If I am agitated and want to find peace, I imagine myself in a beautiful place, usually on a beach or in a meadow where I have felt happy once.
In my mind I get myself to lie down there, leaving above me like a mist of swirling insects, whatever is bothering my mind. I imagine that all those things which are worrying me are in two large rucksacks which I take off my shoulders and lay down at some distance. I imagine myself in the valley of dry bones visited by Ezekiel. Each of my limbs is laid out in the grass or on the sand as part of that vast company of dry bones.
I use my mind as an internal soother with which to visit each joint and limb of my extended body, starting with my toes and moving upward. Carefully concentrating, naming, and feeling each one, I visit and caress them, gently urging them to relax. Coming up through my ankles, my knees, my stomach, my chest, my shoulders, my neck and eventually massaging inwardly the top of my scalp, I allow the assorted pieces to chill out as if they didn’t belong to each other.
Once every one of these portions of my body have been quietened, I invite the Holy Spirit like a gentle breeze to circulate and refresh what has now become a series of items laid out on grass or sand. No longer a scrunched up mass of seething tension, the gentle breeze visits the spaces between each one of my limbs and releases that tension that makes them cling together. Such distribution on sand or grass relaxes me and allows me to become aware of the beauty that surrounds me, and which can now permeate what was, minutes before, impenetrable.
I am now able to engage with the elements. The sun touching my skin, the earth warming my body, the sounds from insects and birds caressing my ears, the scents that seep through my nostrils encourage me to breathe deeply and welcome the fresh air right down as far as the pit of my stomach.
This breathing in and out is a Eucharist: thanksgiving and blessing for the universe.
Relaxing the muscles around my eyes, especially where the forehead is clenched into a fist, my gaze can wander freely across the vast friendliness of the open sky. I end up as if I were asleep but without losing consciousness. My worries and concerns lose their particularity and purchase. They rise like vapours towards another dimension where they lose their impact. I am at peace.
Mark Patrick Hederman OSB is a Benedictine monk, teacher, lecturer and writer based in Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick. He contributed this piece to Sr Stan’s 2021 book Finding Peace published by Columba Books.
