Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Meditation and the Life of Nonviolence

Peacemakers throughout history testify to the need for quiet meditation if we are to live the nonviolent life of peace.

The [ministry] of the nonviolent Jesus, according to Luke’s account, begins with him sitting in silent prayer by the Jordan River. In that quiet time of contemplative listening and opening to the Spirit of peace, he heard that he was God’s beloved [Luke 3:21–22]. In this sacred space, he was able to take that message to heart, to claim that truth as the core of his identity.

Like the nonviolent Jesus, we too need to sit still in silent meditation and open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit of peace and let the God of peace call us God’s beloved. We need to give God permission to love us, name us, and claim us if we want to be disarmed, healed and freed to practice loving nonviolence.

That is why quiet meditation is so crucial to the life of nonviolence. In that silent meditation, we can hear God say to us, “You are my beloved.” We learn who we are, we remember who we are, and we are strengthened once again to be who we really are. In that strength and confidence, we feel liberated from our inner violence and freed to get up and walk outside into the world of violence to offer the hand of peace and nonviolence.

John Dear
Excerpted from The Nonviolent Life
Pace e Bene Press, 2013
pp. 34–35


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Marianne Williamson on Cultivating Stillness
Diarmuid O’Murchú on the Human Capacity to Meditate
A Season of Listening
Eckhart Tolle on Silence and Stillness
Eckhart Tolle on Going Beyond the Thinking Mind
Eckhart Tolle on Being “Conscious Without Thought”
To Be Still
Stepping Out of Time and Resting Your Mind
In the Stillness and Silence of This Present Moment
The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
Today I Will Be Still
Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
Time to Go Inwards
Active Waiting: A Radical Attitude Toward Life
I Need Do Nothing . . . I Am Open to the Living Light
A Sacred Pause
Aligning with the Living Light
Mystical Participation
Keeping the Spark Alive
In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
Seven Principles for Living with Deep Intention
Thoughts on Christian Meditation – Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Happy Birthday, Mum! (includes Thích Nhất Hạnh’s thoughts on walking meditation)

Image: Artist unknown.


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