#27: Where are you?Last summer, I discovered a love for running. Don't worry; this isn't going to be evangelistic. I have no agenda to convince you to tie up your laces and put on your shorts. Trust me, we're going somewhere. I had stretches of running consistently before but had no love for it. I even completed a marathon, but it was something I just wanted to get through rather than embrace and celebrate. I learnt there's a big difference between someone who wants to complete a run and someone who wants to become a runner. One is transactional; it's goal-oriented and a means to an end; the other is formational; it's about who you become in the process. I owe much of my newfound love of running to my friend Bianca. We shared a short conversation at an event last year where she told me she'd begun running, and my immediate question was 'how far do you run?" I followed up with, "How fast do you run?". She replied, "I have no idea", with a satisfied smile to both questions. She said that she didn't keep track; she just listened to her body and ran for the pleasure of it. She was paying attention and told me that running slow equips you to run further and eventually faster. So, following her sage advice, I ran out onto the streets where we were living without keeping track of my distance and speed and ran as slowly as possible. Initially, it felt awkward and, in some ways, pointless, but it didn't take long for the sweaty sense of satisfaction and endorphin release to reach me. I started to run (and still do ) mainly in silence, without the beats I used to depend on heavily. The experience became contemplative, prayerful, and adventurous. I was exploring the world like I had done as a child. A few weeks in, I had marked out a few routes I ran through regularly and felt impatient with my excitement to get out and hit the pavement, a posture I never thought I'd have. Not long after, we moved to London, and a few days after settling in and wading through boxes, I headed out for my first jog. I had only visited the area once and had no sense of place; I was completely disoriented. I heard there was a park nearby, so I ran in that general direction, but after taking a few wrong turns down tracks and through housing estates, I got lost. Before you tell me I should have just checked my phone, I make it a habit to be without it as often as possible, freeing myself from another unnecessary distraction. Maybe I should reconsider. So I keep running, hoping to find something familiar to help me get home. It gets me thinking about this story in Genesis (because that's how my mind works) and a practice I've been doing for a while that I think might help us all find the life we long for in the life we have in a really practical way. It’s so easy to be lost right where you are. I know that sounds strange and contradictory but how often do you find yourself in a moment where you have a sense of being untethered, disconnected and unsure? How often do you go into a meeting or spend time with friends and experience an inner ‘lostness’? It’s as if although we’re ‘here’ we don’t truly know where we are. The Hebrew Scriptures begin with a story that perfectly captures this experience. The poetic writing in Genesis tells us that God would go walking with his friends, Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Imagine that, after the sun had been in full heat when the air was cooling down, the Divine Gardener would revel in his creation with those he created, admiring its beauty and enjoying one another. One day, God comes back to the garden but Adam and Eve are nowhere to be seen. The story tells us they have been tricked into believing they could become like God and disobeyed the one thing they were warned not to do, in their shame and humiliation they have hidden and so God called out, into the cool of the day, ‘Where are you?’ Of course, it is not God who has lost them, he knows where they are and he knows what they have done. It is they who have lost themselves, and God seeks to find them. What a powerful question that is to ask: ‘Where are you?’ The answer may seem obvious: you’re wherever you’re sitting reading this email right now. But there is a deeper and truer way of locating ourselves that reconnects us with the present moment we’re in and the God who is always seeking to find us. Where you are is defined by what’s around you. When you depend on GPS to get you somewhere, it wouldn’t suffice just to open up your map app and see the pulsing blue dot, you need the context of terrain that surrounds you. So it is with us. Contemplative practices have helped me discover the wider landscapes of my inner world, helping not only locate where I truly am despite, like Adam, the shame and worry I may feel, but also give shape and form to a more redemptive and authentic expression of myself. So we do as Julian of Norwich told us when asking, ‘Where do we begin?’ We begin with the heart. This is a short and simple contemplative practice that I do each day. Depending on where I am and what I’m doing, it can range from 3 minutes to 30 minutes. I do it as I go to sleep and when I wake, before meetings and hanging with friends. I have even done it on stage between songs but its intention is always the same, to help us find ourselves and the God who is ever present, helping us move from a feeling of being lost to being able to say of ourselves, ‘Oh, there you are!’ You can do it with me right now, just following the simple stages below. Begin by focusing on your breath for a few moments, conscious of the rise and fall in your body, aware of the inhale and exhale, the breath that sustains you, as constant as the waves crashing on countless shores every moment, the evidence of that which is faithful, constant and unchanging. Now, after feeling a sense of stillness I simply ask myself: Where are you in your heart? This question provokes me to acknowledge my emotions and what I feel at the core and centre of my being. You may, like the Psalmist, call it ‘your soul’, the gut response you have to an experience. Be as authentic and honest as you can, as well as expansive in your language. Perhaps your first response is ‘happy’ but in lingering a little longer you realize that it’s contentment or excitement you feel. Allow yourself to acknowledge the breadth and depth of that experience, fully rooting yourself in the reality of where you are in your inner- most being. Then, I go onto ask, ‘Where are you in your body?’ My body is not simply a vehicle to transport my brain, nor is it the source of a ‘sinful nature’, but the unique craftsmanship of the Holy, an expression like none another, strong and resilient, tender and fragile, an extraordinarily complex feat of engineering and design that sustains life itself. Do you feel relaxed and comfortable in your body? Do you feel in pain or tense, perhaps? The question seeks a simple and true response that does nothing more than honour and tend to the momentary experiences we have in our bodies, locating us in the here and now. There’s something quite wonderful about realizing the feeling of being dehydrated and serving yourself a cold glass of water; it demystifies the notion that there’s something else going on and reconnects you to your daily dependency. From there I ask, ‘Where are you in your mind?’ In one of his letters to the early followers of Jesus, St Paul famously urged his readers to ‘take every thought captive’, that they make their thoughts obedient to Christ, higher, loftier and more enlightened to the truth. In a sense that is what this question seeks to do, to pull from the chaos of our minds a clarity in simply becoming aware of what we’re thinking. Are your thoughts anxious? Are they busy? Are you meal planning, anxiously budgeting, sorting through the cluttered draw of your brain? Are your thoughts set towards gratitude and expectation? Again, just to know and be aware, consciously and contemplatively, is to create the terrain around the blue dot of ourselves, acknowledging where we are and choosing to come out from our hiding. From here you have three simple phrases to locate where you are, giving you all you need to be as truly yourself as you could be in that moment. In my heart I am _______ In my body I am _______
In my mind I am _______ What you’ve done here, though simple, is profound. We spend so much of our lives moving from one place to another without fully being conscious of where we are in the midst of it. Then we have conversations, make decisions and create things, and yet the whole time we’re lost. It’s no wonder we look back on our days wondering why we reacted the way we did to that comment, or why we felt so unsatisfied with how we approached that piece of work. A contemplative practice simply enables us to be led where so often we don’t lead ourselves in distraction and worry, lust and overthinking. The final part of this practice isn’t so much a question but a statement of location, a confession of where we are, however that may look, and an invitation, for God to meet us and speak to us as we are, not as we feel we should be.
We simply say; “Here I am, as I am. I am a witness and a participant. I am open to receive and open to give”. From here we rest in silence, for however long we have. Leaning into the stillness so that God might be known to us. St John of the Cross said, ‘It is best to learn to silence the faculties and to cause them to be still, so that God may speak.” It is as if there is something about giving up our right to have the final word that sets the stage to learn, grow and be awakened. Learning to hear God’s voice takes time, trial and will remain wrapped within mystery, but we know that God is love and that anyone who has seen, heard or tasted love has known God, and so we listen for the voice that is defined by loving-kindness, speaking to us as a Mother tenderly speaks to her child, or as a Father, provoking and challenging his beloved to be his or her truest self. It is in practices such as these that we seek to comprehend the incomprehensible, remembering the words of Julian of Norwich: For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. It is only with the help of his grace that we are able to persevere in spiritual contemplation with endless wonder at his high, surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in his goodness has for us.
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