As any good lover, express your intention clearly

As you enter into prayer, express your intention to love God with all you have (Luke 10.27). I will often improvise on some alluring passage of Scripture that arouses my love, my devotion, my pursuit of the Beloved. Song of Solomon 1.1-4 or 2.8-14 are my preference. These intimate love letters once used between two lovers are, in the history of spirituality, invitations to the divine romance. Express them to God, your Beloved, and let them set your heart aflame.

Obviously, your heart will not always "burn within you"--especially at dawn after you've stumbled out of bed, and perhaps haven't slept well or had your morning coffee. You may have difficulty focusing at the end of a long and troubling day. No matter, you've expressed your intention.  That's what matters.

Your body and mind will follow your words eventually. If not today, then after the hundredth time you've mumbled the words.  One day you'll speak the words as you have ninety-nine times before, but this time there's a sudden brush of wings, a gentle nudge, a voice that comes to you.  You look up and see your Beloved running toward you, and you'll feel yourself rising up with a desire you've not engineered. Love has come for you, unexpected, unforced.

You expressed your intention, then waited. And Grace has come to you; your prayer becomes a dance, or better, a holy bed for lovers.

On learning to love

I'm risking some TMI (too much information) here. I do so to show the deep struggle that is the life of earnest prayer---not just praying for things, but the deeper way of prayer leading to the goal of the spiritual life: union with God. In July of 2009, I was wrestling with the pain and humiliation of a failed marriage and wondering what it all meant, how I could continue on.

"What is this school you've got me in, Lord?"

And God said: "You once prayed, 'Teach me to love, till I love Love above all, till I am Love.' This school's is an answer to your prayer."

"Yes, I remember, but I didn't think learning to love would require this. I guess I thought love would be enjoyable."

"Love will cost you everything."

"Then I didn't mean it."

"You didn't know then what learning to love would mean. Who does? But I mean for you to learn it. Do you think this was only your idea?"

"Then I'm tired of it. I'm hurt, broken, pretty much a failure. I guess I'm tired of You too. You make things pretty tough."

"And sometimes I'm tired of you. You make things pretty tough. But this doesn't have to be as hard as you're making it. It's your attachments that make it feel like this learning-to-love is killing you. That part of you must die. Unless it does, you'll never live in Love. This isn't the end of you; it's the beginning. So stop resisting, and let Me take these lesser things from you. They are not the true you anyway."

Do some "earthy good"

Active people often have serious criticisms of the word "contemplative." It sounds monkish, escapist, elitist. A friend recently said, "Aren't contemplatives so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good. Mine is an active life. Jesus would never have entered a monastery." If that's what the contemplative life is then she's right, let's have nothing to do with it. But it's not. That's a caricature, not the real thing.

The contemplative life is the path of true compassion, and therefore the way of real, redemptive action in the world (Dag Hammarskjold is among the best, modern and public examples; I've written of him here).

"Contemplation" and "contemporary" come from the same Latin roots: "con" meaning "with," and "tempus," or "time."

So, "contemplative" simply means being truly "contemporary"--that is, fully here, now, immersed in the present. That can't, by definite or practice, be escapist. Contemplatives, then make the best engineers and airline pilots, surgeons and chefs, mothers and teachers. Contemplative living is noble living.

Jesus did not cloister himself away in a monastery. But that that doesn't mean he wouldn't have gone there periodically. Was not his forty days in the wilderness a monastic retreat? And St. Paul's years also, when he was hidden away in Arabia (Galatians 1.17)?

The monastery's prepared many of those who's worldly actions have matter most in our world.

Contemplation is an art. Learn it and you'll do some "earthly good."

Be gentle with each person

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.

The essential practice of everyone who desires God

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.