(photo: Mississippi River shoreline, Julian Garcia-Delaney, Minnesota, 2025)

Nature is a very accurate reflection of our mental state. Look once, and you don’t see anything. Look again, and suddenly you see something there that you didn’t see before. What changed?

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Today let’s consider another one of the Admonitions of St. Francis of Assisi.

As I explained in two earlier posts – Franciscan Wisdom for Forgiveness: Balance and Keys to Forgiveness: Patience & Humility – the Admonitions are a 13th century compilation of the words and teachings of St. Francis. This document includes a vast number of the short teachings of St. Francis. One of these is:

Where there is quiet and meditation, there is neither worry nor waste.

The word “worry” can catch our eye for two reasons. One is that worry is one of the hallmark emotions of unforgiveness. When we experience a hurtful event, worry may serve an initial healthy function of giving us the mental energy to figure out what is happening in the hurtful event, how to get out out of the situation, and how to stay out of the situation. However, unresolved worry within us from a hurtful event can slowly turn into the ruminations and hypersensitivity toward possible offense or hurt that are also characteristic of unforgiveness. Our ruminations and anxieties may have us expending a lot of time and personal energy struggling with:

• what exactly happened in the hurtful event
• what caused the hurtful event
• why the hurtful event happened to us
• the injustice of the hurtful event and how could the hurtful event have happened to us
• our current and future safety from things like the hurtful event
• consequences of the hurtful event for ourselves
• consequences of the hurtful event for the person who hurt us (or lack of consequences),
• whether the hurtful event will happen again
• what needs to be done to prevent the hurtful event from happening again
• whether we are a damaged person or person of less worth because of the hurtful event

Remember the point that we can find ourselves expending a lot of time and energy on worry – time and energy that brings us little change or comfort (that’s worry for ya), and that we’d probably rather have invested in something that is good in our lives.

A good forgiveness process, like the research-validated REACH Forgiveness Process taught in Live and Forgive, will move us from the negative emotions (embodied experiences) of worry that are part of unforgiveness to positive emotions that are part of full and lasting forgiveness of someone who hurt us. When you know that, you can reasonably wonder, “Well, why doesn’t everyone get into good forgiveness processes and leave their worries behind?” It’s a very good question, and points to an observation that sometimes…many times…people just get stuck in emotional places of unforgiveness like worry.

Nature made unforgiveness unpleasant as a natural incentive toward engaging in forgiveness for mental relief and even our own mental health. Ideally it’s downhill! Unfortunately, we can be so caught up and desperately grasping our own thoughts and feelings about a hurtful event and person who hurt us, that we can’t let go, and getting to even thinking about forgiveness is an uphill endeavor form the start.

The quote from St. Francis points us to the solution, the exit door from worry: quiet and meditation. Before a forgiveness process, we may need a process that prepares us to even think about forgiving someone. St. Francis is saying that using a process of quiet and meditation is what will get the job done.

When we talk about quiet, we are talking about both our outer world and our inner world. The kind of quiet St. Francis is pointing to is a quiet of both. In our outer world, we need to withdraw from the clamor of busy life and the coming and going bustle as much as we are able. When we do this we are lowering the stimulation level in our environment so that we feel less caught up and reactive from one moment to the next. We make this happen with a simple choice and act: finding or making a quiet place, and grabbin’ a seat. Inner quiet is next, because it is often the case that we are wound up and reactive inside, especially if we are struggling with feelings of unforgiveness.

The important thing is not not add to the mental clamor by trying to fight it and adding another contender to the raging cage match in your head (I hope my readers are acquainted well enough with pro wrestling to get the analogy). For purposes of interior quiet, all we are looking to do is to come back to being within ourselves, the home that is our own body and mind. All that is needed is to see the clamor and swirl, be aware of it, and not react to it — just being sort of a bystander, just watching it happen but not adding to it with more thoughts and reactions.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains to us that seeing the swirl of troubles and joys and desires and fears within ourselves is normal, and is actually a sign that we are standing in the doorway of meditation. The Catechism puts it eloquently: “To the extent that we are humble and faithful, we discover in meditation the movements that stir the heart and we are able to discern them” (para. 2706). Just being a bystander in your own mind will work well enough because what we’ll do next is give ourselves something to rest our mind upon — meditation.

Meditation involves giving the mind something to dwell upon, or you might say rest upon. As the mind meditates, the idea is to dwell more deeply, and rest upon with even more weight as we let go more and more, the thing we are meditating upon. You can probably tell that it is really important to choose a right and good thing upon with which to meditate. In our Catholic tradition, scriptural passages provide ideal subjects of meditation, and are the basis for meditative practices like the Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio Divina, the Jesus Prayer (the Jesus Prayer is a combination of Gospel passages into a single phrase) and other prayers and devotions.

You can choose any scriptural passage that you feel helps you come back home to yourself, or even just expresses your desire to do that even though it is hard for you right now. In the Franciscan tradition, the mystic Francisco de Osuna taught that the in the most effective practice of meditation, we understand that we have come back home within ourselves in order to be present in ourselves as home, and being open to God, waiting for God, sort of having set our mental table for our anticipated guest. The scriptural passage you choose could be a good reflection of this intention when you have set it. Two of my favorites are:

“Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:9)

“A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.” (Psalm 51)

During meditation, we can start with the scriptural phrase, perhaps even reading it out loud, and then dwell within the quiet in a way that simply has us remembering the phrase with greater depth and increasing our own rest in that phrase. Our breath will probably change as even our physiology takes rest within the phrase. If the phrase involves a scene from scripture, some people have a more and more vivid mental picture of the scene and an awareness of their own emotions (embodied experiences) as that scene unfolds in their mind.

Everyone always wants to know how often and how long they should meditate for, and the good news is that it’s very individual — how much time can you give it? It’s true that the more time you give quiet and meditation, the better you become at what it involves. But, if you can only give it three minutes in your day, that is good work! If you do not meditate for 20 minutes twice a day, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure!

As the quote from St. Francis asserts, over time the practice of quiet and meditation will decrease if not eliminate feelings of worry, including those that are part of the negative emotions of unforgiveness for a hurtful event and person. St. Francis also points out that quiet and meditation is a very good investment of your personal time and effort, and not a waste. One can wonder if St. Francis was actually saying that our scattered daily lives of urgent matters, bad habits and chasing after things constantly, isn’t actually the real waste of our time and effort, and maybe a waste of our own potential for holiness.

That innate holiness within ourselves is what is real and present, not the things we worry may happen or may be true. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that in meditation, “We pass from thoughts to reality” (para. 2706). In quiet and meditation, we can use the wisdom of St. Francis to choose quiet and meditation as a way to approach readiness for forgiveness. As the Franciscan mystic Francisoco de Osuna put it, we come home to ourselves so that we may be ready and receive the guest – God – the guest who will be our faithful companion, always at our side, our helper (Psalm 118), as we approach the possibility of forgiveness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains meditation beautifully as “acting truthfully in order to come into the light” and ask (para. 2706).

“Lord, what do you want me to do?”

This text is an original work of its author Tom Delaney and was entirely composed without the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

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If your parish or faith community is seeking a deeper experience of healing, mercy, and spiritual renewal, Live and Forgive is here to help. To begin the conversation, email Live and Forgive presenter and facilitator Tom Delaney at tom@liveandforgive.com—Tom will be glad to connect with you in a spirit of welcome, respect, and shared faith.