Here are examples that occur every Sunday in worship–Doxology, Gloria Patri, and Lords Prayer. Unless I engage the words of each of these elements of worshipl and connect with them actively to my soul and the space I am occupying they become vain words. Each one of these is so powerful by itself and recited from the heart are very powerful. There are physical symbols in the worship space at University Presbyterian Church Fresno that help me to engage these words of each of these elements of worship.

I will contine to work on Meditative processes.

As you enter your heart, drawing the mind down into the heart, you follow your breath as if you’re following the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, into the Holy of Holies deep within.

And the prayer: “Jesus” spoken silently upon the inhale, and “Mercy” spoken upon the exhale, serves not as something merely “rote” but as a “rope” pulling the rebel thoughts back to Center. It’s as if by the prayer “rope” we summon our thoughts into obedience to Christ.

“Rote” comes from the Middle English of unknown meaning, but has come to mean a mechanical and unthinking repetition.

This is exactly the point. But we modern people view this “unthinking” negatively. Instead, it is a positive. We cannot think our way into union with God. Union is a transrational or suprarational (not irrational) gift of grace by the Holy Spirit. Our thoughts get in the way, no matter how lofty, and must be bypassed on the way to true union with the Trinity.

So, consider the rote repetition for what it is. You are “unthinking” your way toward God, that is, giving your relentless thought-life a break. And by the “rope” of the prayer, you lasso each rebel and random thought and draw it back to the Center, to Christ, resting there.

This resting in God, the goal of prayer, will not come easily. And so prayer, is a workout. There may be at first only the briefest moments of this resting before God as Mary sat at the feet of Jesus while Martha scurried around distracted by her thoughts. But over time, as with any training, there comes a more regular and exquisite joy in the gift of true intimacy with the Beloved.

And you look at the Bible’s prayers and they are always a recitation of the tradition (cf. Mary’s response to the angel in Luke 1: “Here I am, servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” What modern liberal westerners don’t understand is that this is precisely rote repetition. Cf also the disciples response to persecution in Acts 4; they pray Psalm 2, verbatim). The Bible and biblical prayer know nothing but rote repetition, and is highly suspicious of the forms of free prayer we in the West consider “authentic.” They’d consider it vain. Any improvising the believer does in prayer is done based upon the memorized text.

The problem is that those of us raised in modern, western, enlightened civilization think rote repetition is a bad thing. We’re hung up on our so-called “free” thoughts. This is why I often say that American conservatives are too liberal for me. There is no such thing as free thoughts. We are all improvising on some “text”. Listen to the prayers that spill from our lips; they do not cohere very closely to the Bible, but rather to Western values–mostly for security, safety, and abundance. There are some exceptions of course.

C.S. Lewis once wrote a piece called “Festooning ready made prayers.” He understood the temptation of free improvisation and its poverty, and suggested believers follow more closely the prayers that are good representatives of the faith.

That said, you might consider:

1. Rethinking your stance toward what is rote.
2. Re-evaluating history and the gifts of the tradition.
3. Becoming suspicious of the mind’s desire to always be in control, always thinking, always demanding to know and understand (which is control).
4. Suspend rational thought for awhile (has it really gotten you where you want to be in terms of intimacy?).
5. Take the Holy Name of Jesus upon your lips and let it move down into your heart. Rest on the Name. Let your meditation (rote repetition) on the Name, keep you coming back to the one thought that really matters: the Name of Jesus.
6. When your thoughts assail you (like: “This is dumb; it’s just rote repetition”), come back to the Name and interrogate the thought: “Why should I believe you?”. Dwell instead in the presence of God.
7. Sit still.
8. Sit straight.
9. Watch your thoughts but don’t follow them.
10. Return over and over to the name.

This doesn’t seem like prayer because we think prayer is chattering at God. Silence is the true language of God (see Moses and Elijah on the mountain, and so many other scriptures). When you are least conscious of your own thoughts about God or your self (or the world), you are nearer to God.

Thanks for asking. It’s a really important question. I hope I’ve helped. Come see me and we’ll talk.

Do I find it in my love of scripture, the fact the the writers of the New Testament we so deeply grounded (rooted) in the Torah, Psalms and Prophets. What practice works for me?

What will help me to let go, become aware and then begin to rest (in our busy lives)? [You described it so well in your facebook post when you described youth of today being able to do 11 hours of tasks in 7.5 hour because of multitasking.] When you rush from place to place with only the task at hand on your mind. How do we really do or What really allows us, to connect with the infinite God who was and is and is to come? Each of us approaches this from different directions yet all wanting to approach the center to be deeply connected to God.