When a Petal Falls

When I was in college, a friend and I made a silent retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani. If the abbey sounds familiar, it may be because you are acquainted with one of its most famous monks, Thomas Merton.

The abbey is a holy place in a rural area of Kentucky aptly called “Trappist.” There’s a nearby hill you can climb to gaze out over the farmlands. Or you can spend time in the quiet, simple chapel, praying along with the gathered monks.

Meals are taken in silence. To encourage that state of quiet, recorded reflections are played over the dining hall speakers. Often, I entered a meal in the middle of such a reflection and left long before it was over. I caught only snippets.

This was roughly 15 years ago, but one such snippet has remained with me. A woman was reflecting on her contemplative prayer, remarking how she had sat for hours beholding a simple flower. She said that at one point, a single petal fell onto the floor at her feet; she burst into tears.

As a college student, I didn’t understand this insight. I remember snickering with my friend. We talked about it on the hill later that night. What an odd form of prayer! What a curious waste of time! We laughed as we stared out across the fields of wheat.

And yet, all these years later, the image that our anonymous lunchtime speaker shared by way of muffled recording has stayed with me. It comes to mind again and again. As I’ve grown, as I’ve prayed, as I’ve explored my own spiritual journey, I’ve discovered that the image shared over that mealtime recording is quite powerful.

Contemplative prayer requires deep attention, a desire and a discipline to sit and behold that which is before us. In the Ignatian tradition, we talk about contemplatives in action; Walter Burghardt, SJ, gives us the wonderful definition of contemplative prayer as taking “a long, loving look at the real.”

We see what is before us—truly and deeply—knowing that here in this place dwells the living God. We allow what we see to stir us to act, desiring that our action manifests God’s dream for our lives and the world.

What, then, to make of that flower and its fallen petal? Contemplation isn’t just the act of looking; we behold the matter at hand in its fullness. We see a flower, perhaps—beautiful and potent—but also our world in all its hurt, sorrow, and wonder. We sink into that which we see; we sit with it. We try to understand how our own selves are bound up in this seemingly other thing, realizing, slowly, that, in fact, we’re all connected. We’re all in this together.

And then the petal drops.

I wonder if, in our contemplative prayer, we allow for such subtle, quiet shifts. We see the world and the needs of the moment, and then we spring into action.

But the petal falls slowly, with not a sound.

The moment that we contemplate—the headlines, our garden, the painting in the chapel, our very lives—shifts slightly too. Sometimes shifts are hard to miss, like a cannonball moment, but most times, shifts are quiet and still. A thing was one way, and now it’s another.

It’s a reminder to us that God is truly here, working. The very object of our attention is changing before our eyes, and we have nothing to do with it. A petal falls and then another, and the world turns.

And we are reminded that our prayer cannot be a static thing but something alive and changing.

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay.