Snorkeling, and the Holy Spirit!
Recently,
I had a foreign visitor, Peter, whom I took to enjoy snorkeling, my
favorite recreation in my favorite places. He was enthralled by the
multitude of multicolored fish, the variety of sea life, the starfish
and the sea urchins. What I took so much for granted fascinated him.
He had never before appreciated the difference between soft and hard
corals and the infinite variety of shapes in which they come. He mentioned
how remarkably like our internal organs the corals, with their polyps,
brain and intestine-like shapes, looked. He found night snorkeling,
seeing the underwater life mesmerized by the light of his torch, or
just floating in the darkness with one's body outlined in the phosphorescence,
a fairyland experience.
Later,
I was amused at hearing him talk to my companion of many years. Peter
was amazed that my companion, even though he liked to swim, would
never don a pair of goggles and a snorkel. "You must be crazy,"
he said, "with all that beauty under you and around you that
you do not open yourself up to enjoying and appreciating it."
I had said similar words many times over the years but to no avail.
It
is strange - to someone who loves snorkeling - how others will not
open themselves to receive the gift, the abundance of enjoyment that
is just under the surface of the water. It is strange also - to someone
who has experienced in some way the fruits of the simple practice
of meditation - that so few, even people who are prayerful and religious,
open themselves up to the riches that are to be found within themselves.
These riches are the Holy Spirit and the gifts of that Spirit.
Today,
is the Feast of Pentecost. Today we celebrate in a special way that
mode of God's presence which we call the HOLY SPIRIT. This Spirit
who had preexisted with the Father from all eternity, today took charge
of the Church, the community of believers that would be the sign of
God's presence in the world in a special way. What we celebrate is
a sublime unintelligible mystery and yet in another way something
that is very simple and tangible.
Getting
to know the Spirit is in some ways like snorkeling. Firstly, there
is the need for a guide. Without my guidance there was no way in which
my foreign visitor would have found the snorkeling place. Just as
I brought him in the fastest way to this place of beauty, my teachers
and guides, Frs. John Main and Laurence Freeman, had brought me in
the fastest way to a preferred way of prayer, a way of prayer which
was to put me in touch with the Holy Spirit who is ever praying in
each of our hearts. Without the tradition and the teacher I would
not have been able to persevere through the barren sands until I came
to a place where I could myself experience the value of leaving self
behind and begin to feel the fullness of life that the Spirit gives.
Then
leaving self behind really makes one view what is below the surface,
ones innards. Most of our decisions are made there in our gut, even
if later we make reasons in our heads to justify them. As one meditates
one becomes more aware of and views what is in the gut. That is where
our feelings, emotions, prejudices and motivations are stored. In
the stillness and silence of meditation we become simple, simply present
to the totality of reality, the infinite potential, the bag of worms,
the kingdom of the ego, all of which are inside us.
Those
who say that meditation is an escape from reality obviously have no
experience of it. Because if they had this experience they would know
that meditation makes us face honestly the reality that is at our
own core and it gives us insight into the core of that reality. This,
I think, is another way of saying that it puts us in touch with the
Spirit. In a sense, then, each time we put on our spiritual snorkels
and set out to meditate we are celebrating Pentecost, the presence
of the Holy Spirit in our midst.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
