Second hand experience of God is not the real thing

The fact is, it’s in the midst of daily life that you’ll meet God or you’re not likely to meet God at all—not really. Sure, you can think nice thoughts about God, and there’s a part of you that’ll congratulate itself on how religious or spiritual these ideas about God might make you feel, but thinking God is very different from loving God. Loving God is a genuine experience that cannot be thought. It’s the difference between reading about love and being in love.

Once you’ve tasted love yourself, no amount of second hand experience through reading can substitute for the real thing.

The kind of prayer that keeps us from God

Prayer, as I offering it here, is living with a nearly continuous sense of the Sacred no matter what you’re doing or where you are. Prayer is life. But so much of the time, what passes for prayer is actually an abstraction of life, and it’s not the kind of prayer God wants for you. The kind of prayer that’s religious and therefore somewhat separate from ordinary life. That kind of prayer is what people do before a meal, but not while they’re eating. It’s what they do when they’re doing something particularly pious, but not while they’re doing the dishes or writing an email, shuttling kids to school or sitting in a doctor's office, talking with a friend or making love. Too bad. Such a view of prayer keeps them from so much of God. True prayer is, as I’ve said before, as natural as breathing, as earthy as talking a walk.

"The Busy Trap," idleness, prayer, and the creative spirit

Okay, so everybody's talking about The Busy Trap, and opinion piece published in the New York Times last weekend.  It went viral. Struck a chord.  People resonate with it.  We don't want to be busy.  But as Rachel Dodes in the Wall Street Journal says about "The Busy Trap," we don't have the foggiest idea what to do about it. Busyness is a distinctly modern epidemic.  Untethered to the wisdom of the spiritual traditions, modern people haven't the foggiest idea how to get free.  But the contemplative traditions teach us that idleness is a sacred path, while busyness is, well, stupidity, and frankly, may be the height of laziness.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

All this reminds me of a book I read years ago by Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture.  It's a sustained meditation on classical, medieval, and modern culture.  Here's a link to a helpful introduction to his thinking.

So, pray . . .

Idly.

Silently.

Uselessly.

Contemplatively.

Leisurely.

St. Seraphim of Sarov once said, "Acquire inner peace and thousands around you will find their salvation."  You're not just saving yourself, but helping to pull all the world to safely along with you.

How to let go of what is unhealthy or unholy

From my journals, Friday, November 23, 2007 I'm reading the Cloud of Unknowing. The medieval teacher urges me to attach (adhere) to God:  "in a manner take hold of our God by devoutly taking hold of his feet."

I recall family systems therapist, Edwin Friedman, in his book of therapeutic fables, writing about attachment and detachment. There, I learned that detachment from what is unhealthy or unholy is only possible because of a corresponding or counter balancing attachment to something health-giving or something Holy. Utter detachment is devastating---a leap into the abyss. Attachment to God as the safest, securest primary caregiver makes letting go of every lesser thing possible.

How to cooperate with crisis as a gift of grace

Continued from previous posts: So, when you come to the Wall, you will need to cooperate with the crisis as a gift of grace, as painful as it may be, as demonic as it may seem. For behind it (while not necessarily orchestrating it) is the Hand of God, guiding you to a new awakening to your life in Christ.

Again, as in Stage Four (in fact, all the higher or deeper stages), you will need guidance, spiritual direction from a competent friend, counselor, or pastor---someone who's not threatened by your questions and frustrations, who won't try to fix you, but who knows there's a mystery at work within you and who can hold you in faith as you journey forward past your fears into the newness of God. But here at the Wall, it's your spiritual practices, especially interior prayer, meditation, and contemplation that will see you through to the new you that awaits you on the other side.

When you emerge from this confrontation stripped down, leaner, cleaner, and more open to love---and if you have found a way to release your need for control and to play God---you will be able to say: "What I thought, I needed I don't really need. What I was sure I couldn't live without, I can live without. With God alone I am content." You will be able to say with Jesus, "Lord, not my will but yours be done" (Luke 22.42), and with Mary, "Let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1.38). This is true spiritual freedom and readies you for the new outward engagement with mission and ministry that is Stage Five.

Facing the Wall doesn't mean that you're now free from the impediments and distractions, the temptations and seductions that hinder your relationship with God. But it does mean that you now know how to face them when they come.

to be continued . . .