Mandi on Mindfulness

Usually “buzz word” trends make me roll my eyes.  But I drank the Kool Aid before it was even a thing…and fell forever in love and define myself by what we now hear called ‘mindfulness’.  It’s because it is what I stumbled upon 20 some years ago when I started doing yoga to save my body and realized it totally cleared my attention to swipe clear a sight-line between the Lord and I. But the truth is…this is one of the most ancient of ancient practices that people have used for thousands of years to hone their focus on what serves them best. We see this in church fathers and mothers, many from the contemplative stream like Thomas Merton, St. Teresa of Availa, and more recently Henry Nouwen and others in his tribe…but the tradition goes back even further:

“As the Christian church moved from bottom to top, protected and pampered by the Roman Empire, people like Anthony of the Desert, John Cassian, Evagrius Ponticus, and the early monks went off to the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria to keep their freedom and to keep growing in the Spirit. We are still carrying the DNA of our great, great grandparents of faith, and knowing that can give us deep identity and meaning.”, writes Fr. Richard Rohr. 

Now, thankfully we do not have to physically go to the dessert, but we do have to cultivate a desert of our own, as Henry Nouwen writes in The Way of the Heart:

“We are responsible for our own solitude. Precisely because our secular milieu offers us so few spiritual disciplines, we have to develop our own.  We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord. P. 30.

Our compulsive, wordy, and mind-oriented world has a firm grip on us, and we need a very strong and persistent discipline not to be squeezed to death by it. By their solitude, silence, and unceasing prayer the Desert Fathers show us the way.” P. 94

In my experience, the GREATEST block to sensing the grounded, rooted center that mindfulness (A.K.A practicing the presence of God) offers is a lack of discipline to make space for it and the common enemy of familiarity – form without power.  Undoubtedly, “fashioning a desert” will come against opposition in your schedule, in your fatigue, your responsibilities, and the nature of your mind itself. “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love…”

This last week of lent, approaching the crescendo of Easter, might you consider clearing a few minutes a day to dial in with intentional and substantial attention to some of the practices that draw you close to God? You can't loose! Only gain. 

Mindfulness has been defined in so many similar variations of these words:  purposely paying attention and focusing our awareness on what is present within (body, heart, mind) and outside of yourself (your environment).  The psychological definition also always includes a criterion that our awareness be free of criticism or judgment. It is just noticing with as much commitment as possible to abstain mental threads we would lead us astray from God’s presence.

Nouwen, Henry. 1981. The Way of the Heart. Seabury Press. New York, New York.

Thomposn, Curt. 2010. Anatomy of the Soul. Tyndale Press. Carrollton, TX.