Take a minute to meditate

In you, O LORD, I take refuge
For you are my hope, O Lord;
my trust,
On you I depend from birth;
from my mother’s womb you are my strength.

Ps 71: 1, 5ab-6ab

It is a bleak and dreary morning. The second day drenched with rain and a month declared the wettest in the most recent past. A perfect setting for Holy Week. Not for the first days of Spring.

Our spirits sometimes reflect the atmosphere. I witness a much quieter city street. Notice a lack of activity outside. I find my interior space and prefer its warmth than to expose it to the elements of life and living. Susie and Deliah instinctually know when to withdraw—disappear under the bed or into a closet. As much as we need sunshine, we need rain for the opportunity to run and seek the shelter of our interior self. Take a minute or two to sit today instead of cleaning out closets or spring cleaning.

Twenty minutes of meditation can add minutes to your life instead of subtracting from it. That’s the simple arithmetic. Dr. Robert Schneider, director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, a research institute based at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, suggests that the stress reduction produced by meditation can cause changes in the brain that cut stress hormones like cortisol and dampen the inflammatory processes associated with atherosclerosis (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE6D91238F937A15752C1A96F9C8B63). That’s pretty powerful stuff.

So, I am putting the Pledge and dust cloth down. Today, while it teems “cats and dogs” outside, I am meditating with my cats. Notice the little sign outside our door, “Knock before entering.”