From Under the Bushel

A Guided Introduction to Meditative Prayer

Meditation, or meditative prayer, can seem like a huge and rather frightening task. After all, it is a practice most often associated with the great saints. But you do not need to be a great saint to create prayers and meditations that deepen your own faith and move other peoples hearts. From under the Bushel demonstrates, describes, and encourages a type of meditative prayer that takes you more deeply inside the Bible and your own religious feelings than you may have been before. By imagining yourself actually present in biblical storiesboth in the simple moments or at dramatic eventsyou can use your own personal curiosity to form questions about what you have read. Author Linda L. Greene shows you how you can use your empathy to imagine their answers, to go behind the scenes, to carry on mental conversations with people, and to respond in your own unique way to the events you are considering. The Bible is about God, but it is also, wonderfully and always, about human beings too. There were achy backs and grumbling stomachs in the crowds waiting for Jesus. There were financial and marital worries. There were child-rearing problems. There were even pride and petty jealousies among the disciples. If you forget the humanity of the people in the Bible, you will miss many opportunities to feel as though youre right there with them and to meditate on the moments of their lives.