Hermitage Meditation January 11, 2025
by Anne Arseneau
The new year has wrapped around the Brandt Hermitage and so we aptly begin silent meditation time with Joan Chittister, the Benedictine author of 60 books on contemplative spirituality. The monastic heart of simple practices includes a chapter on choosing incense for meditation. This guide teaches us how to respond to the suffering of Mother Earth and the world around us.
All major religious traditions give incense a special place in ritual and prayer. For the Judeo-Christian tradition, incense has been used for thousands of years to symbolize the connection between heaven and earth and the harmony in the universe and creation.
The use of incense can invite us to meditate, to focus and reflect on the changes in climate and nature that we are witnessing, and to be mindful of the importance of our place in sacred nature. As Sister Joan writes, meditation prepares us “to recognize and realize that our lives are made of both dust and stars. And we are to live in both.”
“In Benedictine monasticism, those understandings of the essential holiness of life are also still symbolized by incense. Incense is a great deal more than a symbol of peace, a gesture of purification and the upward rise of our hopes and prayers. It touches a dimension that gives us the consciousness and the calm we need to continue the long road to wholeness, through all the darkness, above all the pettiness of life, to its purest, most pointed spirit. Burning incense calms the nervous system and is a gateway to meditation.
As incense pulls you beyond the ordinary, the earthly, the lowly, you find that you can concentrate on the great questions of the spiritual life. The incense swirls over your head and sweeps you into itself. Why am I here? What am I meant to do here? Incense invites you into another part of life that the pace of modern society tramples. As you breathe in its sweet odor of promise, of potential – it brings you into union and unity with the rest of the universe. Incense softens your experience of life. It makes pungent your experience with death, and it brings honor to every living thing – wrap yourself in the mist –”
(Abridged)
The Monastic Heart – 50 Simple Practices by Joan Chittister