The Rev. Garba Gaius, pastor of the congregation to which the young woman belongs, told Compass that the young Christian, Paitence Yusuf, was at home the night of February 1 when a young man asked her to meet him outside. After they had gone outside he told her he wanted to befriend and marry her. Yusuf sharply declined, Rev. Gaius said. As she walked back into her house, the man, whose identity has not been disclosed, told her, “I beg you in the name of God and his apostle, Muhammad, to please accept me as your boyfriend,” Rev. Gaius said. He said Yusuf looked the man in the face and replied, “You are pleading in the name of a person I do not know. Jesus I know, but Muhammad I do not know.” The Muslim man left, Rev. Gaius said, gathering friends and neighbors that night to tell them that Yusuf had blasphemed Muhammad.

Joan Chittister

This struck me as being an important concept not only for us adults but for our children. If our children don’t know how to plant their “own dream blossoms,” how will they ever have time to develop their own “inner music”? How will they ultimately ever know what the deepest desires of their hearts are? How will they ever handle times when they are truly alone and have no external distraction to fill the void?

We must as adults take time to be silent and alone: no music, no TV, no external distractions so that we can hear our hearts speak to us. And we must raise our children with regular times of being alone so that they can grow up to hear their hearts, which is the space in which God often speaks. Constant noise is being used successfully by the Enemy of our souls to keep us from being able to hear God and that subtle strategy is working very well, especially with our children.

A way to begin practicing this with your children: when they come home from school, after they have talked with you, had a snack, decompressed a bit, insist on a half hour of alone time either in their room or outside. No IPods, no conversation, just alone time to process their day, their dreams, their lives. It could also happen after dinner, depending on your family’s schedule.

Or when in the car, insist that some of the time, especially on longer trips, be quiet time: no music, no reading, no conversation. Let everyone have a bit of non-distracted quiet space. At first, it may be very hard for both the children and the adults to encounter this. (A good way to discern if you are addicted to noise is to ride silently in a car for 30 minutes and see what your response is!)

We must be intentional about this in our lives and in giving this gift of alone time in silence to our children as often as possible. It gives us a chance to hear God speaking to and through our hearts deepest places. Our very lives and souls could be at stake.

The answer came to me in one of those Holy Spirit-sent blinding flashes when I was reading the June 2007 Oprah Magazine on page 202. Oprah was sharing about the spa vacation she, her friend Gayle King, and 60 women took at the Miravel Spa. One of the classes was on meditation, taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn. In his talk, he gave people encouragement on being mindful and aware by putting a new spin on the old post card cliche: Having a great time. Wish I were here!  He then went on to discuss how we are so often not present in the moment and gave the example of being physically in the shower but mentally in your first appointment for the day.

And that is when it hit me: the passage Jesus quotes above tells of a time when people will be so busy that in constantly multi-tasking and thinking through the next task they have to do, they will miss being where they currently are. They will miss the flowers on the hike, they will miss hearing their children or friends’ real message behind the words, they will miss their vacation because they are so busy video-taping it. Jon Kabat-Zinn talkes about “throw[ing] out the word meditating” and using the word awarenessing.

When I think about Christian meditation, how we are called not to empty our mind but to fill it completely with God, God’s word and presence, I think the word ”awarenessing” is a very accurate description. Because as Christians, we are to go from our times of intense focus on God (i.e. meditating) into the real world and we are to become more aware of God and God’s working in the world from those times of intense focus on and listening to God’s voice. We are to be more fully present in each moment, seeking to be God’s agent for good in that moment, fully present and not three meetings down the road of where we are right now.

Sometimes I wonder why I have not been healed in certain areas of my life. Maybe it is because God can’t heal me because I am not present to enough to hear his voice of healing (as implied by the passage above). Maybe I am always doing one task but thinking about another such that I can’t access the good God wants to give me right now in this moment in this task. Maybe, as a Christian, if I can learn “awarenessing,” I will be a better witness to the Kingdom of God than if I am always running around “doing the Lord’s business” and working myself into exhaustion. Maybe by being really present to nature on my walk this morning, I can be a healing voice to someone else today.

Yesterday, under heavy guard, his body was brought to the church. Today, under heavy guard we had his funeral. The reason for the heavy guard was thanks to Fred Phelps and the Waynesboro Baptist Church crowd out of Kansas. If you want to have your stomach turned, go to godhatesfags.com. These people stood their legal 100 foot distance limit away, desecrating flags, holding up awful signs and saying vile things. The irony was, the 100 foot limit was on the corner of the Congregational Church caddy-corner from Trinity. First Congregational had hung out their gay pride sign and their safe zone signs! These people, while generating the negative press coverage they so crave, were standing under banners advocating gay rights!

The Patriot Guard surrounded the church. (We also had the entire police department around including the SWAT team on roofs across the street, the church parking lot and nearby streets shut down, and a fire truck and ambulance on stand-by.) The Patriot Guard are ex-vets and friends who protect military familes from protestors during funerals. These people stood in the cold for a long time, using American flags as shields and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance to block the view of and drown out the noise from the protestors. The irony was not lost on many of us: the kid in the box inside was part of a government that (so far) allows people to desecrate its flag and say vile things without fear of jail.

But the other irony that hit me was: how appropriate for Holy Week! The chaos, the shouting crowds, the “Roman soldiers” lined up to keep order. It hit me hard that if Easter isn’t not a victorious shout in the face of this kind of chaos and evil then we should shutter the church doors and all go home. I’ve never played “I Know that My Redeemer Lives” and “Lift High the Cross” with such a sense of shouting victory into the face of death and destruction. If the message of the Risen Christ can’t speak to the insanity that surrounded this funeral, then, as St. Paul says, we are of all people most to be pitied.

I still hate war; I still hate our current foreign policy but today I was again reminded of what it means to be an American. And even more so, I was reminded of what it means to be a Christian living in America. I hope I don’t forget this Maundy Thursday ever.