Many years ago I picked up a little book called “How to Sit,” by the Buddhist monk, Thich Nat Han. I thought it was silly to need an instruction book for sitting, but as I thumbed through the pages in the store something told me that this would indeed be helpful. I had an on-again, off-again meditation practice at that point, mostly ‘off,’ and generally only ‘on’ when I was so desperately spinning out of control sitting in something like meditation was the only thing I could do to keep from throwing myself on the floor and raging like an over-tired toddler. So I bought the book and it sat on a shelf until I was desperate, and then it would go back on the shelf. It went like that for a while.

Eventually I came to a place in my life where the systems and the structures I had been working in stopped functioning. There was an upheaval and a reassessment of a lot of things, and from that came a much more regular practice of prayer and meditation. My hope for the world is that it does not take a major upheaval in one’s life to create space for sitting, but the truth is that for most of us, when things are going along well enough we don’t see the need to make any major changes or adjustments, even if those could be improvements. For most of us, good enough, is, because it is hard to imagine better than that.

That was quite a long time ago now. Today I sit almost every morning, and when I miss the morning I find a few minutes somewhere else in the day. I am a follower of Jesus and so my ‘sits’ look different than what you might encounter in a Buddhist practice. In Buddhism the goal is often to detach from the material world, the experience of emotion, thought. That is all good, that allows space for an encounter with the greater energy of the universe. It is a freeing space, a deeply comforting space, a space of transformation. For me, in my faith practice, I call that encounter coming close to God, though perhaps it is better understood as allowing God to come close to me. I believe that God is always close, but we keep that presence, that love and compassion away with our busyness and ego and desire to control. When we sit, when we pray, when we find quiet in body, heart, and soul we take down some of the walls of our identity and ideas and allow God to speak, and get quiet enough to hear.

When I work with someone in spiritual formation or spiritual direction the first thing I do is say you need a regular time for sitting, for allowing yourself to be available to God. It doesn’t have to be long, and I strongly encourage it to be quite short at the beginning. If you start with a plan to run a marathon and have never run before you aren’t going to get very far before you hurt yourself and give up. I know people who sit for hours every day, these are usually monks of various faiths. I appreciate that service they offer and the gifts of wisdom they can share with the rest of us, but most of us aren’t monks and we don’t need to seek that kind of enlightenment in between picking up the kids, getting to the grocery store, and doing our work (or whatever that looks like for you). Start with one minute of just saying hello to God, and then breathing. After a few days (or weeks), when this has become regular, go to three minutes, then five. Keep expanding until you get to the point that it starts to feel like a chore and then go back a little, that’s how you know you found the right spot for you, for now.

I sit for about half an hour every morning, sometimes it’s forty-five minutes. I settle in after the creatures have been fed, the coffee brewed, and any immediate house needs tended to. I might read a short devotional or journaling prompt that can make me curious about something other than what is in my head. Then I set a timer that plays a bell every two minutes (I use Calm), I pray first, talking to God about how I feel and what I want for myself and anyone in my life I am thinking of, then I go to meditation time and right now I use a rosary to guide that. When I have moved through the rosary I just sit, still, until the next time the bell rings, and sometimes for a little longer if I am feeling very settled. That’s usually 15 or so minutes. Then I listen to the daily exercise in Pray as you Go, and I write. Depending on what my day looks like I may add twenty minutes of reading in whatever spiritual formation book I am on at the moment. This is the practice that works for me, right now, in this season of my life and I have built it slowly over decades.

I have shared before about my meditation practices, and about how to start. I share again because I think it is a great gift if you can bring this into your life. Not everyone believes in God, not everyone who believes in God follows Jesus, meditation and even prayer does not require you to do either. But when you sit, when I sit, when I go through these exercises of being honest about what I want and feel, and the discipline of doing nothing but letting the noise in my head quiet, letting the tension in my body still, an awareness, a knowing, a compassionate presence, has space to offer me insight, wisdom, direction. There are too many words to describe it and none that quite work. When I sit I make space for God to speak, and when I have ears to hear the direction I receive only ever makes my life better. Not always in the way I might imagine, but always in a way that lets my heart grow.

I think that everyone should sit, for at least a few minutes on as many days as you can; I don’t know why it works but I believe it will make us kinder people, calmer, more confident in the direction of our lives, more patient and encouraging of each other. I know there have been loads of scientific studies done that show positive impacts on your brain and your nervous system, correlational reports that show increased happiness, and better emotional regulation. And there is something else, something that is not quantifiable or explainable in the way we like to explain things, or understand them. It is something that just happens, slowly, and gradually that makes you see the world differently, that changes how you feel and react, that lets you move in a way that accepts more wonder without having to direct or control.

I recently read an article about the ‘dark side of meditation’ or some catchy title like that; someone who went deep on the emptying side of meditating and started by running the proverbial marathon (hours a day, not minutes). She reported a loss of identity and anxiety and such. That is a tragedy of course and I do not make light of the experience. I encourage instead, first, don’t start big, don’t try to win meditation by being the best; second, don’t go in with the goal of nothingness; third, don’t do it alone. Very briefly on each of these, the first I have already covered. The second is a mistaken understanding of the goal of non-attachment in Buddhism. It would take a lot more words to give this it’s due but in a very short summary I see it as this: enlightenment is not coming to understand that we are nothing, it is coming to understand that the importance of the material objects in which we find our identity are not the real us. It is an ego shift, not nihilism. Finally, the third, and this is the most important: I sit by myself everyday (actually the little cat Pepper is often with me), but I always start with prayer to God, inviting that presence to be with me. I am not alone, I am not the captain of my own ship, and neither are you. If the word God doesn’t work for you use the word spirit, or creator, or light, or energy, something. And if you aren’t really sure about any of this then just sit and invite in that ‘maybe;’ but don’t sit and believe there is nothing because then all you end up with is more of exactly what you are right now.

When I started sitting it was because I didn’t know what else to do, it was a last resort. Today I sit because I know it is exercise that if I don’t do I am less of who I want to be. I sit because I know there is so much love in the universe, and it is like going to a cosmic fueling station that fills me up and, I hope, lets me overflow to the people I meet that day. I sit because it reminds me that I am in progress, and I need support and direction. I sit, and I am grateful for the time.

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