Quotation for the Day

God created the word out of nothing, and as long as we are nothing, he can make something out of us.  ~ Martin Luther

Carl McColman's New Blogsite

Hi, everyone ~

Our Atlanta friend and contemplative blogger Carl McColman has a new website that you'll want to visit at http://carlmccolman.com/.  When you go to visit, be sure to subscribe so that you'll receive an email notice whenever Carl posts something new and interesting.  You'll especially want to subscribe if your interested in Celtic spirituality, a tradition deep in Carl's heart and about which he often writes.

Centering Prayer Practice: January 31, 2012

Hi, everyone!

It's been a year since we first began meeting on Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m., and I want to thank everyone for being so faithful to our practice.  Word has it that tomorrow we expect several more to join us.  Inasmuch as I set up this blog some time in the past (and have not been a faithful blogger on a day-to-day basis), I would like to recommit myself to posting near-daily as I can in the future.  I'll alert those in our Centering Prayer Practice group about this site and suggest that they subscribe to receive postings when available--daily we hope!

We've been reading and discussing Cynthia Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening for some time now, working our way slowly through it week by week.  For tomorrow, January 21, I'd like to ask our group to begin reading Chapter 6, "Centering Prayer and Christian Tradition" (pages 55-58). I've made some notes on these pages which I'll hand out tomorrow.

Rita and John Bennett are bring something to share with our usual coffee.    And the good news is that Ellen, still recovering from her car accident this past week, will also be with us.  God is good; every day!  See you all tomorrow!

"One Big Self" by Stephen Rue

“As the soul becomes more pure and bare, and possesses less of created things, and is emptied of all things that are not God, it receives God more purely, and is more completely in Him; and it truly becomes one with God, and it looks into God and God into it, face to face as it were; two images transformed into one.”   -Meister Eckhart

                                                                                                   

Saint Nicholas Providing Food during a Famine

Today is St. Nicholas Day, and forty-some years ago or so it was a rather important day in my life. Because in the late 60’s and early 70’s I was often overwhelmed by the days and evenings surrounding Christmas itself, I used to compensate for my not being able to spend bunches of time with the kids by “pre-doing” Christmas a bit.

My family knew that over the centuries fat Santa had evolved in story, myth, and importance from traditions surrounding fourth-century Bishop Nicholas of Myra. The real “Nick” was born in Patra, a village located in the southern coast of Turkey. As the orphaned son of fairly wealthy parent, Nicholas, took Jesus’ word to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor” at face value and unloaded up his inheritance to help the needy, sick, and suffering. The tradition says that he dedicated his life to serving God and became well-known for his generosity, especially toward children, along with his concern for sailors and ships. Later in life Nicholas suffered for his faith during imperial persecutions with exile and imprisonment. When released from prison, he attended the Council of Nicea in 325, died eighteen years later on December 6 in Myra, and was buried in his cathedral church.

Of the many stories associated with his life, the best known rehearses his helping a gentleman with three unmarried daughters. The father was unable to raise enough money to provide his girls with dowries; as a consequence they were destined to become old maids. Some embellish the tale suggesting that they might have well ended up as prostitutes. When walking by the gentleman’s home, so it is said, Nicholas threw a bag of gold through a window on three successive nights and so saved the daughters from a life of shame. As you might imagine, yes, all were married and lived happily ever after. Such is the hagiographical nimbus of Old Saint Nick, good enough to make sure that our present jolly oaf has a decent resume, the business world’s best gift-giver.

Retelling the story of Saint Nick to our children on December 6 had two advantages. First, it nicely deconstructed the myth of Santa. Our kids were never fooled beyond the age of four or five. And second, it gave us an opportunity to finesse the 25th out of its overbearing emphasis on getting so many toys that little else mattered. We finessed by giving the children some pre-Christmas gifts on December 6, the Day of Saint Nicholas. Moreover, for several years we baked and bagged St. Nicholas cookies, tied up small branches of evergreens, and early on the morning of this day surreptitiously hung both on our neighbors’ front doors. We never told them who had hung the greens.

I still like to remember the real Nicholas, the generous saint who suffered for his faith and helped the Church think through her understanding of Christ at the Council of Nicea. I’ll say the Niceane Creed today and thank God for his witness.

