Contemplation is not quietism

The path I follow in contemplation, the prayer of the heart, is not mere quietism. It is not transcendental meditation or emptying or relaxation. It certainly transcends. It does empty. And it may relax.

But it is active, in fact, it is warfare. It aims at the deepest from of asceticism---an interior renunciation.  It aims to watch rising thoughts like a fly-fisherman watches fish. I take hold of thoughts before they lure me away and pull them down instead, toward Christ in my heart. I draw them in and down, following the breath.

In the presence of Christ, they give up their pretensions; they're made nothing in comparison to the Almighty.

To dance with time

"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.

Why Pray? A Beginner's Grace with Kate Braestrup

One way to practice the Twelve Days of Christmas

The Twelve Days of Christmas are largely forgotten today. If they are remembered, they’re remembered as a song about “Lord’s a leaping,” and “partridges in a pear tree.” The Twelve Days, December 25-January 5, are the true Christmas, the Christmas not of preparation for a single holiday, but of opening our hearts increasingly to the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Eternal Light of God. They’re also an invitation to an intensified spiritual awareness. We seek to open further to the Light come into the world in Emmanuel, God-With-Us. And so, the Twelve Days are a journey into prayer. It’s a season set at the beginning of the year that helps deepen our experience with God in the midst of daily life, embracing the sacred in the ordinary tasks of emails and grocery shopping, washing dishes, sitting in staff meetings, and running kids here and here.

This holiday season, why not soak in this mystery a little longer that most other people do? Why not practice the relevance of the Twelve Days for your interior life?

For help along that path, I’ve prepared a simple and short free ebook with readings for each of the Twelve Days and Christmas Eve. Most of them are short enough to be read in a minute, yet potent enough to provide you with meditative guidance throughout the day. To download, click on the title: The Journey of the Magi: The Twelve Days of Christmas as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Experience of Prayer.

How to read prayerfully--lectio divina

This is an excerpt from Cyprian Consiglio's excellent little book on prayer: Prayer in the Cave of the Heart: The Universal Call to Contemplation.  The book's a primer on the historical center of Christian spirituality---drawing from resources from the Christian East and West, as well as illustrating parallels to other religious traditions enriching our prayer experience. In this selection, Cyprian introduces holy reading, or lectio divina, as a particular practice of prayerful feeding of the thinking mind with holy things.

"When choosing the object of our meditation, pride of place is given to scripture.  In addition, though, there is a long tradition of other types of reading (of devotional or spiritual books or of poetry) and other types of experiences (listening to music, looking at art) that can serve the same purpose.  At times we read academically, to learn facts and figures, dates and names, or we listen to music or look at art critically, analytically.  Lectio divina, however, is totally different.  It is gentle, like reading a love letter, or hearing a loved one's voice, or gazing on a loved one's face." (p. 96)

It is my habit to read a very small section of holy scripture each morning, in addition to the non-reflective reading of a psalm, and invite the Trinity to be the Host of this encounter.  I read and listen, waiting upon the voice of the Beloved.