How Good to Center Down!

This morning, I want to share a meditation that I discovered during this week of the Republican Convention, a hurricane that took out half of Louisiana, and the small tsunamis of our pandemic-era days.  It is by Howard Thurman, a great African American theologian, friend to Martin Luther King, Jr., mentor to thousands in his lifetime of teaching and preaching in the Boston area — and through his brilliant, mystical writings, to many more.  He died in 1981, but his insights are as penetrating and as necessary today as they ever were.

How Good to Center Down!

How good it is to center down!

To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!

The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;

Our spirits resound with lashings, with noisy silences,

While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.

With full intensity we see, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;

A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos.

We look at ourselves in this waiting moment – the kinds of people we are.

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives? — what are the motives that order our days?

What is the end of our doings?  Where are we trying to go?

Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused?

For what end do we make sacrifices?  Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?

What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.

As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind –

A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.

It moves directly to the core of our being.  Our questions are answered,

Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round

With the peace of the Eternal in our step.

How good it is to center down!

 

(from Meditations of the Heart, by Howard Thurman)