Almighty God, who in your love gave to your servant Nicholas of Myra a perpetual name for deeds of kindness on land and sea: Grant, we pray, that your Church may never cease to work for the happiness of children, the safety of sailors, the relief of the poor, and the help of those tossed by tempests of doubt or grief; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Second Sunday in Advent: Mark 1.1-8

Tomorrow's Gospel reading is Mark 1.1-8.  In our Sunday Adult Seminar we will be working through the Good News of Mark because important selections from Mark's Gospel will be read in Year B.  As our Seminar's moderator, I usually prepare a three- or four-page handout, sometimes distributed in advance.  Here's is the handout for Mark 1.1-8:

Today we begin our reading of Mark in earnest.  And the very first awareness we must have about verse one is that Mark’s first sentence is radical, especially from a political point of view.  Understand the contexts.  First, there is the political context.  The powerful Roman government has been telling everyone that it has the “good news”!  Second, there is a smaller context: that of young Christian community, the scattered “house churches” established by itinerant missionaries throughout the Mediterranean.  For two decades, from the early 30s until the early 50s, there has only been talk, preaching, and “house communions” held on every Lord’s day, Sunday.  Paul and other Christian missionaries have been walking, traveling, sailing, and planting small church groups all around and throughout the Mediterranean world.  Importantly, in the year AD 50, there is no Christian Bible.  While in prison during the late 50s, Paul, often in prison, has been sending letters out for circulation among the tiny congregations.  During their times of worship, they have been reading their Hebrew and Greek (Old) Testaments. 

When does Mark write his Story?

Not hankering after glamour

The great obstacle may be not greed but the modern hankering after glamour.

Dorothy Day

A lot of our smartest, most concerned people want to come up with a big solution to a big problem. I don't think that planet-saving, if we take it seriously, can furnish employment to many such people.

When I think of the kind of worker the job requires, I think of Dorothy Day (if one can think of Dorothy Day herself, separate from the publicity that came as a result of her rarity), a person willing to go down and down into the daunting, humbling, almost hopeless local presence of the problem--to face the great problem one small life at a time.

-- Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays.  


Born in 1897, Dorothy Day was baptized in 1927.  After her conversion, Day desired to combine her activism and her faith.  Peter Maurin's brand of personalism provided the link that Day sought.  In 1933 Day and Maurin founded The Catholic Worker newspaper and house of hospitality.  Until her death in 1980, Day continued to work on behalf of her "fellow workers" and the poor.

More information about the personalism of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin is included on a PDF file provided by the National Catholic Reporter and used with persmission.  Click on the following link to read Pat Marrin's article on the personalist roots (PDF file) of the Catholic Worker Movement.

November 30, St. Andrew's Day

Today is my favorite saint’s day.  After all, it’s St. Andrew’s Day!  You shouldn’t get the idea, however, that I was intentionally named after him (although  in the long view of things, I like to think so).  The story goes that during the Great Depression (yes, I’m that old) my father was unable to render due payment to my mother’s obstetrician, Dr. Harvey Andrew Stein, for the services he provided during my delivery and birth into the God’s world.  With little or no money in hand, my father decided to honor (or pay!) the Dr. Stein, one of the finest Jewish obstetricians in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by naming me after Dr. Stein.   So on my birth certificate, the nurse penned in my full name as Harvey Andrew Stein.  For whatever reasons (and I’m glad somebody decided to do so), the first name never stuck, and nobody ever called me Harvey.  To this day, I don’t use it ever and have always managed, when necessary to do something legal, to sign my Hancock as “H. Andrew Harnack.”

Be that as it may, I know I was baptized as Harvey Andrew Harnack on St. Andrew’s Day, and consequently (as I said, “in the long run”),  St. Andrew is and has been for 74 years my patron saint.   His icon now hangs in my study by the door so that I get to look at him many times during the day.  Although the icon itself displays St. Andrew as a rather dour-looking fellow (I am, of course, dour at times myself), I like to look at the icon appreciatively for at least two reasons.  First, it was to Andrew that Jesus said clearly, “You did not choose me; I chose you!”   And second, in Scripture it is St. Andrew who likes to introduce people to Jesus.  He is, after all, the disciple who introduced the first Pope to Jesus.   All of this reminds me that I am Andy only by the grace of God and that one of my jobs is to introduce as many people to Jesus as I possibly can.

