Learning to Trust What Shimmers -- A Guest Post by Christine Valters Paintner

 Learning to Trust What Shimmers

 

Our habitual ways of perceiving the world, which help us navigate things like stopping at a red light or stop sign, also stand in the way of seeing the world in fresh and new ways.

 

In my book Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice, I find inspiration in the ancient practice of lectio divina, or sacred reading.  In lectio, we read scripture and listen for what word or phrase is shimmering. This practice is always in service of contemplative vision in daily life.  Lectio invites us to slowly see more and more of the world as a sacred text, ripe with possibility for meaning.  We can expand our contemplative practice to include a kind of visio divina, or sacred seeing, where we gaze on a painting or photograph we love and look for something that shimmers – perhaps a symbol, a color, a brushstroke, the play of light and shadow.  And in that shimmering we know there is a gift for us, even if we don’t fully understand its meaning in the moment.

 

We can then expand our practice of sacred seeing even further to include what we see all around us in our daily lives.  What would it be like to move through our day, watching for what shimmers, waiting to receive these moments of revelation, and then savor them? 

 

A question I often receive from people cultivating the contemplative path is: How do I cultivate trust in what shimmers?  How do I know what I am drawn to is sacred? 

 

We are so used to moving through the world analyzing and judging, bringing our expectations to each encounter, planning for the next several steps ahead.  It can feel awkward to bring ourselves fully present and draw on intuition, wisdom, and experience, rather than logic and analysis, to see what is most true.  This heart-centered knowing comes through practice. 

 

The most essential way I learn to trust what shimmers, is to ask myself if this encounter increases my compassion.  Do I feel a sense of expansiveness toward myself and others?  When the holy shimmers before us, it is always in the service of greater love.

 

As I cultivate this practice of attending to the gifts the world has to offer me, to what shimmers, I am at the same time nurturing the opening of my own heart.  Our minds harden our defenses, but the heart softens and blooms forth slowly, so that we find ourselves looking with more compassion on those who annoy us, and perhaps later, those we actively dislike, and finally those we have previously ignored and not even allowed into our line of sight. When we discover ourselves surprised by love and grace, we come to trust what shimmers forth as gift.  We receive without needing to figure things out.  We begin to follow the thread of moment by moment revelation, not knowing where it leads, only embracing the call to see with eyes of the heart.

 

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, is the online Abbess at Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and community for contemplative practice and creative expression.  She is the author of 7 books on art and monasticism, including her latest, Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice (Ave Maria Press). Christine currently lives out her commitment as a monk in the world with her husband in Galway, Ireland.

Racing Lessons: #1 -- Trust

Screaming into turn 3 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 180 mph gave me a new understanding of the word trust. Just a few seconds, literally, earlier, we had rocketed out of the pits, down the pit road, up onto the track, and were hurtling toward turn 3. I was snugged into the back seat of a two-seater Indy car, strapped in behind a driver who I had never before met and had not spoken to. He was already in the car when I got there, suited up, strapped down, helmeted, radiophones in his ears, and ready to go. After I climbed in, he fired the engine and we sat there with him blipping the throttle.

Then the pit crew attendant tapped him on the head, stepped back, and he hit the accelerator. The back tires smoked (at least that's what I heard from those on site), squealed, and I was slammed back into the seat as we went from 0 to 60 in a little over two seconds. He ran up through the gears along pit road, gaining speed with each second. But the time we shot off pit road and up to the outside wall down the back straightaway, I realized that my vision was dimming. I'd be holding my breath ever since he'd taken off!

I took a deep breath, reminded myself that was riding with a professional race car driver who planned on living as long as I did, started to relax a bit when he pulled a left turn and we sped, without him lifting off the accelerator, into turn 3. I forgot to breathe again.

It was then I thought that I could do one of two things. I could either fret myself into a heart attack and die in the back of the car -- thereby earning myself spot on the evening news and infamy at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway -- or I could trust that the guy in front of me was really skilled, the car was really good, and this was going to be among the most exciting minutes in my life.

I decided, against my lifetime of distrust of those who hold my life in their hands at various times (other drivers, pilots, dentists), as we flew across the yard of bricks, to trust. To relax. I even remembered how my friend Buck, a Quaker pastor, says that he thinks learning to trust is the great lesson of the Christian life. So I prayed (quickly), "Buck, I hope you're right," took a breath and relaxed my tense muscles and watch the track surface, walls, trees, golf course, and viewing stands come and go in less than the blink of an eye. Zip through turn two. Zoom into turn 3 and up to the top of the short chute, then jetting down into turn four, up and out. As we hit the main straight, the driver lifted off the accelerator and we turned onto pit lane.

Thirty seconds later, I was up and out of the car, and walking a little shakily toward the safety behind pit wall where people I loved where there to greet me. And I hummed, to myself, a bit of an old gospel hymn that I'd grown up with:
"’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus..."

And Indy car drivers, too...

-- Brent

Quaker Wisdom for Today

I have assumed a name today for my religious principles - Quaker-Catholicism - having direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma, yet recognising the high worth of all other forms of Faith: a system, in the sense of inclusion, not exclusion; an appreciation of the universal and the various teachings of the Spirit, through the faculties given to us, or independent of them.

--Caroline Fox