AND….

It happened on a Tuesday night during my weekly Zoom centering prayer gathering – which is a very unique thing. About a half dozen of us get on our computers and log in for a Zoom meeting (with which, by now, we have all become experts!). Once everyone is present, our leader just shares a brief statement, rings a chime, and then we all sit silently in our own places in a time of just open prayer. No requests, no thanksgivings, no praises, no confessions – just quiet and stillness. After 15-20 minutes of silence, a chime rings and we finish our time together with some conversation around our prayer time. It has proven to be a lovely and peaceful way to end my day.

During this particular time of centering prayer, our leader started with a portion of one verse of scripture – Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” This is a widely popular verse for people to turn to when worried, frightened, sad, lost, confused or agitated. Since there is no “agenda” for our prayer time together, my goal is to keep my brain quiet, so I can be in a spiritual space. This time, as I tried to quiet my mind and sit in the spiritual space, this phrase, “be still and know that I am God,” kept coming back to me. Rather than fight this, I thought perhaps I was meant to engage this phase in my prayer. I decided to focus on each individual word in that phrase, and so I began with, “be.” In time, I moved on to prayerfully sit with the word, “still.” From, there I moved on to the word, “And,” and that is where I got stuck, or perhaps I should say, I “remained” with that word.

“AND”….such a little word, a throw-away little word. Sometimes the word “and” doesn’t even get letters; it just becomes the symbol “&.” We use “and” freely and generously without really ever a thought about it. “And,” I discovered, upon looking it up, is a “coordinating conjunction,” a word that joins together other words or phrases

But this time, I was caught up in the limitless possibilities of the word, “AND.” I had focused on “be still,” which seems to be relatively simple – don’t move about, whether in body, mind, or spirit. But, the word, “AND,” – well, that is a completely different story. “And” – once I am still, what do I want to do next? “And,” – does this mean, what I will do as soon as my centering prayer is done? Or does this mean what I will do with my life, my gifts, my talents, my money? The “and” suddenly became very weighty, with both ideas and responsibilities. The “and” was suddenly not just a little 3-letter word intended to join words together, it was the source of “Pop Rocks” going off in my brain with all these ideas and possibilities.

SO……”and”….what do you think? What will you do with the “ands” in your life?

Enjoy the possibilities!