A window on a prayer retreat
In this brief video, I describe the place along Big Sur where I spend a few weeks each year in solitude seeking God. You not only get a window into the natural beauty of the setting, but also into my rhythm of prayer. I also describe the simple practice of arousing the 5 senses as a way to a deeper encounter with God. All at the New Camaldoli Hermitage.
How to pray at dawn
In this short video, I meet with you at dawn at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. I'm on a weeklong prayer retreat, and in this video introduce you to a simple practice for not only awakening to the new day, but to an experience of prayer that includes all your senses, and therefore by-passes mere thoughts about God to meet with the real presence of God. I tell the story of a man who'd felt a growing distance between what he knew in his heart about God and what he was actually experiencing. This is an invitation to spiritual awakening.
An exercise for awakening to the present
So, here’s the exercise to move toward what I've written this past week: Today, and for each day of the coming week, make a little study of how frequently your mind pulls you into the past or future.
- In an average hour of your day, what percentage of the time do your thoughts dwell on things from the past or over concerns about the future?
- When you find yourself absorbed in the past or present, study how you feel. What is your stress level? Are you smiling or frowning?
- Observe your handwriting and the way you talk to others: what does your handwriting they tell you about your inner state? Your words—the inflection, speed, and type of language you choose?
Also watch for those activities, projects, or persons with whom you find yourself intensely present. How do you feel? What do you notice about the quality of your experience when you look deeply into the eyes of the person you’re with or when you are undistracted—nearly absorbed—in a project or task?
What it's like when God is more than a mere idea
What I've been saying in these recent posts is more than mere empty words, I assure you. I was once assaulted by a disease that, while the doctors told me it probably wouldn’t kill me, it made me feel like it was. A couple years later, my marriage collapsed. And a year after that, my closest friend took his life. I know what it’s like to live when life feels a lot like hell.
But I also learned in the midst of it all about the power of the present.
I learned to make friendship with each and every moment.
My body felt like it was killing me, but I was not, in each breathing moment, dead. My marriage of twenty-three years fell apart and I fell into an emotional free-fall, but I was not, in each breathing moment, falling apart. My friend’s mind broke, but my mind was not, in each breathing moment, broken.
In each moment I was alive, breathing. And so long as I stayed in the moment, life came to me and even (believe it or not) I could taste the most exquisite happiness. I learned the habit of returning to the moment every time my mind pulled me into the woulda, shoulda, coulda’s of the past, or I head-tripped through fantasies about a better future.
In the present I learned to taste God and that taste of God was nothing like what I’d known of God when God was a mere idea.