A common way of praying for me is to allow myself to move deeply within into the center of self. I may begin by presenting a situation of concern to God and then move into silence. This is a dark (not depressing) kind of praying, but I descend deep into the mystery where there is both peace and silence; I lose consciousness of the time and place in which I exist in the moment and move into the darkness of God, into unknowing... I return to waking consciousness feeling vulnerable and empowered; I experience tenderness and new awareness.
~ from FROM CENTER TO CIRCUMFERENCE by Elizabeth-Ann Vanek
"YHWH." It is the Name that by tradition we are forbidden to pronounce. Free yourself, I thought. Pronounce it. With no vowels, it came out: "Yyyyhhhhwwwwhhh." It sounded like breath. God's Name: the breath of life! No words, just the whispering, murmuring sound of a deep-drawn breath. For years I took delight in this discovery It hanged the way I prayed. Yet the hart of what had moved me I still had not discovered. I did not know it was my mother's breath I yearned for. For my mother to breathe easy once again, to draw once more a deep and even breath – that would be God for me. For each of us I realized, the deepest Name of God arises from the depths of our own life.
I have learned to understand time and thought as a spiral: neither a straight line that must go always forward, even into a precipice, nor a circle that must remain forever stuck in repeating past experience. Instead, a spiral, which curves always backward in order to curve forward. What makes time and life into a spiral instead of a straight line or an endless circle is setting aside time for reflection, rest, renewal. That renewal time is the curve that moves the spiral onward. This lets us re-view where we have been, so that we can go forward.
