Rumors are circulating on the Hill today that Stillman Brown has privately urged Hillary Clinton to drop out before August.
I became good friends with my freshman-year college roommate, Matt M. He was a south Floridian and perpetually a little tan and very smart – we got along swimmingly and spent the first nights of our new co-residence talking into the night about girls, philosophy, and the philosophy of girls. Most Saturday mornings he would wake me midmorning with the throaty growlings of his peerless wookie impression. I felt like Han Solo and Chewbacca was my best friend.
I digress.
A month ago, I was telling Matt about the sweet-ass meditation retreat I’m going on in July at Karme Choling, in Vermont (with the inimitable Ethan Nichtern – maybe you’ve heard of him?) and much to my surprise, he told me he’s been practicing mindfulness meditation for over a year now.
“But you’re Catholic, or something,” I said, surprised.
“I know,” he said, “I got some instruction in my fellowship group at Penn. They called it Quiet Reflection Practice, I think, but it was basically meditation.”
“Huh,” I said, “so it was Buddhism undercover?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Cool,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Do the wookie? Please?”
“No.”
Fast forward to The Internet! and a thread on Andrew Sullivan’s blog about the commonalities between Buddhism and Christianity. A Sullivan-ite writes:

As you know, Christianity has it’s own version of meditation, we just call it ‘centering prayer’, or ‘contemplative prayer’. It is, however, exactly the same thing. And it’s this PRACTICE, not set of things to believe, that connects one to God. All prayer does that, of course, but I tend to think that it’s only when we stop asking God for favors and are simply present for him that we actually might manage to connect with him. And this goes back to the issue of the ‘self’ – I don’t think that’s a specifically Buddhist notion. Centering prayer brings us to the same idea – letting go of the self and simply being present for God. If I recall correctly Simone Weil talks about this at length in “Waiting for God” and “The Cloud of Unknowing” is of course all about this too. The 14th century monk who wrote that was talking about this exactly.

The last line is my favorite:

And I gotta ask, what is it that Jesus was doing in the wilderness for 40 days? Just hanging out?

So it turns out that Christianity has it’s own form of meditation, too, albeit with a focus on the Divine, instead of simply emptiness or the breath (although, from one of our excellent Monday night discussions I know that I’m not the only one who has experienced some connection with the Divine in the pregnant emptiness of mindfulness practice). This reader’s comment is supported by my flimsy knowledge of medieval history, which says: There were loads of monks in cloisters engaged in profound meditation.
Sullivan’s other Buddhism/Christianity post is worth a look, too. And I’m excited that my friend is experimenting with meditation. Now, if I can just teach him to levitate…