So on this day, give thanks with me for my Holy Baptism into the life of the Most Holy Trinity and the Church created, sustained, and nourished by the grace of the Father through the gift of His son and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  And as often as possible, ask God to let me use my life and Praying Daily Blog as an introduction and invitation to resurrection with Jesus, our Lord.

During the past year in my local parish we've been able to form a small group that meets weekly for Centering Prayer. Meeting on Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. since January, we've recently been studying Cynthia Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. Our small group is firmly knit, and today we welcomed two new hearts: Carolyn Shaw and Carol Garman. Typically we first enter the sanctuary and practice Centering Prayer for twenty minutes and then gather over coffee to discuss Bourgeault. Well committed to our practice and meetings, we're determined to continue for as long as possible. Even when only one or two are able to come, someone sits for the practice. As we move along, you can be sure that we'll keep you informed about what's happening.

Returning

It's been some time now since I've posted to this blog (actually since Tuesday, October 20, 2009), but tonight I'm returning for the best of all reasons: it's inexpensive to post here (no expense at all!), manage, and maintain. As someone who has become more aware of the limitations of his fixed retirement income, I have over the years been reducing many items on my budget, many except those that serve either directly or indirectly my parish and the beloved poor of Christ. To that end, then, I'm back, and I hope you will continue to visit Praying Daily, reading what I trust will be interesting postings, and commenting when the opportunity or desire arises.

We've moved to a new blogsite

Dear readers,

With the help of a young friend, I've been able to set up a new site for Praying Daily at http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/, an installation using WordPress that will enable me to make attractive postings more easily. Please visit http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/ and then subscribe at its RSS FEED so that you'll receive email notices of the new postings and comments. Speaking of which, let me add this encouragement: if you find yourself responding to whatever it you may read at http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/, please post a comment. It's so easy to do! I so much enjoy your commentaries, and so do others!

I'll keep this blog up for a while; then when it's time has run its course, we'll pack it up. Nothing will be lost; everything here has beem migrated to http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/. If you wish, let me know what you think about the move with a few words to me at andrew.harnack@eku.edu.

Thank you, www.blogger.com for your years of helpful service. And may God bless you, www.wordpress.com for all that you will offer in the years to come.


Blessings! -- Andy

Living in the "Not-So-Quite-Right" Church

Many of us are members of churches wherein at times we feel uncomfortable for one reason or another. Perhaps it's as small an item as the choice of hymns that don't seem to fit our needs. For some it may be that the Liturgy seems too traditional; others may believe their Sunday worship lacks any real memory of the church's historical identity. For others the infiltration of "entertainment worship" is disconcerting. Maybe you feel that the pastor doesn't get out and visit folks as he should (or you think he should). Worse yet, according to your lights, something is askew with the theology of your pastor, your denomination, your church. Whatever the reason, you squirm in your pew. You think about going elsewhere. If so, listen closely to what William J. Abraham in "Staying the Course: On Unity, Division and Renewal in The United Methodist Church" (Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century, ed. Kenneth Tanner and Christopher Hall: InterVarity, 2002) suggests:

We need to beware [of] a naive utopianism in our thinking about the church. Even with complete success in the work of renewal, the church will be a fragile and mixed vessel. Jesus warned us that even the kingdom will have wheat and tares which can only be sorted out at the end of the age. Hence we should be prepared to live with all sorts of difficulties, setbacks, strategic retreats and challenges. If any are discouraged, I urge them to read the writings of the fourth-century leaders. Athanasius complained that when the Arians took over his church in Alexandria, folks were frolicking naked in the baptismal fonts. Yet Athanasius stayed the course, organized the faithful in exile, suffered banishment at least five times and eventually won the day for the gospel and the faith.

What Abraham says is not only thoughtful counsel for Methodists, but for any Christian who is unhappy in the pew. If you find yourself unhappy, discouraged, and down-spirited with what you see happening liturgically, theologically, or "whatever" in your church or your parish, bring your concerns before God in prayer, ever-so-quietly consider the merits of your concerns, talk gently and honestly with whomever you disagree, and work fervantly toward the renewal you desire. Above all, in everything let us all allow the love and centrality of Christ rule (and perhaps over-rule) our thoughts, manner of living, and actions.

