ken wilson online

This is an experiment. That is making the occasional blog entry on prayer. That is the experience of praying. That is the attempt to do meditative reading of one book over an extended period of time, the book of psalms in particular. I will only continue the experiment only if it is helpful to me or at least not harmful. Otherwise it’s not sustainable. Can blogging function as a journal? Not sure. To be determined. Obviously not an anything goes journal, but selected entries. Enough of that.

Day 3 of mediating on psalms, as per what my friend Rick does, I think, and is described in Sacred Reading, by Michael Casey. Still reading that. Today, parking on “desire” in the second verse of the first psalm. Happy is the person who sustains a choice of negation–not pursuing the path of the wicked, the offenders, the scoffers. But instead attaches desire to the Lord’s teaching is the sense of the first two verses. Attaches desire. A raw word-experience. Came to me in prayer, John Lennon’s song (white album, i think): I want you. I want you so bad. I want you. I want you so bad, it’s driving me mad, driving me mad. That’s some kind primal of fixation, mediated by what, the amygdala, part of the emotion system in the brain, a deeper in structure of the brain–not the part we do math with, either. Lennon wrote that, I guess, about his desire for Yoko Ono. Which was so strong it was in the process of breaking up the Beatles, if I understand it right. What did he see in Yoko Ono? No one really knew. People around him didn’t see what he saw.

Desire. This morning, parking the brain’s awareness on desire, which I have known. Not for Yoko, obviously. Affixing that raw human energy-intention-feeling on the Lord’s teaching. I don’t know how that happens, but it does, or can. God grabs your attention-desire like Yoko Ono grabbed John Lennnon’s. This morning, mainly parked there with an awareness of that. Not fancy, I know. Lectio.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 6:08 am and is filed under the praying brain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.