These guiding metaphors by Richard Rohr provide a way to help us be present and to enter into prayer in a deeper way. Many times in our lives we are keeping vigil until something or someone is restored to life.

Watching At the Tomb: Attitudes for Prayer

Now Mary Magdalene and another Mary kept vigil there, seated opposite the tomb.  Matthew 27:61

Picture yourself, like Mary Magdalene, sitting outside the tomb of the buried Christ. It is the ultimate luminal space, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the time of ultimate rest and waiting: the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Many fruitful possibilities and entranceways are offered here. Read the list below, and try the practices that most invite or challenge you today. These might help you find your attention and your inner silence. Let it be your guiding metaphor for a good twenty-minute “sit” as you also keep vigil:

Sitting in Love.

Filling the tragic gap with pure presence, often in the presence of “nothing” or even “death.”

Note that Mary does not keep vigil alone. Prayer often needs other “Mary’s” for support.

Waiting without answers.

Hoping without evidence.

Love sustaining itself by longing.

Inner space is only created by patient watching.

The “grief work” of holding patiently, without resolution or consolation.

Prayer as watching and waiting more than doing.

Prayer as unknowing and not knowing.

Prayer of quiet.

Christ in the tomb is still the Christ (absence is its own kind of presence).

The dead Christ is still Christ. What does that connote for you? How often do you intentionally pray in the presence of a “dead” situation?

An exercise in not forcing resurrection but letting it come when it will.

Note that a “large stone is across the entranceway” but they do not try to move it.

The dead Christ is your passing display of negativity, anger, fear, and hopelessness, and your attachment to these deaths.

You must stay in your vigil until the dead Christ resurrects, that is, until you can release or detach from the reactions of your False Self. This may take two minutes or two hours.

Taken from Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self by Richard Rohr, OFM

In God’s loving presence I unwind the past day, starting from now and looking back, moment by moment. I gather in all the goodness and light, in gratitude. I attend to the shadows and what they say to me, seeking healing, courage, forgiveness.

Taken from: Sacred Space.

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk

looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon…

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.

It doesn’t interest m

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

By Oriah Mountain Dreaming from the book: The Invitation

Intentional living is about soul work. We must first “get on the path” –  it’s like getting on the mat in yoga. My yoga instructor says that before you can become aware, before you can begin the journey, you must first “get on the mat.” Be present. Raise your level of awareness and consciousness – awaken your heart!

Pema Chodron tells us: “begin where you are” and “examine the nature of unborn awareness.” We are all invited to this awareness. This invitation, this call, is an invitation to wholeness.

Our call is a spiritual prompting to complete the work of love that we are here to do. This call assumes we are spiritually linked with others and with creation – whether we like it or not!

Intentional living leads us to Intentional Transformation. This does not simply happen. The word intentional implies a premeditated, deliberate, and purposeful meaning associated with transformation.

At times, we are transformed by life-altering events or conversions that we did not deliberately seek out or choose. Many times, these events or conversions result in unpleasant and unplanned circumstances that negatively affect our lives.

As a result, intentional transformed is often overlooked or viewed unfavorably or as just too risky. It is usually accompanied by joy, pain and even suffering. Intentional Transformation is a process – a process that requires us to live intentionally. It is a process requiring exploration. This exploration becomes a part of our life-long journey.

Let us explore this path of intentional living during Lent, listening to the call and opening ourselves up to this invitation of wholeness.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

from: A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracle

 “Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.”

― Emily Dickinson