Divine Arousal
“Morning by morning, [the Lord] rouses my ear to listen….” Isaiah 50:4
I wake from a wretched night of sleep, exhausted, wishing I could find a way to quiet my wakeful body into slumber. I am alert and tired. Restlessness seems to course through my veins. Though plagued by nothing, at least that I am aware—no racing thoughts, no anxious concerns, no sense of doom or gloom, I can’t seem to find stillness.
I wander out of bed; it’s 3:30 AM—too early. I have always been an early riser. This is too early. 5 AM is really ideal, sometime 4:30 AM if I need a little extra time to write. 3:30 AM is pushing insomnia.
With my mind alert and my body half dead, I wander down the stairs to my office, sit in the chair, close my eyes, and begin my practice of centering prayer. It’s too early to read or write. I’ve stopped drinking coffee right when I wake up, letting the cortisol moving through my veins to do its trick. Maybe there is something I am supposed to hear this morning, so I sit and listen.
Centering prayer is a practice I adopted several years ago. It’s a simple practice, though it’s not easy if sitting still and quiet is challenging for you. While I’m someone who prefers to be on my feet and on the go, I can sit still in meditation or prayer for lengths of time. Centering prayer is a practice of “wordless prayer.” It’s about sitting in and with Silence, listening with one’s whole body—still. Thoughts happen, there’s no stopping them. This is a common misunderstanding about centering prayer and meditation altogether. Many think it’s about eliminating thoughts. Good luck with that! Instead, its about disconnecting with thoughts, even the really good ones.
Typically practices for 20 minutes at a time, centering prayer is a way of being present with the Presence—with God. As thoughts arise, you acknowledge the thought and you let it be. I like to image these thoughts as words floating off into the night sky, something like the opening credits of Star Wars, only less paragraphed. Having a “sacred word” helps with this process. Before you begin your time in centering prayer, you take for yourself a sacred word, preferably a single-syllable word. The wisdom from The Cloud of Unknowing is that multi-syllable only instigates more thinking. The goal is detachment from thoughts, retraining one’s thinking to simply be in the Presence, in Silence—in God.
I sit and linger in the silence. At this point in my centering prayer journey, remaining detached from my thoughts comes somewhat naturally. And, there are those moments when I do not even realize that I’ve been thinking thoughts. Before I realize it, I have been considering some matter of unimportance for an unknown amount of time. In fact, I notice the tension in my body before I notice the thoughts in my mind. Resisting the temptation to continue figuring out what to do about the thought, quietly in my mind I repeat, “Kind. Kind. Kind. Kind. Kind.” All goes quiet, at least for a few seconds. The thoughts return. I acknowledge and, letting them be, come back to center, “Kind. Kind. Kind.”
I’m not sure God is the one waking me from my slumber at 3:30 AM. I suspect there’s something stirring in me that I’ll uncover in the coming days. I am aware that something rouses us in the morning, inviting the attention of our ears, our eyes, our hearts. Whether this something is God, email, news reels, social media, the tasks and obligations of the day, or a child staring us in the face as they tug on the covers saying, “Breakfast,” we are all roused by something.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of God rousing his ears to listen each morning (Isaiah 50:4). Isaiah also speaks of those who disbelieve the divine communication he receives. They accuse him falsely, beat and ridicule him. Amidst it all, Isaiah speaks into the darkness that he yet trusts in the Lord, who alone can vindicate him (Isaiah 50:8). He speaks of walking in darkness, all the while trusting in the Lord. Isaiah then names those “who glow hot with fire, girded with firebrands” (Isaiah 50:11). The image Isaiah paints is one of rage. They move about, seeking to put their mark on everything or burn it down.
The Lord’s servant, here, is walking is darkness, guided by trust in God. Those seeking their own will, walk by the light of their own rageful fire. Interestingly, this interplay of light and dark, so prominent in Isaiah, contrasts two different lights. There is the light of trust that enables one to walk amidst the darkness, and there is the light of rageful fire, where everything becomes object of destruction. Isaiah is working with the ancient understanding of human perception, whereby what a person sees or imagines comes from some form of light within. The light of trust sees with clarity, even amidst the darkness. The light of rage and hate, guilt and blame, see only struggle and conflict, even in times of peace, even with peaceable people.
Listening carefully with Isaiah, we discern a deep wisdom: we can only be roused to listen and attend to what we are prepared to hear and receive. Isaiah is roused, morning by morning, to listen to the Lord because Isaiah rises every morning to listen for the Lord. Whether or not Isaiah practiced some version of centering prayer, he clearly sat with God, morning by morning. In The Cloud of Unknowing, the anonymous, English mystic who may have first introduced what we now call centering prayer, speaks of drawing God down by removing distractions. Isaiah suggests the same: when we rise to meet the Lord, the Lord deigns to meet us there, speaking into the Silence, with perhaps a deeper Silence, rather than the wordfulness we’re often seeking.
What are the habits at your waking that may be keeping you from being roused by God? What might be one shift you could make to draw God down to visit you with renewed Silence?