Because I'm sharing John's "blogstipation" tonight, I'm also sharing my comment inspired by his post Learn to be Still:

"I wish I could recall in greater detail the sensations of my first Zazen session, but most of that 30-minute period is lost on me. What I do remember, and really, the only important thing I need to relay to you, is that when the session ended, I never felt closer to God than I did at that moment. I found him. I found myself."

Ah, exactly. And the book that finally got me to muster the courage to give meditation a go after a couple of years of reading about it and taking yoga classes was Old Souls. That book literally fell on my lap while I was looking for something in my sister's partner's meager shelves to read and kill time, the night before we were to drive to Scripps hospital to be with dad as he was released to go back home, to home hospice care.

And the silence and the closeness to the divine, so, so different from a priest's tirades about atheists and abortionists, and so different from the mass hysteria of the Pentecostal meetings my poor mom was talked into a couple of times.

I sometimes walk by a Baptist church after running, and one night last week I could hear the pastor's booming, angry voice from across the street. As I passed by (only the first row of parking space was taken), I felt sorry for the poor souls in there. It was such a starry glorious night out -- there's a poem I'm trying to remember that was written by a WWII pilot who loved flying and the line "touch the face of God" comes up thinking of how close the sky was, how sweet the silence.


There -- blogstipation circumvented! Thanks, John! And the Maná video needs no stinking explanations; simply the latest heavy-rotation hit from Mexico's greatest rock export.