Toward Blooming

right? Life lately has been busy on all fronts. I have not made enough time for this kind of emptying and connecting quiet time. And when life begins to unfold in new and different ways, those are some of the most important times to be quiet and listen.

abiding state of union with God.”

Keating writes, “Contemplative prayer is not so much the absence of thoughts as detachment from them. It is the opening of mind, body, and emotions—our whole being—to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond words, thoughts, and emotions.”

Simple and straightforward,

In centering prayer, you generally repeat a word to re-center you when your mind wanders. That word can be any number of things— love, peace, God, amen, gratitude. Recently, I couldn’t find a word to help me center. I had so many things competing for attention in my mind, it was like having a comforter or bedding in the washing machine when it is spinning and bangs all over the place.

The washing machine of my mind

Toward Blooming ing us toward and helping us bloom?

stopped spinning, got quiet…and the word “bloom” opened on its own. I don’t know how it got there. But that was it.

Our life goes through phases. For my girls, it has been moving from elementary school to middle school, then to high school and graduation. There is always something to mark the transition from one thing to the next. In my life, there have been school, jobs, relationships, marriage, kids, divorce, health crises, career change, kids growing up, seminary, etc. In all of our cases, in anyone’s case, really, the journey is toward some end: what about blooming?

What if we look at our lives as moving toward blooming, and all the things we go through—some that we enjoy, some that we don’t want to experience again—what if each of those steps along our paths is mov-

Think of flowers and gardens. There is a lot that goes into flowers blooming—where they are planted, how good the soil is, how much water, how much sunlight—some of which we can help with, some of which we can’t. But if you spend any time in a garden or in your yard, you know what it feels like to work toward something coming into flower, or bearing fruit, in terms of a vegetable garden. And we do the work that is necessary to get what we hope will happen.

Do we give our own lives that kind of space and grace and purpose to think that maybe we can grow into something in the same way, with attention and intention?

John Ruskin, writer, philosopher and art critic, said that “if a thing can be done, it can be done easily, but this ease is like the ease of a tree blossoming after long years of gathering strength.”