I’ve stumbled upon a book that parallels my own teaching on prayer.  And since my own book is bogged down or delayed, I suggest you pick it up.  John Main (deceased) and I’ve read much the same historical material and come to similar conclusions and practices drawn from the wellspring of historic Christian spirituality.

From the Amazon.com review:

This is his classic book on how to practice contemplative prayer, or Christian meditation. Stepping aside from the busyness of our daily lives and being still in the presence of God is the key to discovering our true selves and knowing God as ‘the ground of our being’. This book offers a twelve step programme in learning meditative prayer, but as the author says, it is not so much about mastering a set of techniques, or escaping from life’s challenges and difficulties, or cultivating a self-conscious piety. Its purpose is to teach us how to be at peace with ourselves in order that we might let the presence of Christ flood our whole lives and our relationships.

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Saint Hesychius of Jerusalem writes: “There is but one task that we must hold before us and must always perform in the same manner—to call on Jesus Christ, our Lord, entreating Him with a burning heart that He would grant us to partake of and to taste the blessings of His Holy Name. For constancy is the mother of habit for both virtue and vice, and habit eventually takes over as second nature.”

A taste of heaven is not yet habit. But such a taste creates the desire for virtue.

I feel the pull outside myself. Old drives and ambitions and fears scatter my inner poise.

The poise of my interior life is fragile. Like a seedling, it requires care. Unceasing mental busyness has given way to unceasing prayer and concentration on the Divine Name, but the newness has shallow roots and needs time. I need time to grow deep roots that will sustain me in the second half of life.  The gate is narrow, yet I have entered it.  The path is hard and few find it, therefore I must be vigilant and uncompromising in my determination to walk it.

Each and every moment when I’m aware and mindful presents me with a choice.  This choice is the great miracle of human dignity restored in Christ. I can choose each and every moment how I shall live, what I shall love, Who I shall worship. The lure of sin is great, but when the soul presents itself before God with even the hint of a desire to choose the good, God sends grace to carry us the rest of the way.

Choose then to take your stand on that tiny toehold of love in your heart.  If a tiny ledge of love is all you have, the ledge is enough.

Take a stand there and cry out to God for help. Help will come swiftly to carry you into All you seek.

Time is precious. Through awareness of our experience with time—that is, watching over our impulses that, unguarded, call us out of our heart’s dwelling in real time—we taste of the life we would have known had we never sinned.

Awareness of time is our vocation as the New Adam, the New Eve.

Fully aware of this present moment we stand in the presence of God in humility, love, and gratitude, desiring to live in yielded obedience rather than the slavery of self-rule.

“All time is given to you, it shall be asked of you how you have spent it.” St. Anselm

Watch, then, for “sin is lurking at your door; it’s desire is for you—you must master it” (Genesis 4). Prayer is the holding of the heart in time (eternal time, God’s time)when the soul is buffeted and even tormented and mauled by the beasts who want to drag you into space. How intoxicated we are with space—filling it up with stuff, things; conquering it, taming it.

You are to be concerned with time. Embracing it. Loving it. But the beasts will draw you out of time and into space, space that’s increasingly crowded by obligations, demands, and tasks that will always keep you living from a sense of deficit, scarcity. You will be led to believe you don’t have enough time to fill up this space. But you have all the time in the world. You have an abundance of time. Time cannot really be spent, it is eternal.

Anselm, I know what you’re getting at, but don’t talk about spending time.

We get to dance with time, make love to time.  Prayer is this dance, the marriage bed of God.

If I can keep my mind active and busy with the clutter of competing and distracting thoughts that keep me unbalanced and focused on external matters, surely I can exercise the mind toward active, interior prayer that moves from psalms, prayers, and the recitation of the Jesus Prayer, to the prayer of the heart and watchfulness over my interior landscape.

Surely, with God’s help, I can trade the primitive “prayer” to the idols that seek my allegiance for prayer that anchors me in Jesus and unites me with the inner life of the Holy Trinity.

Surely, if I can “pray” unceasingly to such false gods, I can pray to the true God—for I have God’s help and nothing pleases God more.

A vacation posting: this post from last spring is even more timely now in the midst of such widespread incivility

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.