Sixteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, B--Letting Your Soul Catch Up.

In the deep jungles of Africa a traveler was making a long trek. He had hired some local people to help carry some of his camp gear. The first day they made good time and they went very far, much farther than he anticipated. This traveler had high hopes that the journey could be completed quicker than he thought.

But the next morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. Although they were not particularly tired they just sat and ate and drank and rested. When he asked the leader why they would not march, he said, “Because we went too fast yesterday, and we are now waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies.”

Letting Your Soul Catch Up.

We hear something similar in our Gospel today in Mark 6:31, to “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” Or, the older translation, “Come apart” with Jesus and rest a while. It’s been said, “If you don’t come apart (for a while) and rest, you will come apart.” (Vince Havner)

The philosopher Pascal once quipped, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”….a restlessness which recalls Augustine, who found that the restlessness of the human heart can be rested only in God. 1

When the Master invited the Governor to practice meditation and the Governor said he was too busy, this is the reply he got:

“You put me in mind of a man walking blind-folded into the jungle—and too busy to take the blindfold off.”

When the Governor pleaded lack of time, the Master said, “It is a mistake to think that meditation cannot be practiced for lack of time. The real cause is agitation of the mind.”2

Jesus enjoyed popularity with the character of his person and message of eternal salvation. The disciples find Jesus and say, “Everyone is looking for you,” but Jesus says “rest” because Mark 6:30 says that the apostles had been busy and “gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught.” To spend silent moments savoring the working of God in our life, which includes discovering all the emotions we have buried in the rush of activity and work, and discern the movement of the Lord. You don’t hear silence, per se, but it is that by which you hear.

We can also see from the example of Jesus not to be codependent with compliance patterns during prayer time like by worrying about others rejection or anger, or that others are incapable of talking care of themselves, or even a sense of false loyalty of remaining in a harmful situation like too much time at the office.

The ethics of doing nothing for a time is about how “all labor must eventually come to an end,” which has effects and purposes outside of itself.” For instance, prayer or appreciating artworks are seemingly non-productive yet they are truly subversive [to the dominate culture] and transformative.3

It’s also protective. The passion and calling to serve others may even blind one to the detrimental effects resulting from a lack of attention to physiological, social, emotional, and spiritual limitations, [and] the specific negative personal and professional implications of neglecting oneself can include burnout, compassion fatigue, and even vicarious traumatization.4

The challenge is that the human mind tends to be always active with thoughts, but “it is of little use to say to ourselves “stop thinking;” we might as well say “stop breathing.”5

Yet we have a natural hunger for silence whose recognition requires only a disciplined taste for it.

The remedy of the ancient Christian monks also happens to be the same insight as “the Chinese Buddhist saying which forms the basic rule on one-pointedness, so necessary for any kind of sitting meditation: to `replace the ten-thousand thoughts with one single thought.’ In our case, this one single thought, or “the thought of One only,’ is the holy name of Jesus.” Repeating the name of Jesus is distinct from Zen meditation as it should be seen “not so much as prayer emptied of thoughts, but as prayer filled with the Beloved.”6

Or consider that the Jesus Prayer is not mindfulness. The problem with mindfulness is that is can weaken judgment because it filters likes and dislikes that biases our experience. Plus, the Biblical witness is that of love, hate, to emphasize priorities in life. The Christian version of mindfulness is contemplative prayer. E.g. “If you really wish to cover over your evil thoughts…to be still and calm, and to watch over your heart without hindrance, let the Jesus Prayer cleave to your breath.”7

Regarding distractions in prayer, “Oh, there’s someone I need to remember to email tomorrow;” “I remember when he or she said this or that to me!” And if the memory of your past sins or the temptation to new ones should plague your mind,…bury the thought of these deeds beneath the thick cloud of forgetting just as if neither you nor anyone else ever done them.” The Cloud of Unknowing, 14 Century.