I have a confession.

This is a blog about centering prayer, and I don’t do it very much.

Well. That’s not even true.

To be totally honest?

I don’t do it at all. Except for in my weekly Centering Prayer circle.

It’s embarrassing. How can I write on a blog which is subtitled “My Journey into Centering Prayer” and not center the rest of the week?  What kind of a journey is that? Not one that goes very far.

I know that I meet God in the quiet. I know that those weekly group sessions of prayer have changed me.  But when I’m home, I never seem to set aside time specifically for my 20 minute sits.  Father Keating recommends two twenty minute sits a day. I would be happy if I could do one. It is on my list of things to do, but always gets trumped by laundry, or vegetable chopping, or dog walking, or cleaning the cat box, a thankless, stinky job which I hate. Surely, I could delegate the cat box to one of my sweet children, go into my bedroom, shut the door, and take that time to center for 20 minutes?

Here is another confession which connects to the first: years ago, I bought a pack of four goal setting notebooks on Amazon that were put together by Seth Godin and based on the teachings of Zig Ziglar.  I hoped the notebooks would help me figure out my most important goals and work toward them.  Plus, they were purple. Basically, this is what they said:  Use this space to write out your dreams. Anything you want! Choose four goals that will help you get there. Work on them every day.

For years, I said that I wanted to write. I was blessed to work for the National Catholic Reporter newspaper for a time after college.  I was an intern for them and later a staff reporter and columnist.  My last column was published right as I finished massage school.  I have worked as a massage therapist for 17 years now. Ironically, my path into massage came about as I tried to write a novel that featured a massage therapist. Back in the time when Google was just starting, I procrastinated on writing my book by looking up everything I could about massage therapy.  I had to know something about my character’s back story, after all.  Eventually, I gave up on the book completely and went to massage therapy school myself.

I don’t regret my work as a massage therapist. It has been a tremendous gift. But always, always, I wanted to write. Writing was one of the goals that I put down in my first purple notebook years ago: January 7, 2013, to be exact.  I spent the next few years feeling bad about not writing and tried again on January 6, 2015. When did I finally launch this blog? The end of 2016. I am slow. So slow.

But here I am, writing. For a couple of months now, actually. Afraid, but doing it. Afraid, but showing up at the blank screen, sitting down, and hitting publish. I am so relieved and happy about this. Doing it is so much better, so much easier, than not.  It took years, but it wasn’t too late to begin.

This would be a nice place to end this piece.

There were four goals in that first purple notebook, though. Writing was just one. Another was to spend time in silence and contemplation and to move more deeply into centering prayer.

This shouldn’t be hard, right? It’s only 20 minutes a day. It’s not physically strenuous or scary, like running a 10k (another of my initial purple book goals.) or trying to do a pull up. It just means making silence a priority. It means being alert and grabbing the small time blocks that appear when I’m at home or waiting for my son in the school pick-up line. It means no more scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook feed.  It means acting on what I say I believe and not being a hypocrite.

It seems funny to share this. I think of Jesus’ whole talk in Matthew 6 about being private when you pray.   I think He understands, though, that I am not looking for praise here. I am looking for accountability. If I share that I am aiming for 20 minutes of day in silence, then my five friends who regularly read this blog can check up on me. They can ask me if I am centering during the week.  I know they will love me, regardless.  But hopefully, this blog can be a tool that helps move me toward my purple book goal. And the point of that goal?  Connecting with my good God who loves me.  So?  Come, Lord Jesus. Off I go to center for 20 minutes.

I am learning I should not believe most of what I think.

I think I know what is true. But really, much of what I think is just plain wrong.

Last week, I worried about my daughter’s chemistry test. Well, I worried about lots of things, but this is the one that most noticeably grabbed my attention. She came home from school one day afraid that she failed her midterm.

Failed?

My worry train chugged out of the station. Because if she failed? (Chug, chug, chug went the train.)  If she failed, her grade in the class could slide! Her GPA might go down! She might not get into the college that she would have gotten into if she hadn’t failed this one thing! Life as we know it could have changed, never to be the same!

It’s what I spent the morning thinking, as I did the dishes and puttered around the house and typed a few words here. I wondered and fretted. I felt sick and nervous. I ruined my own day.

And none of it was true.

First, she didn’t fail the test. She actually did OK.

But more than that?

How do I know that a failing grade would have been a bad thing?

It could be the best thing that ever happened to her. It could be a great gift. Maybe failure here would open a door, or change a situation, or be a foundational event that took her someplace new, exactly where she needed to be.

I say I believe in a good God who loves us and carries us. I know this good God tells me not to worry. Everyday, I try to pray Fr Keating’s Welcoming Prayer, where I say I let go of “my desire for power and control, for survival and security, for affection and approval.”

But it doesn’t take much for me to forget all this and to act as if worldly success is my savior, my daughter’s savior, too.  When will I remember that it’s not?  It’s actually an empty path that leads  away from true happiness, which is found in God’s love and presence alone.

I know nothing of the future. I know nothing.  I need to remind myself of this, over and over. The things that seem so good to me? The things that seem horrible? I need to hold them lightly. What I know for sure is that God loves us and is for us, that all things work together for good, and that it’s not my job to keep it straight or understand it as it unfolds.  To welcome “everything that comes to me today because it’s for my healing” as Fr. Keating says, from the hand of a God who loves me? That is where I want to start. And being free of worry, living without it? That would be wild, and lovely, and new.