The View From Here

By Peregrine Morkal-Williams, Seminary Intern

During this season of Lent, some of us may be experimenting with or deepening contemplative practices—whether that’s dropping in to one mindfulness circle before Sunday worship (9am in the Plymouth Room), meditating daily, or anywhere in between. Or maybe you’re thinking about trying other practices: centering prayer, lectio divina, journaling, tai chi, yoga, the list goes on.

My dojo, where I train aikido, hosts three zazen (seated meditation) sessions per week. I usually go to all of them. Here is one thing I have learned about contemplative practices from sitting zazen: they are often boring! They sometimes even feel useless. Sure, some rare days, my mind goes quiet, or I have a big insight. Those days are the exception. More often (much more often), my internal chattering continues in a fairly similar fashion as it does the rest of the day—maybe a little slower, usually interspersed with attention to my breath, but not fundamentally different.

But I still sit. Why? We have two flat wooden blocks at the dojo. One says “awake” and the other says “or not.” Together, they refer to something my sensei (teacher) heard a shihan (senior teacher) say: “Awake or not, every sit is a good sit.” Personally, I find that very encouraging. It can be tempting to get up from zazen or any other contemplative practice, notice how distracted our mind was during it, and think, “what a waste of time—that was a pretty bad sit.” But no, this saying reminds us: every sit is a good sit. Awake or not, peaceful or not, attentive or not, enlightened or not, every sit is a good sit. We’ll never get contemplative practice “right”—but we also can’t mess it up. Every time we sit, every time we get out the yoga mat, every time we set pen to journal page, we make a little more room for the Holy Spirit to move in us. And that is worth the effort.