Many ways to enter prayerful contemplative living

For those of us who live in the Bluegrass of central Kentucky, it' s almost always a pleasure to drive by a horse farm and enjoy the fencing.

Sometimes in the spring when the foals can be seen, I stop my car to say hello to mom and her newborn. Last year Moonstone Farm on Grimes Mill Road (a lovely part of the horse country south of the Lexington) let me walk around its paddocks, taking pictures of the horses, barns, and fencing.

A lover of such fencing, I often think of them as reminders of how I spend my time "fence-walking" or pilgrimaging through life. Just as the placement of well-grounded fence posts provides solid anchorage for the railings of horse-farm fencing, so praying the Daily Offices and setting aside time for centering prayer serve as "fenceposts" for contemplative living. Between the posts, between our morning and evenings, there's a good bit of "railing," that is, our time during the day. Assuming that one's "fenceposts" (prayer in the morning, prayer in the evening) are well in the ground, we are fairly ready to put the railings in place and walk along their timbered bars, the hours between sunrise and sunset.

What is that "railing" walk for those of us who have the fenceposts in place? How do we pass our "day hours" as we go from post of post? Here, by way of encouragement, Merton suggests how one might live prayerfully and contemplatively as the day passes, inbetween the fence posts:

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. Above, all, enter into the Church's liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life-let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul. (New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1961), 216.

What Merton is suggesting is that we allow our more or less concentrated contemplative times of prayer to extend themselves into every facet of living. With a contemplative heart, we say hello to the cashier at WalMart; with a contemplative mindset, we answer the phone to find out who's calling and why; with a contemplative attitude, we wash the dishes, do the laundry, grade student papers, mow the lawn, work on the budget, and work as an attorney, a salesclerk, a pastor, a custodian, or a retired professor. Just so, all of life becomes a contemplative journey.

Image: A picture of the paddock fencing I took at Moonstone Farm on Grimes Mill Road.