All over the place

I am all over the place this morning and I can't concentrate.
Yesterday I did a wedding rehearsal and today is the wedding and so that is on my mind.
Thursday I had a meeting about the keynote for the Fall Retreat at camp and that is on my mind
And then there is Grandparents Camp coming in June and that is on my mind
We have Brian coming to visit Sunday and that is on my mind
And I have a race next week and I wonder  how I am going to drag my body 6 + miles around Columbus with so little "training" and that is on my mind
And there are some work issues in my daughter's lives and that is on my mind.

So....I am all over the place.

And I come to prayer and a chapter about centering prayer and it feels impossible.  I read about Thomas Keatings three levels of awareness: Ordinary, Spiritual and Divine and know that I my mind is circling around in ordinary awareness - otherwise known as "egoic thinking."  Cynthia Bourgeault writes:
"It is the normal functioning zone of the human mind.  it doesn't matter whether you're a Ph.D, a bishop, a nuclear physicist; how brilliantly intellectual or intensely devout you may be.  Without special spiritual training, your sense of the world and your sense of yourself will be formed at this level of awareness."

She writes this about spiritual awareness:
"spiritual awareness perceives through an intuitive grasp of the whole and an innate sense of belonging....since spiritual awareness is perception based on harmony, the sense of selfhood arising out of it is not plagued by that sense of isolation and anxiety that dominates life at the ordinary level of awareness."

So....I sit with my monkey mind in silence this morning.  I sit and want that harmony and inner peace and I don't know if I "get there" in any kind of satisfying way.  She later writes that

"learning to shift to seeing with your spiritual awareness is a lot like learning to see in the dark.  At first everything seems totally black.  but if you're patient and don't grab for the flashlight, little by little you begin to discover that you can pick out shadows and shapes and in some mysterious way "see."

I read again the 23rd Psalm of this week and remember that the Lord is my Shepherd and not only with and guiding me but also Matt and Joslyn on their wedding day, our team planning a retreat, Mary Jo, Marsha and I with Grandparents camp, Brian in his visit, Kim and I in our walk,  Kacey, Marnie, Audrey and everyone I love and worry about.

I sit in silence and in the midst of my resistance, distractions, anxieties and fears I trust that God is doing what God always does - loving and guiding and making everything new.  Even me.
That is my faith.
Ephesians 3: 16-19 is the promise and the charter of this spiritual life.

  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power 

through his Spirit in your inner being,  

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

 And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,  

may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 

to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  

 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.