A believing, meditative look sees the traces of God (the "foot prints" of God as Meister Eckhart puts it) in the created world. Our eyes and ears must be alert for that. What happens this week is built on the exercises of the third week: "Master, let me receive my sight in order that I may see your love."
- Read Matt. 6:25-30; 5:44 ff; 10:29-31 (See the birds, the lilies, the sun, the sparrows)- Read these passages slowly as though you have never heard them or read them before...
- Identify with the way Jesus viewed and experienced the world of creation...
- Picture yourself in situations of Jesus' life in which such a perception could grow...
- Freely choose a part of creation on which to ponder. Look at this until it reveals itself to you as a "foot print" of its creator...until the picture lights up with the image of the one whose workmanship it is ("God's invisible nature, namely, God's eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." Rom 1:20)...
- Pray for the gift to look with less and less effort at your surroundings in this way (also created things and even human reality itself)...
A word of caution: During your meditation on creation when aspects of the environment adversely effected by humans seem to dominate the scene, try to set these images aside temporarily (not repressing them) in order to be led back again to the perspective of Jesus's view of reality. This is how God intended and willed things for creation.! Where things look too bleak compare your image with Romans 8:21.
- Read Psalm 104 (The marks of God in creation)
- Look in a nature picture book and with each picture see the "footprints of God"...
- God's love for me is like." . ., , " ... (metaphor meditation). Find your own images ... .
A metaphor meditation is symbol meditation in reverse. Whereas in symbol meditation we begin with sensate signs (the symbol) and transfer that into a mental or spiritual reality (see symbolic pictures), in metaphor meditation we leave ourselves open to a reality that cannot be perceived with the senses and wait until a visual image comes into our mind (for example faith is like a long journey with many obstacles and leads one from darkness into light).
- In doing this we must keep in mind
that every symbolic picture emphasizes only one side of the reality it is depicting.- When we don't work exclusively with our intellect in a metaphor meditation, but empty ourselves and wait for what "occurs", then the image offered can reveal understanding of this truth and also of our present situation.
- If we are presented with an overload of images then we must decide on one and remain with that until we have "savored" it thoroughly ". In meditating further on the same theme, other symbolic images will often present themselves.