Jon, in a quiet moment. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve tried meditating a few times \u2013 a very few times. I\u2019m well read on the subject, however. Indeed, I\u2019ve spent way more time reading about meditation than I\u2019ve spent doing it.<\/p>\n

Why meditate? Why would I want to just sit there observing my mind, I reason, when I could be outdoors pulling dead blossoms off the shamelessly prolific rhododendron in our front yard? Those blossoms snap off their stems with such a satisfying pop<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(I do nothing to make that plant bloom. Yet year after year it sucks up dirt and rainwater and blasts dozens of grandiose purple-blue blossoms<\/a> into our tiny\u00a0 front yard. Hardly anybody notices this plant or its outrageous flowers. It produces them anyway.)<\/p>\n

So \u2013 why would I want to just sit there, meditating? I could be calling my son in Minneapolis, my fingers still sticky with rhododendron sap, to ask how his appendectomy scars are healing. I could be phoning my daughter \u2013 were there any cute guys at the wedding in Kansas City last weekend? I could be at the kitchen sink in my 91-year-old mother\u2019s apartment, washing her dishes. I could be having fun.<\/p>\n

\"why-meditate
Sylvia Boorstein. Photo by Christine Alicino<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People like Sylvia Boorstein make a great case for the practice of meditation. Her book, Don\u2019t Just Do Something, Sit There<\/em>, is one of my favorite ways to think about meditating without actually doing it.<\/p>\n

Sylvia is very convincing, but the sitting vs. doing trade-off has never worked for me. Sit quietly for a half hour? I\u2019d rather be sorting laundry or brooming cobwebs off the windows in the garage. I like<\/em> the physical world, right down to clean socks and window sills speckled with dead fruit flies.<\/p>\n

A life is to be lived. And for the time being I\u2019ve got one. Why meditate? Why would I want to spend any of my precious sitting there watching my thoughts go by \u2013 when I could be out in the world, generating new ones?<\/p>\n

Yet \u2013 right now I\u2019m thinking maybe a little meditating could do me some good.<\/p>\n

Last week, a friend gave me a copy of an essay that Thomas Merton wrote way back in 1968. It\u2019s called \u201cCreative Silence.\u201d In it, Merton makes a distinction between negative silence and creative silence. In negative silence, we fret and stew and let our anxieties run off with our thoughts. In creative silence, we experience what Paul Tillich called \u201cthe courage to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creative silence requires a certain kind of faith, Merton says. (If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019re not keen on the word faith. It has a squishy, sentimental, boasty feel to it. So, bear with me here. Merton uses the word in a specific way.)<\/p>\n

Faith, says Merton, requires us to cut through the smokescreen of our daily activities, our busyness, the charming or efficient or competent personas we present to the world and to ourselves. Our talky prayers can be a smokescreen. So can the ideas about God that our traditional religions have constructed for us over the centuries.<\/p>\n

All those reassuring slogans and routines of religiosity, says Merton, \u201ccan become a substitute for the truth of the invisible God of faith, and though this comforting image may seem real to us, he is really a kind of idol.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dead
Rhododendron blossoms ready for deadheading. Photo by Barbara Newhall.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We fear genuine silence, Merton says. We are afraid of being alone in the nakedness of our true selves without our usual masks of competence or sociability. Why are we afraid? Because we\u2019ve lost hope of ever reconciling with \u2013 of accepting \u2013 our true selves.<\/p>\n

By faith I think Merton means the willingness to trust that, if we set aside the busyness of our days and the busyness of our thoughts and we go fully into silence, someone \u2013 our true selves \u2013 will be there to meet us. As will God.<\/p>\n

I like Merton\u2019s take on silence. But does that mean I\u2019m about to take up meditating? Time spent in meditation might be like time spent with a Stairmaster or a hair dryer. I might like the results.<\/p>\n

No, sitting meditation is not for me right now, but Merton\u2019s silence is. And so, as I snap the spent rhododendron blossoms from their stems, and fold my husband\u2019s T-shirts, and wait for the phone to pick up in Minneapolis, I\u2019ll remember the silence. I\u2019ll listen for that wordless self of mine.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Don\u2019t Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat with Sylvia Boorstein<\/em>, by Sylvia Boorstein, Harper Collins, 1996.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cCreative Silence,\u201d by Thomas Merton, first published in April, 1968, in Bloomin\u2019 Newman, by University of Louisville students. Reprinted in Thomas Merton: Essential Writings<\/em><\/a>, Christine M. Bochen, ed., Modern Spiritual Masters Series, Orbis Books, 2000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you might like “Buddhist Writing — Wisdom or Chicken Shit?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Jon
\nI\u2019ve tried meditating a few times \u2013 a very few times. I\u2019m well read on the subject, however. Indeed, I\u2019ve spent way more time reading about meditation than I\u2019ve spent doing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[687,34,274,275,276,688],"class_list":["post-6422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-bloomin-newman","tag-dont-miss","tag-meditation","tag-sylvia-boorstein","tag-thomas-merton","tag-why-meditate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}