Unceasing prayer is not quietism

Another journal post on the practice of unceasing, interior prayer. From September 16, 2007:

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 often relaxes. But it's more. It is active. In fact, it is warfare.

It aims at the deepest form of asceticism, the highest form of freedom.

It aims to watch the rising of thoughts as a fly fisherman watches for a trout rising for the fly. I take told of each thought before it lures me away, and pull it instead, down toward Christ within my heart.

I draw thoughts in and down, following the breath, until, in the presence of Christ, they give up their pretensions; in the presence of Christ, they're made nothing in comparison to Love. I practice loving God alone, beyond all thought, Who alone satisfies. All thoughts become as nothing to me.

This is not relaxation. But it does lead to rest---the hesychia of purest prayer.

In this practice habits are formed, and from habits comes virtue---that inner freedom from all false loves. Virtue is the unceasing, instinctive love of Love Herself. In loving no other thing---truly no-thing---we have Him-Who-is-Everything.

I pray this way so that I may be bound to God in each and every moment---and not to my false self and the lower loves which are driven unconsciously by the unceasing lure of relentless, untethered thoughts. This way there will be no created thing between God and me---not even a single thought that clouds my vision of Him, not even a solitary passion that shades my heart from the splendor of Her.

Love moves us where we wish to go

Another journal post on the practice of unceasing, interior prayer. From September 13, 2007:

Why does God send love into our hearts? Why tend this love so diligently, unceasingly? Why love for God above all else? Because, as Jesus said, "where your treasure is there will your heart be also."

Our affections move us. If we love foolishly, we move through this life as fools. If crude loves attach us to unholy things, we become crude and unholy.

"The foot of the soul is love," wrote St. Augustine, "for it moves us by means of love to the place it's going."

The place I long to go is God. My love for God is the only thing that'll move me where I long to go.

Begin with a simple, affective, preparatory prayer

In the previous post, I wrote that Richard Methley urged us to begin the brief episodes of simple prayer scattered throughout the day "with a simple, affective, preparatory prayer." Here's one of my little poem-prayers I offer when I begin my morning prayers. It recognizes the wild dogs that bite and nip at my heals---the distractions that keep me unfocused and scattered. And it summons me to the one thing that really matters.

We never know what hounds us so, until the desert kills the dogs. Then naked and alone we cross the narrow gate, and find the kingdom known as God's.

Arrived, we owe no debt to yesterday, No anxious glance tomorrow's way. The present gives us all we need, for here and now our hearts are freed to love, and from Your river stoop and feed.

Toward a simple rhythm of daily prayer

Okay, so here's a lesson from the 14th century to the 21st. Maybe you'd prefer something a bit more modern, up-to-date. I assure you there's nothing more up-to-date for the living of these days than some instruction from a century a lot like our own---instruction that's been treasured now for some seven centuries. Richard Methley, a teacher of the life of prayer in our turbulent world, describes his own practice of daily prayer (this comes from James Walsh's introduction to the Cloud of Unknowing, pages 17-18).

Methley instructed those who seek God to go to their accustomed place of prayer, concentrate the whole attention on God, hide from every creature, close the eyes, and begin with a simple, affective, preparatory prayer (like the Jesus Prayer).

His own habit was to get away from the distractions of daily life for three brief episodes---at dawn, noon, and just before sleep---for up to 15 minutes. Just a brief and simple dip into the Holy. He practiced a longer season after supper---a half hour.

My own practice has settled into a similar rhythm. Most people, with a little renovation of their lives can improvise on this instruction. Lots of folks do similar things with other occupations---reading the paper, smoking breaks, watching TV, a Starbucks run.

You may tell yourself you have no real time to pray. Frankly, you'd be surprised at how much time you actually do have. But you'll have to put a little muscle behind shifting things around.

The key is not to bite off more than you can chew as you're making the renovations.  A little time here and there goes a long, long way.

Painful things can hold exquisite beauty in its place

Usually, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I come to the end of a book.  I close the book and put it back on the shelf and feel no compulsion to reread it.  But once in a blue moon, I come the end of a book and grieve reading the last few sentences.  I'll never again get to read the book for the first time. In 2006, I felt that way with Will Dalyrimple's, From the Holy Mountain.  This morning, I read the final word, "Selah," in Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, paused, and wept.

The Red Tent is a deeply moving retelling of the biblical story of Jacob's kin, told from the vantage point of the women.  It's a tale of rare beauty, terrible brutality, and of suffering redeemed.

After these grueling years of my own suffering, I find my journey reframed by this ancient tale freshly retold.  After brokenness and loss and death, a new wholeness is coming.  After her own long, hard road of suffering, Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob says, "The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place."

I like that.  Pain made beautiful.  Somehow---both a gift of God and the fruit of our own dogged determination to put one foot in front of the other.  Pain is not forgotten or trivialized.  Rather, there comes a point when you begin to realize that your knotty pain is keeping the beads of an exquisite beauty in place.  You awaken to realize that even death has lost its cruel sting.

Suffering and death, no longer enemies, become "the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art.  Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death."

Suffering winnows and refines until only love remains.  If it does that---if we allow it to do that---death will lose its sting.  And suffering becomes our teacher.

Solomon once said that "love is strong as death."  He was wrong.  It's stronger.  For love alone is immortal---and so are we, when our suffering's stripped us of every lesser thing.