could only notice this in the repetition of a daily routine. The routine of watering the garden daily brought me to the mantises everyday. Routine reveals so much about how life is going; how it is moving ahead and how it is standing still. The things we place into our lives on a routine basis have so much power to affect who we become; particularly when we pay close and steady attention to them—over time.
Stepping toward the hose at watering time almost felt as if I was entering a holy place; a place where I would uncover some immense glory. The air that surrounded me during the watering time was palpable. I could feel myself entering into sacred space as one hand reached for the hose and the other hand for the spigot knob. I was becoming an act that would transform all space and time. I became a holy event for a moment. That is the best I can do to describe it. A stillness reigned in the act itself. A sacrament was born. Words about phenomena, union, and the sacred are meaningless. The NOW became Divine Milieu.
As I am crafting the description of these moments—with my words—I remember other moments that time slowed down and stood still long enough for me to become transformed. The birthing of our sons. The death of my father. The boarding of our plane home from Greece.
They all had this numinous quality that not only made me feel alive, but also aware. Stillness prevailed. It was not as if they made me feel aware of any one thing in particular. It was that they made me feel aware of everything, all at once. I owned space and time in these events. I was at one with everything. Life itself became a sacrament; living became a cairn. I realized that whether we slow down or the events of life slow us down, slowing is vital for deepening.
Every time I approached the hose I could almost begin where I left off the last time I had watered. The routine itself had some part in my discoveries. Doing the routine over and over built up some sort of energy within the act itself—an energy of seeing. Layer after layer of meaning is added to the pieces of our lives that we repeat again and again. After a while, I began to slow down as I simply began to approach the routine task. As I thought about watering, I would shift into stillness. Could this be the same with my prayer life?
This intrusion of awareness on a single moment is often revealed in routine events. It may also come as we enter into the fruition of some long awaited moment. It can be a result of a process or an event. The mantises were able to open in me this sacred space because of the routine and regular nature of my watering encounters with them. The birth of my sons opened me to eternity because of the culmination of long hours of anticipation and hope. Both can spawn awakening.
***
Coming into the Presence of the Holy One is the same. We may enter into the Presence through a routine event like daily prayer and contemplation. We may enter into the Presence through a long awaited event like a sacrament or rite of passage—even a crisis. Philosophically we would say that entering the Presence can be facilitated by either a process or an event.
Either way it is the same. We must make space for the encounter and notice the encounter if we are to unravel the meaning of the encounter. We must provide time for the wrestling. Without space and time for the encounter of and union with the Divine Milieu, there can be no reality of the Divine Milieu in our lives.
Like the daily watering that produced an encounter with the mantises, we first strike out to find a place—a garden to water. Once we have come to that place to do the work of “watering” we must learn patience, repetition, and watchfulness. We must look for the markers that will call us into encounter and wrestling. It is the same with our prayer life. We can build up a routine that will begin to settle us, even when we simply think about enacting the routine.
We can begin a habit of prayer that will open our awareness with a simple routine. Finding a daily time and place to sit and remember God is how we begin the “watering of the garden.” Set aside a time and a place and then we are ready to begin. We must build a cairn—a place of remembering (space). We must visit that holy place often—again and again (time).
Some people choose a rocking chair. Others a straight back chair. It may be in front of an icon, or window, or in an out of the way corner. It may be on a porch, or deck, or shed out back. There may be a “Holy Book” and a candle, or a simple stick of incense. The senses must join the prayer in being able to make this time and this space a shelter from life’s usual. But, there must be a place. There must be a place where we can go, sit, and enter into an encounter with Divine union. There must be a place for wrestling with our observing awareness.
When we come to the holy place we have chosen we can begin by offering a simple spiritual practice—a simple prayer. This may be an invocation of the Presence, it may be a sacred salutation, it may be a favorite prayer, it may be a prayer service (like Morning Prayer, or Vespers), or it may be a Psalm.
Once the words are offered, it is as if we have drawn a line around our place, we have marked it. “This is sacred space, this is sacred time” our prayer tells us. We have added another stone to the cairn. Eventually we will learn to sit and inhabit the stillness of that time and space itself, but at the outset, we must have a spiritual practice of prayer that we can begin and return to in our sacred place. We must have a “watering act.”
It is important to find a space that you can return to with little or no distraction. You are going to return here daily—perhaps even more often. The time you spend here will be like the “watering of a garden.” It must be routine and it must be thoughtful.
There are a myriad of practices you can pick up in this space. First, going to this place must become a regular habit—a routine visiting. Second, our spiritual practice in this prayer-space must become a regular habit—a routine visiting.
Go to this place often and just begin with a prayer (or a psalm, or a prayer service) and conclude with a sitting in silence. Remind yourself that you are here to water the soul, to commune with the Divine. Let what comes to fruition in your silence be a natural out-flowing of what your heart, mind, and soul hold inside after offering up your spiritual practice.
Let your sitting begin with a practice. When the practice is finished, simply sit. Become aware of your own presence in this cairn. Become aware of what the stones of practice are building. Listen. Watch and wait for what arises as you water the garden of the soul.
The more we visit this space, the more meaning it will have for us. When we pass by it, we will sense the history it has in our lives and it will begin to have a feel all it’s own. It will radiate a sense of identity to us. We must return to this cairn-space over and over again.
Our thinking does the same. When we have a thought over and over again, it builds up a sense of identity in us. We collect whole bunches of associations around the things we think.
Perhaps we have the thought of “apple pie.” As we think of “apple pie” over the years, we will begin to attach experiences of “apple pie” to the idea. Perhaps we think of grandma’s pie, or our mother’s. Perhaps we remember the permeating aroma. We may have intense autumnal memories when we think of “apple pie.” Maybe we are galvanized by the texture and flavor of the crust.
We add to the thought of “apple pie” the memories, feelings, impressions, and inner tastes that go along with all of the pies we have experienced. These things get all glommed together. Images and impressions begin to affect our perceptions. In time, depth is added to an idea. We develop multiple layers of meaning. A thing (or the idea of a thing) becomes a concept.
This concept carries much more weight than the simple beginning idea of “apple pie.” The concept becomes our icon of “apple-pie-ness.” Eventually, all of the surrounding associations that go along with “apple pie”—crust, grandma, autumn, smells—become a part of the history of “apple pie” in our lives. All melds into concept.
