Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
All topics considered
It’s a blog day, but I have no good ideas. God knows there are enough causes to blog about, enough injustice to write about, and plenty of past experiences. But as I told my friend, Rose, the other day over coffee, sometimes the inside of my head is very quiet. That’s the case this morning. So far, anyway.
However, yesterday at church Reverend Allmond talked about hearing the still small voice that can be found in any of us. To hear it, though, requires the ability to still my “monkey mind” with its incessant chatter. That’s how my mind works – yada yada yada, b’dee, b’dee, b’dee most of the time. And I have a touch of OCD, so sometimes one thought predominates and I can’t find a way around it. It’s invariably a sentence with random words and sounds, sometimes parts of song lyrics but never a whole song. Then I’m off looking for the words of the song and whatever I was going to do at the moment is quickly forgotten.
I have tried to still my mind. In search of absolute silence in my head I have tried meditating. Now that definitely helps slow down my thinking but it’s never completely quiet in here. I have a friend who says she can empty her mind and literally not think of anything. I’m sure that meditation masters can go for hours without a single thought. I have been trying for decades without success but I’m not about to quit trying.
The way the still small voice works for me is when I listen to my intuition. A thought will bubble up related to something I’m questioning or struggling with. I can’t trace the thought to any source other than my own inner workings. If I give it time to simmer, more details materialize and a plan or an intention begin to take shape. As an introvert, I have to think about it before I reveal it to anyone else. My extroverted friends tend to things over out loud and formulate their plans in the presence of another person – not necessarily asking for feedback, either.
Richard Rohr defines intuition as God speaking through us, using words we can understand. In my Unity church and my 12 Step work we believe that prayer and meditation are keys to finding the divine source of all that is good. As a prayer chaplain, praying with another person, the words of a prayer come not from me but through me. I am reminded of my close connection with God within. I believe that is the gift that we all share. It’s a gift that belongs to people I love and people that I just don’t get. I struggle with the idea that 45 also has a God spark in him.
Back to monkey mind. It’s trying to tell me that I have to quit this pretty soon and get to my daily walk, then meet Rose for breakfast, then go to my 12 Step meeting, then go to work for a half a day, and don’t forget to take the paper that I need for someone’s file, and when I get to work I need to contact four clients and close out their files because I’ve done all I can do for them. And so it goes.
The US Air Force song goes, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder….” Of course I don’t know the rest of the words…