chris erdman » Contemplation and Meditation

The Reformation left interior prayer behind

Chris — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:31 +0000

The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer

Part Four

All this changed in the sixteenth century with the advent of the Protestant Reformation. The change had been coming for centuries; medieval scholasticism was no stranger to abstract ideas and words, books and debates. But the Reformation turned the corner abruptly, leaving the legacy of interior prayer behind. For most of the last four hundred years the practice largely disappeared . . . until recently.

There is no question that the Protestant Reformation was not only a great gift to the Church but also to society—the democratic reforms arising from the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Anabaptists, and much later, even the Pentecostals, have deeply influenced movements for justice and peace around the world and shaped political ideologies and structures. They also influenced important reforms within the Roman Catholic Church. However, there is a shadow to the Protestant Reformation, and as a Reformed Christian I know this shadow intimately—not only its effect on my own spiritual life, but also its legacy in the lives of those Protestants I’ve taught to pray over the last quarter century, and those who, having grown up in Protestant churches, lost their faith and walked away.

To be continued . . .

The mind stands dumb before its Maker

Chris — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:29 +0000

The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer

Part Three

From earliest days, Christians were taught to relinquish their ideas about God in order to embrace (and be embraced) by the one thing mere thoughts can’t give them. This doesn’t mean that Christianity shunned the intellect; it simply means that in the end, the mind stands dumb before its Maker, and the only way to the Heart of God is through the human heart—that is, through love. So prayer, especially wordless, interior prayer, was the ultimate expression of prayer for most Christians for most of Christian history. And even if Christians didn’t all practice some form of the prayer of the heart, its value was rarely questioned, and its practice always had teachers.

To be continued . . .

I must love the one thing I cannot think

Chris — Sat, 12 May 2012 12:00:14 +0000

The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer

Part Two

The anonymous author of the fourteenth century spiritual classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, and probably an English Christian monk, sums up the mainstream teaching this way: “We can know so many things. Through God’s grace, our minds can explore, understand, and reflect on creation and even on God’s own works, but we can’t think our way to God. That’s why I’m willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think. He can be loved, but not thought. By love, God can be embraced and held, but not by thinking” (Carmen Butcher, trans., p. 21).

To be continued . . .

Spirituality: The mind must learn its proper place

Chris — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:47:00 +0000

Protestantism arose as a protest made up of ideas and the words that communicate them. Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses, or ideas, on the castle door at Wittenberg in 1517. As the Reformation grew, the ideas of the Reformers were disseminated through books and pamphlets printed on a new invention, the printing press, which made mass communication possible for the first time. These ideas brought down kings, empowered the peasants, and made new ways of thinking possible. I’ll not dwell on the effect of these ideas on politics, the arts, philosophy, or theology. Instead, I’ll focus on the effect these ideas had on the experience of prayer—that is, the experience of living a life in communion with God.

To understand what happened following the Reformation, I return to what I said earlier about the difference between a magazine article about a sunset and a sunset itself. Words can quite easily take on a magical quality; they can cast a spell over us. Once we name something, label it, or describe it, we can find ourselves believing we’ve captured it. A living, mysterious thing like a sunset or a flower or a person is reduced from the wild thing it is to ideas in our head and words on a page. But those ideas and words are not the thing itself, only symbols of that thing. They are abstractions.

Over the years, I’ve talked to thousands of people about prayer. When I ask them to describe prayer, their first response is nearly always to describe prayer as the words we speak to God. True, sometimes there’s a person who will say something like, “Prayer is intimacy with God,” “Prayer is listening,” or “Prayer is silence,” but by and large, the shadowy legacy of the Reformation—its heavy emphasis on thinking and the power of the words we use to label, describe, and capture what we’re thinking—has dominated Christian spirituality.

Consequently, nearly all of us pray from above the neck—with our brains and lips; our pursuit of God is largely a head-trip.

The early Reformers rediscovered some great truths about God, a rediscovery that was long overdue. But their followers became enamored with those truths turned into ideas, and with each step along that path, God was increasingly reduced from the living Word—wild, free, untamable, even unknowable apart from the prayer of a loving heart—to mere words about God that no longer needed prayer to make any sense. In the fourteenth century, an English spiritual director could say to his flock, “You must abandon everything you know to love the one thing you cannot think.” But within a few hundred years, that orthodox teaching was turned upside down. God could now be thought, and no longer needed to be loved. Prayer became a tool to get things from God, not the means of grace for knowing God as God.

As it aged, Protestantism lost the sense of mystery that was common to Christianity during most of the first fifteen hundred years of Christian history, a mystery that was still cherished among early Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. The mystery of God was reduced to thoughts we can think, ideas we can debate, and words we can speak or write or even pray. The need for theological precision and intellectual rigor required of Christianity a rationalism that was foreign to its experience, especially as Christians were forced to debate not only with Christians of new sects and denominations, but also as they were forced to meet the challenges of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. Mystery gave way to certitude. The pursuit of God became largely a head-trip, and prayer now required right thinking, where before all it required was love. Prayer was relegated to religious services where experts crafted artful sermon-prayers spoken to God on behalf of others who merely listened. Among some Christians the devotional life became a highly rational form of prayer urged upon believers who were to practice “quiet times” that were rarely “quiet times” at all so filled were they with Bible study and intercessory prayer for others.

Of course, there are plenty of Protestant Christians who have experienced some taste of the Divine and who have found ways into stillness before God. But the shadowy legacy of the Protestant Reformation and its interaction with the Enlightenment meant that the way to God became a matter of ideas and words and activism. Prayer became something the believer did on behalf of others or as a rational and verbal expression of devotion. Gone was the mystery and awe, the intimacy and simplicity of the prayer of the heart—a wordless, contemplative, loving encounter with the Beloved—which had characterized Christianity for most of its history. Astonishingly, the same Reformation whose ideas fostered democratic reforms throughout Europe, making the political process accessible to all people, more often than not had the opposite effect spiritually: the ordinary believer often felt she didn’t know enough to pray, or was intimidated to open his mouth because he wasn’t sure he had the right words.

The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer

Part One

For over a thousand years, orthodox Christianity taught that the heart is the organ of spiritual perception, the receptacle of true wisdom, not the mind; the mind is only a servant of the heart. And love is the path to this wisdom. That doesn’t mean Christians didn’t think. Far from it. Over Christianity’s long history, women and men have always applied their minds to understand their experience with the divine. But the mainstream of orthodox Christianity has known that the mind must know its proper place in the spiritual enterprise. The life of prayer has kept the balance, tutoring the mind to know its place and offer its gifts to help the heart communicate what it knows.

To be continued . . .

What music can teach us about prayer

Chris — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 12:00:53 +0000

Prayer is listening, resonating, participating in the fulness of God and creation.

In this TED talk, percussionist Evelyn Glennie explores music as more than mere notes on a page. Rather, as an expression of the human experience. Playing with sensitivity and nuance informed by a soul-deep understanding of and connection to music, she talks about a music that is more than sound waves perceived by the human ear.

I wonder in what way(s) prayer is the resonance of sound, the sensation of something deep, even eternal…a participation in the eternal song of the Trinity.

If the Eternal Word was made flesh, that is, a human being in what way are we human beings invited to participate in the Word of Eternity, the deep music of the cosmos?

In what ways are our very bodies, offered in prayer, a “resonating chamber” for the deep music of God as Trinity and of the angels, saints, and drumming of the creation?

How to hear GOD speak to you through scripture: 25 micro tips

Chris — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:53:32 +0000

GOD hasn’t stop speaking, it’s just that most of us don’t know how to listen. Sometimes we don’t trust what we’re hearing to be the voice of GOD. That’s understandable–you don’t want to listen to your own thoughts and ideas and tell yourself it’s GOD speaking. Wackos who’ve deluded themselves into believing what they hear in their own troubled or demented minds have done some pretty rotten things.

Just because some have made grave mistakes assuming they’ve heard GOD doesn’t mean you ought to dismiss the art of learning to listen to GOD interiorly.

Throughout history, one of the most time-testing ways to check your own thoughts and listen instead for the still, small voice of GOD (1 Kings 19.12) is to sit still with Holy Scripture, yield yourself to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and listen for what may come to you. The historic practice of Lectio Divina, long neglected, is now making a come back. You can read more about the practice here (Tony Jones, a Protestant) and here (Thelma Hall, a Catholic).

Below I briefly outline 25 things to keep in mind when you do this. I know, 25 is a lot to keep in mind. But you’ll see from the list that they’re quite simple, and repetitive. You may even find them predictable. I do that on purpose, to reinforce these simple ways.

Read a short passage of Scripture, slowly, letting a word, phrase, or image in the text gather your attention, then . . .

1. Sit still and straight. Feet on the floor. Your body relaxed.

2. Invoke the Trinity with a simple prayer.

3. Relax your mind, let it drift a bit, like a boat without an anchor.

4. Don’t hurry.

5. Sit with the word, phrase, or image that’s invited your attention.

6. Give yourself some inner space, that is, open up.

7. Relax your mind. Baptize your thoughts by drawing them down into your heart where Christ dwells (Eph. 3.17).

8. When you mind wanders, come back to the word, phrase, or image.

9. Trust the Holy Spirit as guide.

10. Listen.

11. Let the mind graze freely within the pasture of this text; keep it inside the borders of the passage.

12. Embrace what comes to you; relinquish judgment.

13. Abandon any attempt at Bible study.

14. Arouse your senses, allow different parts of your self to interact with the text.

15. Pray for wisdom.

16. Don’t judge what’s happening.

17. Don’t try to create a spiritual experience.

18. Did I say, listen?

19. Avoid working at this: rest in GOD.

20. Smile gentle to yourself.

21. Straighten your back again; it keeps you alert.

22. Freely associate mentally until something seems to hook you.

23. Inquire of GOD: “GOD, I’m listening. What are you communicating to me?”

24. Rest with whatever comes to you, as subtle or astonishing it might be.

25. Give thanks to GOD.

An app to help you time your praying . . . seriously, it’s good

Chris — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:00:30 +0000

If you practice contemplative prayer, you may know how challenging it can be to know when to stop praying. What I mean is, if you get lost or absorbed in prayer, it’s really annoying to have your cell phone alarm ring or beep or whatever and summon you out of such deep intimacy with God.

So, here’s a great little app for your phone or tablet. I don’t have many apps and frankly find many of them a waste of precious time. This one, though, is enormously helpful to help you time your periods of contemplation.

Check it out . . . here.

Satirizing our abuse of prayer

Chris — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:59:03 +0000

Satire’s a powerful way to open our eyes. Here’s an eye-opener to our misunderstandings and abuses of prayer

Becoming a healing presence to all: the end of stage six

Chris — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:32:04 +0000

Continued from a previous series of posts on the stages of spiritual growth . . .

Abiding in love is the fruit of years of spiritual practice. There’s no shortcut to this experience of full union with God in Christ through the Spirit, nor is there any way for you to bring yourself here. It comes to you. You become “a partaker of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1.4) only because you’ve participated all along the way along with the mischief of God at work in you—through all your joys and sorrows. You’ve finally become fully human, alive to love, and therefore a person in whom all the fullness of God abides (Ephesians 3.19).

This doesn’t mean that you will live without suffering or frustration, temptation or even anger. Rather, when you abide in love, you know how to sublimate your reactivity to such things. You can redirect your spirit quickly and re-establish yourself in the current of God’s love.

Gratitude, warmth, and wisdom are the chief characteristics of those whom God has brought to this final stage, a stage, which is a taste of the eternal life that awaits us beyond death. These “saints” are a healing presence to us all.

The end of the series.

Becoming more fully the self God made you to be

Chris — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:42 +0000

Continued from a previous series of posts on the stages of spiritual growth . . .

You’ve not reached some pinnacle of perfection; instead, you’ve become more fully the self God made you to be. You own who you are. You have nothing to prove to anyone else. You need nothing to make yourself feel successful or worthy or lovable. You don’t need a new car, a better house, another spouse. You accept what you look like. You embrace your idiosyncrasies. You receive life as it is and have learned to let go of the woulda, shoulda, coulda’s. Judging yourself and judging others is no longer a need. And you’re no longer bothered by the challenges that come your way or lured by opportunities you must take advantage of or lose out. You’re not attached to things, not even your life. There’s an equanimity and a magnanimity that possess you. You’re free from everything that once held you captive.

This doesn’t mean that you’re passive and don’t care about things like injustice, or for your family or work. It means that your life is lived from an entirely different source. You’re abiding in the love of God. And this means that you will more effectively right the world’s wrongs and battle injustice and care for others than you did when there was still a lot of you, too much of your unhealed ego involved, to mess up even your best intentions.

To be continued . . .