Central Valley Prayer of the Heart Conference, this weekend in Fresno!

"Moment by Moment: Contemplation for Active People" PRE-REGISTER NOW! Call 559.439.8807

Living an alert spiritual life is demanding, and we need helpful models to show us how to live it well. Contemplation is sometimes dismissed as escapist or elitist. But in fact, the opposite is true. Contemplation is about learning to live your life more fully aware of life around you: more productive, more focused, more spiritually alive, more happy. Our teaching this year will focus on four ordinary people from various walks of life who lived remarkably active and meaningful lives because of their contemplative practice: Elizabeth of Hungary, Dorothy Day, Teilhard de Cardin, and Howard Thurman. In addition to the taught sessions, the retreat will provide you with several intentional contemplative periods for prayer. Spiritual guides will be available during those times for those who may wish to speak with a spiritual guide for companioning and perspective.

Speakers: Dr. Karen Crozier, Fr. Robert Hale, Cindy Correia, Dr. Chris Neufeld-Erdman

Begins Friday evening February 10th, 7pm

Saturday morning through mid-afternoon the 11th

$35 includes lunch; please pre-register to help us plan for lunch ($45 fee at the door). Mail your check by February 1st to University Presbyterian Church, 1776 E. Roberts Ave. Fresno, CA 93710.

Contact the church office at 559.439.8807 for more information and to register.

PDF brochure available, click here.  Please forward to friends!

Monastery Bookstore with books, candles, icons, and other handcrafts from around the world.

This conference is open to the community, so please invite a friend and spread the word.

University Presbyterian Church of Fresno 1776 E. Roberts Ave, Fresno, CA 93710

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Prayer: the key is to simply practice what you know

Below is an email exchange with a reader. He's given permission to post these notes. I thought it would be helpful for you to hear about another reader's journey into the prayer of the heart . . .

Dear Chris;

I write to say “thank you” for the encouragement I have received from your honest reflections in the downloadable eBook Returning to the Center. I sincerely hope that part 2 is available before too long. Is the entire book available anywhere? I have, so far, been unsuccessful in my web-searches I arrived at your website, and the above eBook, after reading comments about you and your work in Alan Roxburgh’s book Missional Map-Making and found that your writing spoke directly to the kind of journey I seem to be making at present. It is a journey into prayer of the heart – and I am experiencing all the many distractions, of which you speak.

Kind Regards

Peter

Dear Peter;

Thank you for your thoughtful note. Alas, part two is on hold for quite awhile. I'm working on another book on prayer now. Part two of my memoir requires some maturing before I can write honestly about the years since the first part ended. It'll be out someday, but not soon enough for you. My advice is to simply practice the Jesus Prayer. That sounds so terribly unhelpful, I realize. There are several books that you might find helpful. Here's a little list: Prayer in the Cave of the Heart, Cyprian Consiglio; Word Into Silence, John Main; The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel, a new translation by Carmen Aceveo Butcher (soooo excellent!); John Main: The Expanding Vision, ed. by Laurence Freeman and Stefan Reynolds, Prayer, Abhishiktananda.

The key is to simply practice what you know. Too many of us spend too much time reading and casting around for help when the help is as near as the beating of our hearts, close as our next breath. The ego doesn't want to admit that though and will keep disturbing you. Your chief work is to simply learn to step around the ego through contemplative practice. It'll learn to relax and "stand down" eventually. But it must learn, first that your serious and second, that stepping around it (the ego) isn't about its destruction, but its salvation. The recitation of the Name, along with the breath, will bath your ego in love and over the long haul it'll learn to trust that it doesn't always have to be in charge [smile].

Blessings your life and ministry, brother.

Chris

Dear Chris;

I have simply devoured your eBook. In my imagination, and feeling similarly spread rather too thinly like butter over toast (wonderful metaphor!), I accompanied you to the Wadi Natroun, to Iona, and finally Oxford; each places of great significance and interest to me. I have not yet read Merton, though I am aware of him through other writers. I am learning from your journey that the spiritual journey is a shared one, even though the physical one may never be a reality for me. You reiterated in your email that the key was realizing that the answers were as close as "the beating of our hearts, close as our next breath." And you are so right about the ego, with its clamouring voices, as one intentionally sets about cultivating contemplative practices. This is precisely my experience too.

