Now and then in my life, I have tried to meditate. It’s supposed to be good for your brain or something, plus I belong to an organization that suggests daily prayer and meditation. There was a period of maybe three years where I listened to one of those meditation apps every day. It didn’t really take, but at least I gave it a shot.
People go on retreat, too. I knew people who went to Malvern Retreat House, where they held regular retreats for sober alcoholics. My husband went to Holy Cross Monastery in New York State on retreat once, too. It was one of the most significant times of his life. He would have liked to be a religious brother, in another life, which considering what I know about him was pretty consistent with what I’ve heard about religious brothers, and take that any way you like. He belonged to a group at his Episcopal Church that was going through A Course in Miracles. I don’t know if he went to Malvern Retreat House.
That stuff wasn’t my style, either.
No, I really suck at sitting still and concentrating on nothing, and I should just own up to that.
Well, except at one time of the year, which is to say during the couple of weeks before Christmas, when all I can do is sit still and concentrate on nothing. Of course, it doesn’t count as meditation, not really. That’s because I’m not doing it deliberately.
I think there is supposed to be some kind of intention with meditation.
I’m sort of doing something while all this is going on. This year, I am working my way through the thirty detective novels of a minor mystery writer. I scroll through the public feed of Reddit in the way I used to read Reader’s Digest. I don’t belong to Reddit, or to any social media except Mastodon, so I am in no danger of fighting with anyone or falling into a pernicious algorithm.
No, I just look vaguely at posts about sad dogs who were in a shelter for 8 years, cats who were rescued from car engines, people who have written fictional screeds asking if they are the asshole, with lots of responses insisting they aren’t, and videos of scary events. I never question the videos until after I have watched them, whereupon I find myself wondering how you can have multiple camera angles in a theoretically unscripted event. Reader’s Digest had a similarly staged feel to it; all the articles were summarized in a way that gave you a nice black-and-white view of the world, divided into good people and bad people.
In addition to reading, I sit with my cat in my lap, petting him. I do jigsaw puzzles, or least bits of them. I listen to Mozart, or to George Friedrich Handel, while eating cookies and tortilla chips. I run at least one errand a day, and then I go home. I do laundry, make the bed, and run the dishwasher.
Heck, I even talk to people, sometimes in person. So it’s not a completely silent retreat.
I know some of the theoretical reasons why my December retreat happens like clockwork every year, though none of them are relevant any more. Family history, cycles of the years, and so on.
No, it’s just my annual winter gloom, arriving on schedule, and if I choose to call it meditation, I feel so much better about it. It’s my personal retreat, and I will embrace it until it’s over. Which will happen the day after Christmas, when I take down my pretty glittering Christmas tree, look around me, and notice the days have already started getting longer.