September 29: St. Michael and All Angels

Collect of the Day: Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today's Daily Office

Getting Ready for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Each Monday morning Daniel B. Clendenin publishes an essay givng us opportunities to anticipate the lectionary readings for the coming Sunday. Next Sunday, October 4, will be the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (also the Feast of St. Francis), and many of us will hear these appointed readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B):

Job 1:1, 2:1–10 or Genesis 2:18–24
Psalm 26 or Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1–4, 2:5–12
Mark 10:2–16

Clendenin tells us that his essay this week takes a page from the pastor-poet George Herbert to consider humanity "Between Nature and Grace." In addition to writing fine essays, Clendenin also usually suggests a book or movie for reading or viewing; his recommendations this week are The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin and the seven-part HBO series John Adam. For poetry he posts his all-time favorite poem, "The Revival," by the Welsh poet-physician Henry Vaughan (1621-1695). Clendenin's weekly publication, a "webzine for the global church," is read by our brothers and sisters in 230 countries. See what you think by visiting Journey with Jesus. You may even wish to subscribe and receive his weekly email announcements as reminders to read his essays and recommendations.

Susan, on another list, recently posted this remarkable quotation taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness:

Each of us has an ever-faithful companion--presence. Something that is always with us. Something that helps us to live with inner integrity and depth, to see through the outer coverings of others and of the world to their purpose and core being, and to get over placing ourselves at the center of everything. This companion-presence is Silence. It never goes away. We go away from it, become distracted and forgetful, and lose the manners needed to nurture companionship with it. We go away from Silence into the world of noise as if into a vast buzzing of insects, pushed to exist within the permanent irritation of dissonance. [...] Silence is palpable. [...]What if, to some degree, the "subjective" experience of God is also subjectively stated? ...What one names "God," for example, another may call "Silence." Certainly, in my devotions the lines between what I "know" of God/Silence often dissolve.

I share Susan's posting of this quotation with you because I have found that Sardello's observation, so creditably articulated, has often been mine. And perhaps yours? My friend Susan recommends that I get a copy of this book, and one reviewer at amazon.com confirms her recommendation: "Get this book now. Crawl naked over brocken glass to get a copy. Read this book before you die." It's Sunday morning and the Gospel, I hope, will remind that I do in fact need to die. I hope it will be a good death. If, however, I live through the week, I should be able to pick up my (used) copy in the mail box sometime this week.

In Open Mind, Open Heart, Fr. Thomas Keating discusses five kinds of thoughts that may come to us during our practice of Centering Prayer:

1. 1. wanderings of the imagination
   2. exploratory intellectual searchings
   3. attractive solutions to problems
   4. feelings of self-congratulation
   5. reawakened emotions arising from dormant traumatic experiences.
   

At one time or another in our contemplative practice many of us have experienced what Fr. Keating calls "the consequences of traumatic emotional experiences." While such experiences often occur in childhood, we may also encounter them in domestic arguments, the undoings of marriages, the death and suffering of loved ones, the horrors of the battlefield, and our encounters with poverty and injustice here and in the Third World. We live in a violent society; our movies, newspapers, and television shows constantly barrage us with scenes of pain, despair, and great unhappiness. Our personal lives have often carry the wounds of psychic damage. In Centering Prayer it would be unusual not to have violent images, feelings, thoughts, and memories intrude into our movement toward "unworded" contemplative prayer. When that happens, Fr. Keating gives us this exceptionally helpful advice:

When you feel restless, agitated, or pained by some emotional experience, you can't spend the time better than by waiting it out. The temptation is great when you are suffering from a distressing emotion to try to push it away. However, by allowing your attention to move gently toward the emotion and by sinking into it, as though you were getting into a nice jacuzzi, you are embracing God in the feeling. Don't think, just feel the emotion.

If you were blind and then got your sight back, even the ugliest things would be appreciated. Suppose you had no emotions and suddenly experienced one; even a disagreeable emotion would be thrilling. Actually, no emotion is really distressing; it is only the false self that interprets it as distressing. Emotional swings are gradually dissolved by the complete acceptance of them. To put this into practice, you must first recognize and identify the emotion: "Yes, I am angry, I am panicky, terrified, restless."

