COMMENT: Meditating into winter

Into September and the summer is gone without ever making an appearance. That’s Ireland for you. This isn’t normally the time of year to start thinking about new beginnings, yet we have no choice but to settle ourselves into the rest of the autumn and prepare for the looming winter. We have to ready ourselves.
Recently on social media a friend commented how he sent birthday greetings to a 91-year-old man. The reply that came from his elderly friend was, ‘Sure I knew nothing last year!’. That sentence was loaded with wisdom. What do any of us know, at any time?
It brings to mind the monk, Thomas Merton. He explained how some monks take another vow, stability, in addition to the three basic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.
Merton stated: “By making a vow of stability the monk renounces the vain hope of wandering off to find a ‘perfect monastery’. In fact it does not matter where we are or whom we live with… Every monastery is more or less ordinary, its ordinariness is one of its greatest blessings.”
This is taken from Dominican Donagh O’Shea, who puts it succinctly in his book, ‘A Hundred Roads to Here’: ‘A God who can only be found somewhere else isn’t worth finding. The treasure lies buried in your own field’. The book’s subtitle is ‘Introductions to Meditation’.
Just as many people struggle with the prospect of winter so do those who ‘drag themselves’ to prayer, according to St John Climacus. He said: “When the time comes for prayer… boredom makes him sleepy, and the verses of the psalms are snatched from his mouth by untimely yawns… if he is standing, it urges him to sit down; and when he is sitting, it urges him to lean back; and when he is leaning back, it urges him to stare through the window.”
Donagh O’Shea’s book offers a hundred short ‘doors to meditation… not meant to further reflection, but to silence’. He adds: “They are to help you to hold on, and to know that you are not alone.” It’s a ‘dip into anytime’ book.
His opening chapter starts: “How do you learn something? By doing it badly. How did you learn to walk? By walking badly. How did you learn to talk? By talking badly. How do you learn to meditate? By meditating badly.” My kind of man!
“When you meditate take a vow of stability, simply for the duration of that time. Don’t imagine a better time or better circumstances. If you find nothing here, you will find nothing elsewhere. Your hope lies here, in this ordinary place.”
This is basically the commonsense notion ‘bloom where you are planted’. So often we travel, thanks to the wandering mind. I know I do, like a mighty traveller without ever leaving home! Who says the free travel pass is only for pensioners? My mind has hosted many trips upon a ‘magic swirlin’ ship’, yet the future is only a thought. It is not life.
If I browsed this book between now and Christmas I would open most of the 100 doors it contains. It would even be a ‘diversion’ now that we have no football silverware in which to wallow, no Olympics left to watch. The Paralympics will keep us occupied until the 8th of this month, but no longer.
Still, the mind will still pendulate from side to side, just as the wind will toss the waters close to the edge. Other less-savoury distractions will abound, from the crassness of the American presidential election to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and a world looking the other way. And Ukraine will still be droned while sleeping.
The oncoming winter is an opportunity to delve a little further into the stillness of the deep water. It is an opportunity to join in the great prayer: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference’.
We take the ground for granted, except when we touch it after being high up a ladder. Autumn, winter, summer, even spring, are all in the mind. There is only now, this moment. Grab it!