Guided Meditation: Calming Prayer
This guided meditation is from Spiritual Director Erika Clauson. It is a calming prayer intended to support you in your journey to wellness, especially as you experience fear and anxiety. Enjoy.
Erika: I will be guiding us through a calming prayer practice that can help us connect our mind, body, heart and soul to the God of love, so that as we experience God's perfect love, the control that our fears and anxieties have over us may lessen.
Erika: Imagine our prayer is when we enter our imagination with Jesus and open ourselves up to whatever gift Jesus desires to offer us. I will invite you to imagine a specific scene, but please feel free to adapt it to whatever works best for you.
Erika: As we begin, I invite you to focus on your breath. Notice your inhalation and your exhalation. Let yourself breathe in and out, naturally connecting with the Holy Spirit that is within you. Now you may close your eyes and imagine a favorite place of yours.
Erika: A place where you feel at peace, where you feel safe. Your own sanctuary. It could be your bedroom, a place outdoors, a real place, or one that exists in your imagination. Enter that place in your imagination.
Erika: In that place, you feel free. You feel comfort and warmth. You are there now, and you feel peace. You notice that there are two chairs, or perhaps a sofa. You sit down alone and in a comfortable position.
Erika: You hear a knock at the door. Slowly you get up and go to open the door. You gaze into a tender and direct gaze of another. It is Jesus. Stay in this moment and notice how it feels to have Jesus in front of you right now.
Erika: You look at Jesus and invite him to enter your safe place. You ask him to sit next to you. You notice that he is carrying a box. What does the box look like? You ask Jesus about the box. Jesus reminds you of a Bible verse that says give all your worries and cares to God for he cares about you.
Erika: 1 Peter 5:7. And then Jesus invites you to put all your worries, fears and anxieties into the box. Watch as your worries and anxieties go into the box. How do you feel as you watch this? Are there any that want to come back out of the box?
Erika: Are there any that you would like to talk to Jesus about? Take this next minute in silence and talk to Jesus about them. Listen to his response. When you are ready, imagine that Jesus closes the box and he is smiling.
Erika: Even though we know that Jesus is always with us, this prayer time is coming to an end. And so imagine now that Jesus hugs you as he gets ready to leave. What would you ask Jesus for before he leaves?
Erika: How would you say goodbye to each other as you leave the sanctuary in your imagination? Wiggle your toes and fingers and come back to this present moment. Slowly open your eyes and notice that you are here.
Erika: How are you feeling now? If you have time, I encourage you to pause this recording and take five minutes. To journal, draw, color, or do whatever that may help you process or savor this time with Jesus.
Erika: And as we conclude, receive this blessing from Jan Richardson's poem entitled beloved is Where We Begin. If you would enter into the wilderness, do not begin without a blessing. Do not leave without hearing who you are beloved, named by the one who has traveled this path before you.
Erika: Do not go without letting it echo in your ears. And if you find it's hard to let it into your heart, do not despair. That is what this journey is for. I cannot promise this blessing will free you from danger, from fear, from hunger or thirst, from the scorching of sun or the fall of the night.
Erika: But I can tell you that on this path there will be help. I can tell you that on this way there will be rest. I can tell you that you will know the strange graces that come to our aid only on a road such as this, that fly to meet us bearing comfort and strength, that come alongside us for no other cause than to lean themselves toward our ear and with their curious insistence, whisper our name.
Erika: Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. Amen.
