Resilience

The sages tell us that we should always pray in the same place at the same time each day.  I grin when I hear this, because it reminds me of my friend’s child who asked, when their family planned a vacation away during Christmas, how would Santa Clause know where to find her if she wasn’t in her own home? In fact, praying (or any practice of looking within such as imagery, dream practice, or meditation) in the same place at the same time each day is how we make sure to find OURSELVES.  The regularity of rhythm locates our bodies in the present tense – “you are here” on the map.  The more changes in our lives, the more this anchor point becomes a rooted home base.

In addition to putting us present tense, “same place, same time” allows constancy and continuity through linear time.  I was present yesterday, here, so even if today is scattered I can go back to “here” and reclaim myself, catch myself in my own hands, and then go forward.  Day after day we create an arc – at the end of a year we look back and see: that’s where I was, and this is where I am. Experience is no longer chaotic (‘oh my gosh where did the year go?’) but rather intentional, meaningful.

There is much talk these days about resilience. Everyone wants to “gain resilience tips”. Resilience isn’t built on tips, it’s built on a carefully constructed foundation. We can’t yell from inside a burning house “how do I make the house safer?”; we build a safe house before the fire.  As a fellow dreamer reminded me recently, the Latin etymology of resilience is resilire, to rebound.  RE, as in, having a base and then returning to it in order to spring forth again.

Praying at the same time in the same place every day creates the base, the foundation, upon which we can spring forth – again and again, with each stumble or challenge that comes our way.  By so settling ourselves in time/place we construct our inner space, the deeper foundation of connection to the eternal wellspring that we then carry with us throughout our days upon leaving that anchoring time/place.  Two touch points:  the physical, embodied settling in time/place, and the mapped inner space of Source that can move with us (and which is only mapped by a rhythm of settling in time/place).

So the sages, in the most simple of exhortations, give us the flashlight for the many dark nights of our journeys: just, simply, pray at the same time, in the same place, every day.  As Colette, the great teacher of this lineage wrote in her poem Transposition “In the totality of being I reside. There, I return to myself …”

Excerpt from the poem Transposition, published in the book of poems Colette Aboulker Muscat Alone with the One.  Acmi Press, 1995, New York.

Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash