Such talk of prayer is likely to awaken objections—
“How do I pray continually when my life is so full of obligations?”
“When I’m not doing the things I need to do to get through the day, I’m thinking about what I need to do. Prayer is often the last thing on my mind.”
“As much as I desire intimacy with God, the call to prayer loads me with more guilt than inspiration. The prayers I utter are basically prayers for help—for myself and for others.”
There’s no getting around the truth that Jesus summons us to unbroken communion with God and that the Apostles taught this practice to the first Christians. Throughout history, there’s also an unbroken line of praying people who’ve kept the practice alive, handing it down from one generation to the next. That it’s foreign to us is an indication that the Modern world isn’t very hospitable to interior experience, to mystery, and the mystic encounter with God that is above and beyond the heightened rationalism so characteristic of these last centuries.
Prayer then, according to Jesus, is more like breathing than sitting down for a meal at certain times each day. Nevertheless, the ability to live in unbroken communion with God is fed by formal times of prayer alone or with others, by the Psalms, Scripture, and by offering intercessions.
Unless you sit down and eat periodically throughout the day, you’re not likely to do much breathing. But, fail to breathe and the meal hasn’t done you much good.
Unceasing prayer as unbroken communion with God is not for super-Christians only—the spiritual elite—any more than breathing is for some special class of human beings. Prayer is life and life is prayer. You were made for this.
Prayer, according to Jesus, is life. Prayer isn’t a doctrine or a duty; it is bread, or better, breath.
Jesus lived prayer. He not only joined in the formal prayers in synagogue and temple, but also he prayed in the middle of a meeting, walking along a road, facing intense suffering, and experiencing conflict. The Name of God was constantly on his lips. His words were heart-deep, as if drawn up from a well of an inner life that was, regardless of outer circumstances, in constant communion with God.
And he taught his disciples to “pray always and not lose heart” (Luke 18.1). “Keep alert,” so God doesn’t “find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” So, “keep awake” through the practice of unbroken communion with God (Mark 13.33-36).
Christ’s disciples followed his example. Saint Paul lived a life of prayer, and urged it upon all believers. “Pray without ceasing,” (1 Thessalonians 5.17). “Pray in the Spirit at all times. Keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6.18).
Prayer, then, is life and life is prayer.
Here’s a simple practice that will change the way you interact with others, and how you treat yourself.
“Be gentle with each person you meet, for each of them is actually fighting a great battle.” Philo of Alexandria, 20 BCE—50 CE
It is a deeply spiritual practice, and contemplative—that is, it rises from the unceasing, interior prayer you are practicing.
Gentleness arises from the compassion God is birthing in you as you pray. Gentleness arises from your deep awareness of your own interior battle to be human and holy. Practice this and you will not only change the little part of the world you inhabit, but you will change yourself, for you too are fighting a great battle.
This post is a continuation from yesterday:
Contemplation is an interior habit. I draw my mind down into my heart, returning throughout the day over and over again to the Center where Christ dwells—no matter what occupies me exteriorly.
It’s a habit that becomes virtue. And virtue, in turn, becomes instinct—an unceasing recollecting of my being into the presence of the Beloved. This is the essential practice of every Christian, every person who desires God. It is the essence and goal of prayer.
But it doesn’t come easily. It requires specific training. Without instruction and practice we live lives alienated from this Center. Jesus said “enter through the narrow gate, walk the hard road.”
But many, oblivious, walk an easier path. They don’t even know there’s nothing along that way worthy of their love.
This post is a continuation from yesterday:
The idealization had to die for me to find the true path of contemplative living.
Contemplation is not hiding from the world. It’s the deepest form of immersion, or better, communion—a true awareness of life as it is, not as it would be, should be, or could be (unhelpful idealizations, fictions, and illusions that keep me outside of and distant from this present moment).
Contemplation is living radically, here, now. Watching the face before me. Listening to her voice. Attending to beauty or pain behind those eyes. Being present in a way that really matters.
This post is a continuation from yesterday:
But even reawakened and hungry for the spiritual Reality that comes through contemplative living, my drive was still too much alive. Desperate for God, I drove my inner life, working too hard at it, always seeking but never finding.
Contemplation was still captive to an idealization.
I still saw in my mind a monk robed and silent and lost in the bliss divine Love. I longed to taste the bliss, but I was not a monk. I was busy, active, involved in the wide and wonderful and sometimes frightful world.
How could I find the way?
When I first heard of contemplation, I had in mind some idealization—a picture of a mountain-top mystic enrapt by the Divine Mystery.
I wanted something of that experience but the vision was not only unreachable, much of it was undesirable. I was young then, active, goal driven, wanting to squeeze the best out of life, make something of myself. To me, the contemplative life was unrealistic.
Only later, at mid-life, when many of us face a major re-evaluation of the life we’re living, did I—forced by great necessity—reawaken to the gifts of contemplation for this active life.
Here’s a revolutionary spiritual practice that can bring you into the present and can change your experience of this moment:
With only a very few exceptions, welcome whatever you face in this present moment as if you’d asked God for it specifically.
You spend a lot of time dwelling on what you want instead of what is. You waste a lot of good energy fighting your way through this present moment, because it’s not what you thought you’d signed up for or what you think God should have given you. You dream of a better job, a better body, a better friend or spouse or child or boss. And you’re in essence praying for deliverance from this moment. But what if you’re praying against the present God’s given you? What difference would it make today, right now, if you yielded and embraced this moment—even its pain—as a gift from God?
Of course there must be exceptions. No one should accept as gift the cruel things humans can do to each other. Those are more rare than you may think. While you may suffered great cruelty at a moment the past, you’re not facing it at this very moment. The pain was real, but right now it’s a pain that can only live in you with the permission of your memory. Let it go. It’s hurt you too long.
Come into this moment.
Be.
Here. Now.
Breathe.
Let God kiss you.
My soul is buffeted, even tormented and mauled by the thought-beasts that try to drag me into the spaces and places outside of me. These spaces are increasingly crowded by obligations and demands and worries—full of thoughts that want to make me believe I’m always behind, never good enough, always living from a deficit.
Unless I make space between the me-who-I-really-am and the mind-made-me, the false self constructed by these thoughts, I’ll never live well. The thought-beasts will be always nipping at my heels.
This is no way to live.
Today, I’ll pass through the narrow gate of my heart. Throughout the day, I’ll pause and breathe my prayers again and again, drawing these maverick thoughts down into my heart. They’ll meet Christ there.
Perhaps a few will be still, be silent . . . simply be . . . along with the rest of me.
And those that won’t? Well, I’ll refuse to follow them. I’ll let them go, muttering as they march stubbornly onward.
from my journals, September 25, 2007
