A Fall of Snow

I go to a patient in a side room. This elderly lady about whom I know nothing is dying and, as it turns out, has less that 24 hours left to live. She is unconscious, lying on her side, one eye and her mouth slightly open, breathing softly, unresponsive to my voice or gentle touch. One of the amazing privileges of the hospital chaplain is being able stand and stare. I am, perhaps, a kind of voyeur, but a voyeur who sees me, one day, on the bed, dying. She is another I. Today I am fortunate to be able to gaze and gaze. I see this body that is simply worn out. I stand by her bed and as I look I feel a peace settle over me after this morning’s rush. I am not a very loving or compassionate person, but in this moment I feel overwhelmed by tenderness for this scrap of life unable, to my senses, to respond to God in any way, at least consciously. Who knows what goes on in the dying? I ‘see’ God still loving her, still giving her grace, which seems to me now like a persistent, heavy snowfall softly, silently falling on her, grace piling upon grace. Whatever her goodness or lack of goodness, despite her seeming inability to respond to God or bring her consciousness to bear on this reality, despite everything that we usually think of as necessary for a person to be in connection with God, at this moment, I ‘see’ that God’s giving and desire to give to her is not – will never be – checked.

God cannot help it. Irrespective of our ability or wish to respond, the torrent of love and grace that flows from God continues unabated. We indigents can never step outside God’s desire for us and this gratuitous, intemperate outpouring. I can feel it now, on the surface of this body, this skin, the snow falling and falling on me, on all of us. This dying woman was my teacher and I can feel these lessons still.

God’s love and grace is not dependent upon anything I do. It is not earned by achievements, by duty or by goodness. This is completely different from how things usually work. We are exhorted to study hard, pass exams, work hard and then we will get the rewards of money, security, happiness and being well thought of. We are expected to go to church, to study the scriptures, to spend time in prayer and then we will grow close to God and become holy. With God, all these efforts are unimportant; they are important for us, perhaps, but they are not how things work with God. There is nothing we can do to improve our standing with God.

The very places where we expect God to be absent are where God is most present. In the irresponsible near-death coma, in the self-forgetting of dementia, in the places that terrify us the most because we seem to be least like the selves we have come to know over a lifetime, there God is comatose, demented.

It seems to me that our job, and the work of prayer, is simply to put ourselves in the way of – to crack ourselves open to – being drenched by that love and grace. There is nothing more important in life than this.

Relaxation exercises

I am used to exercises to relax and prepare to pray that focus on and relax parts of this body in turn until the whole body is relaxed. Some start at the top of the head and work down to the feet; some the other way round. For my money, the best end up in the belly.

I think these exercises are not primarily about relaxation. I think they about awareness, about noticing the whole of who I am, about allowing the whole of me to be present, and about the integration of all of who I am. They are prayer too, and praise of, God whose creature I am.

Identity

An assertion: my identity — my sense of self, of me — is rooted in the sensations of this body. If these sensations change, e.g. during serious illness, or as the result of an accident (as happened to me when I was knocked off my bike and broke my arm), then my sense of who I am changes too. There are times when we say, "I don't feel myself, today."

Movements

There are two movements:

1. outwards to the world — opening the pores of this body to sounds, sensations, the other, the Other — moving to an opening in and to love;
2. inwards to this body and attending to this body's voice, in tenderness and interest.

   "Breathing in I go back to the island within myself." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Both are about being present in the present. Both tend towards love and compassion.

(See this blog post and this research paper on Open Monitoring and Focussed Attention.)

Levels of Body Prayer

1. Relaxation
2. Awareness of the breath
3. Awareness of physical sensations
4. Attend to the ‘stories’ this body has to tell, it's messages; learn to be at home
5. Let this body tell you who you are
6. Let this body be ((in) God)

One never moves on from earlier stages, but one moves deeper into them as each new stage is given.

What I learnt today

This body can be still even as the mind chatters away.

Let this body do the praying.