Regards, and God bless you.

Peter

Practicing the Jesus Prayer, part two of two

Continued from a previous series of posts on the stages of spiritual growth . . . You're sitting quietly, resting, waiting, being in the presence of God.

And now . . . when something draws you away again—and it will (for these moments of pure prayer, absolute awareness of nothing but God, are fleeting)—simply take note that you were drawn away temporarily and return to the Beloved. Open your heart to love. Become drunk with love, full of light. Your untamed thoughts and feelings will become disoriented when they encounter a soul aflame with love; they’ll recede, I promise. You’re forgetting all but Love, and Love will tame the wild beasts inside you—your mind, your commands, and your will cannot.

Wait, wait, wait in stillness until you reach the silence which is the voice of the Beloved, then on the inhale, speak inwardly, “Jesus,” and on the exhale, “Mercy,” or some other simple prayer. The grace of God will come to you on the wings of this humble, interior prayer. These words, once planted in your heart, will become the seeds of unceasing prayer. Repeat them, following your uncontrolled breath as you rest in God.

When you’ve come to the end of the time you’ve allotted for this exercise (you might use a quiet alarm so you don’t have to keep looking at the clock), simply bring your soul to an awareness of the external world outside you. Thank the beloved Trinity and re-enter the day.

To be continued . . .

Practicing the Jesus Prayer, part one of two

Continued from a previous series of posts on the stages of spiritual growth . . . Find a quiet place. Sit still. Back straight. Begin by greeting the Light, the Beloved. Follow your easy breath, in and out. Survey your whole body, beginning with the toes and ending with the nose. Release all tension. Sink into the Presence of God. Gently breathe, giving your thoughts the freedom to come and go. Like snowflakes, you may notice them but you mustn’t hold them. Simply let them fall.

Letting them fall won’t be easy. Your mind will parade many things in front of you. To-do lists, problems you’re dealing with, dreams you have for yourself will lure your attention away from God. The barking dog next door will annoy you. Memories from long ago will entertain you. Ugly things too will crowd in upon you—lusts, fears, ambitions. Don’t fight them, judge them, or follow them. Just watch them and become aware that you’re aware of them. This awareness is the key. When you’re aware, you’re present—to God and to your self before God.

This is pure prayer.  Resting.  Waiting.  Being.

To be continued . . .

Advancing in the spiritual life: the Jesus Prayer as partner

Continued from previous posts . . . As part of this current series of posts about the stages of spiritual growth, I wrote most recently about the experience called “The Wall.” At the Wall, you have to face what’s standing in the way between you and God—and that’s never easy. “It’s your spiritual practice,” I wrote, “especially interior prayer, meditation, and contemplation that will see you through to the new you that awaits you on the other side.”  In the next few posts, I’ll open up to you a simple way to practice interior prayer.

The method of prayer I’ll teach you is very, very old. Old as St. Paul who taught us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.12). Old as Jesus who taught us that the “Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17.21), and that when we pray we’re not to go on babbling as so many religious people do, but are instead to enter the closet of our hearts and commune simply with God (Matthew 6.6). A form of this kind of praying is quite possibly as old as Elijah and the prophets of Israel who knew that God’s voice was best heard in “the sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19.12).

The Prayer of the Heart (the Jesus Prayer, contemplative prayer, etc) is the most universal spiritual “technology” for achieving what all people seek: union with God. That it’s relatively unknown today doesn’t mean it’s strange or esoteric. Nor is it only for monks and mystics. The monks and mystics all agree that it’s the most beneficial and easily practiced form of prayer available to the most active of people. For millennia housewives and blacksmiths, kings and farmers have practiced the Prayer of the Heart, nourishing a vital spiritual life, cultivating virtue, and living humble lives of love and grace, compassion and courage—bringing hope and wholeness to our often fragile and wounded, yet beautiful world.

In the posts that follow I'll offer you a little guide to this ancient and durable practice that’s making a come back in our day—and not a moment too soon, for the state of our world sorely needs the kind of women and men who are shaped by it.

To be continued . . .