Meditation, smeditation...

So after boldly announcing that I was planning on trying out a different spiritual discipline per week throughout lent, I was less than excited to see that my first task was meditation. But, I've been doing yoga for years, and I figured that should help my wandering mind some. I've never really done what I now realize is "Eastern Meditiation", where you try to detach your mind from everything and seek emptiness. I've never had the attention span for that.
However, as I opened up my "Celebration of Discipline" (my guidebook for the next six weeks) I realized that I was quite mistaken about what it was that I would be doing this week.
Christian meditation has a very different goal than the other sort I mentioned. Instead of seeking an empty mind, the purpose here is to seek a full mind. Foster says, "Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey his word." He then goes on to talk about how originally Adam and Eve were in communion with God. But after the fall and the subsequent curse, Adam and Eve felt they had to hide from God, and thus the ultimate communion was destroyed. Christian meditation, simply put, is intentionally seeking out communion with God.
Foster suggests picking a passage of scripture and spending a whole week pondering, and dissecting, and ingesting the passage. He does, however, also suggest putting current events before God and asking for the wisdom to interpret those events.
While I spent some time trying to meditate yesterday morning, I found a much more helpful experience last night during chapel. A friend of the chapel who comes about once a month to sing and play came to bless us with her music last night. Our normally rowdy services are usually much quieter when she comes, and true to form, once she started playing, The Holy crept in a little further. I was sitting in the front, so I turned to spend some time just watching the kids worship. As Lisa was playing, suddenly I could just see the things that these kids were carrying around. That became a meditation time for me as I looked from one kid to the next.
I'm not sure how I'll do with meditating on the scriptures, though I will certainly keep on going. I am, however, thinking that as a part of my morning time with God, I'm going to start going down the placement sheet one name at a time, praying for the kids. I've always prayed for them--especially the ones that have come to share joys and concerns, and I always hold those in my heart, but I think this more organized type of prayer may prove to be an especially helpful spiritual discipline to me.
I had great intentions of getting up this morning, and being in the chapel this morning, even before the sun woke up. I was going to do this mediation thing-- and do it right...and then I was going to go for a Prayer Walk. But after a night of coughing and a yipping dog, it just didn't happen like I thought. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges in this Lenten observance thing is carving out a chunk of time and sticking to it, instead of trying to cram it into whatever space I have. My hope is to make it a priority, not something I do with my leftover energy.