Intention

When you awaken spiritually, you awaken to the power of intention. My friend, Jim Brannan, a savvy pilot and trainer of some of the world’s top pilots, knows this. After our writer’s group last Wednesday he sent me an email that helped me see it more clearly too.

“So where’s the answer?” he wrote. “I believe it’s in your statement, ‘To live a life wholly devoted to God in the midst of this distracting world requires a determination that is not only fierce, but that’s intentional and examined.’ As you say, ‘unexamined life is not worth living.’ To live the life you’re describing requires the power of intention, the power of intentional prayer, focused purposeful prayer. It is praying with expectation, it’s taking God up on his promises.”

Jim’s a pilot. I’m glad he knows the power of intention. He’s not only responsible for those he ferries through the skies, but he’s responsible for training the women and men who vault hundreds of thousands of us every day into the dizzying and dangerous heights.

“An intentional spiritual life,” he says, “means knowing how to live in the presence of God, focusing our attention, sustaining our awareness, checking in with God when our blood pressure goes up, or our anxiety increases. It means being aware of our inner lives in the midst of distraction. It’s living consciously in the Presence.”

The 14th century English mystic we know only as the one who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing—one of the most influential works of Christian devotion—says much the same thing. Those who awaken the power of intention focus their lives around an irrepressible Force for good in the world (chapters 37 and 38).

What’s even better, these lives are not just good, they’re generally happy and pleasant to be around.

In the state we’re in today, we could use a few more of them.

The Power of a Spiritually Awakened Life

When you awaken to a vibrant spiritual life you're entering the fullness of life. You're not hiding yourself away in some interior cul de sac, avoiding the demands of daily obligations and roles. Spiritual transformation is not a dead-end street nor is it a private party. The heart is the abode of God . . . not exclusively, of course. The whole earth is full of the glory of God. But our bodies, our beings, our lives are a shrine. And when the light of God shines from within us, all things around us are affected.

The Butterfly Effect, or the ripple effect a single butterfly's wing movements on the whole cosmos, is now common science.  It shouldn't surprise us then to hear St. Seraphim of Sarov say, "Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will find their salvation." It's one thing to hear such words coming from a monk. It's quite another to hear them coming from someone like Dag Hammarskjold, General Secretary of the United Nations (1953-1961), and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1961).

Hammarskjold said, "Understand through the stillness. Act out of the stillness. Conquer in the stillness."

This was spoken by someone deeply involved in global politics and who lived a very busy and demanding life.

"Acquire inner peace." St. Seraphim of Sarov

"Act out of the stillness." Dag Hammarskjold

"The kingdom of God is within you." Jesus

There is no action more powerful than the action arising from a single spiritually awakened life.

The Center is Not Where You Think

You know what it’s like to look in the wrong place…like the last time you looked for your car in the airport parking lot after a long trip.  Sometimes we think we know just where to look but we’re off by a mile. Most of us think our thinking is the center of who we are.  At least that’s what our thoughts would have us believe.  But when Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” he wasn’t talking about your skull.  St. Paul was more explicit.  He said that our hearts are the dwelling place of God (Ephesians 3.17-19).

For most of us the heart is a kind of airy-fairy name for our emotions.  But for a Middle Easterner, and therefore for the writers of the Bible, the heart is not merely emotion, nor is it the life-pumping organ in our chests.  The heart is the core, the guts, the abdomen, the true center of the body.

So, the center of who we are, the place where God dwells within us, in not in the head.  Despite what your thoughts want you to believe.

We modern people are not the only ones to be troubled by distracting thoughts that think they rule the roost.  But we modern people certainly weren’t helped out of that trouble by the 17^th century thinker, Rene Descartes who said, “I think therefore I am.”  Most of us also think that thinking defines who we are.

It doesn’t.  Our hearts do.  And the sooner we learn to draw our thoughts down into our hearts, but more whole we’ll be.

Remember, your center is not where you think.

So long as you think it is, your praying will be off by a lot more than a mile.  And you’ll not likely know much intimacy with God either.

The Mixed Life--Activity and Spirituality

We'll be better off if we don't divide what God's joined together.  In Christ, God joined divinity and humanity, the sacred and the ordinary.  By doing so, all of life is made holy. Ours is to be a mixed life.  Finding the sacred in the midst of every day life and experiencing the common life we share as a sacred gift. Recently, a woman approached me after a talk I gave and said, "I'm called to the mixed life, but I don't know what it looks like."

She is searching for a workable combination of contemplation and action–”The Mixed Life” in the language of 14th century Christian mystic, Walter Hilton.

Here's a video meditation on the path we might walk.  It includes some practical tips for practicing an active spirituality.

Prayer as an “Easy Tour”

From my journal | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 | St. Marcarius Monastery, the desert of Skete, Egypt

The key to prayer is to stop trying, stop seeking, stop posturing, and simply open to Christ, greet him adoringly, and then let my love for him carry me blindly, trustingly, wherever he leads.

Matthew the Poor calls pure prayer, prayer of the heart, contemplation, an “easy tour”—something so simple it is nearly unbelievable by the sophisticated mind (From Orthodox Prayer Life).

“It requires a simple and easy-going soul that can go on, caring little how or where it goes. This may be likened to walking in the dark in simple faith, making no use of the sense, mind, or imagination. It is as though a blind man were guided to walk along a path free of stumbling blocks or other impediments without boundaries on the left or right—a path that is seldom trodden by anyone. This blind man may have a simple heart, a clear conscience, a serene mind, and a calm imagination. In this case, he would advance rapidly forward in faith without confusion, as an open-eyed man would do. But if the blind man were a sophisticated, skeptical, and fanciful philosopher, he would grope his way with a stick, and because of the existence of ditches, barriers, or wild beasts, he would stumble on the way. After a while he would prefer to sit down rather than walk on.”

As helpful as methods for prayer may be (and in many cases, necessary for the beginner, and for those who get stuck or lost along the way), it is love above all that leads the praying person across the final leap toward real oneness with God, a leap no method can span.  Love then, and do so simply . . . let love carry you across until there's only Love.