Every feeling has some good. Since God is the ground of everything, we know that even the feeling of guilt, in a certain sense, is God. If you can embrace the painful feeling, whatever it is, as if it were God, you are uniting yourself with God, because anything that has reality has God as its foundation. "Letting go" is not a simple term; it is quite subtle and has important nuances-depending on what you are intending to let go of. When a thought is not disturbing, letting go means paying no attention to it. When a thought is disturbing, it won't go away so easily, so you have to let it go in some other way. One way you can let it go is to sink into it and identify with it, out of love for God. This may not be possible at first, but try it and see what happens. The principal discipline of contemplative prayer is letting go.

To sum up what I have said on this fifth kind of thought, contemplative prayer is part of a reality that is bigger than itself. It is part of the whole process of integration, which requires opening to God at the level ofthe unconscious. This releases a dynamic that will be peaceful at times, and at other times heavily laden with thoughts and emotion. Both experiences are part of the same process of integration and healing. Each kind of experience, therefore, should be accepted with the same peace, gratitude, and confidence in God. Both are necessary to complete the process of transformation.

If you are suffering from a barrage of thoughts from the unconscious, you don't have to articulate the sacred word clearly in your imagination or keep repeating it in a frantic effort to stabilize your mind. You should think it as easily as you think any thought that comes to mind spontaneously.

Do not resist any thought, do not hang on to any thought, do not react emotionally to any thought. This is the proper response to all five kinds of thoughts that come down the stream of consciousness.

Note: There are two editions (and many printings) of Open Mind, Open Heart. The first was published in 1986; the second (The so-called 20th Anniversary Edition) in 2008. Although they are basically the same, in the 2008 edition, Fr. Keating has rearranged and revised the text in a catechetical (question and answer) fashion. The quotation cited in this posting may be found on page 98-99 in the 1986 edition; on pages 102-104 in the 2008 edition.

Images: Michelle Forsyth, Trauma, 2002. Cotton thread on cotton, 4 x 5 inches ; Sunday, July 9, 2006, 2006. Watercolor on Fabriano SP watercolor paper, 18 x 27 inches.

Reflective Silence during Evening Prayer

There is a set of paperback books on my shelf that has attracted my attention for years. It’s a four volume edition of the Philokalia. Last night, reading in and around the first volume containing St. Hesychios’ “On Watchfulness and Holiness,” I found myself underlining this passage:

Each hour of the day we should note and weigh our actions and in the evening we should do what we can to free ourselves from the burden of them by means of repentance—if that is, we wish, with Christ’s help, to overcome wickedness. (124)

St. Hesychios’ advice is good, and my prayerbook asks me to take advantage of it.

Each day at 5:00 p.m. in Evening Prayers, this prayerbook asks June and me to maintain a period of “silence for meditation.” We don’t observe an overly long silence (admittedly, sometimes it’s short), but most of the time we allow a minute or so to go by in which hear only the ticking of the clock or our own heartbeats. During that silence we reflect on what has happened during the day.

As the day passes, I know we are aware, more or less, of how things have gone. Nevertheless, the evening silence for meditation is an especially good time for summing up and reflecting on the day’s thoughts and actions. This “summing up” allows us to explore and examine the more subtle forms of egotism to which we are constantly inclined. In contemplative language, our review of these egoistic activities alerts us as to how we have been constructing what Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating call our “false selves.”

Each of us knows how to construct a bogus, phony, cooked-up, and specious self; that is, we are experts in creating identifies intended to deceive others—and ourselves!--as to who we really are. I, for example, am given to suggest to you that I’m a fairly decent practicing Christian. Writing these sentences is right now a movement in that direction. For example, I like to read. But lots of times I know I am tempted to read so that I can quote other Christians, a temptation which professional academics find especially fetching. My false self is especially prone to the production of such presentations. I like to associate myself with famous Christians; it helps to suggest that I'm a pretty good Christian. In other words, surely you will recognize me by the company I keep. Just take a look.

Luther, following St. Augustine, describes this tendency to fabricate a false self as the product of homo curvatus in se, “the human "curving" or turning in upon the self.” That is, as a human beings, you and I like to turn and direct our gazes upon ourselves. We’re the objects of our own fascinations.

Homo curvatus in se. Here’s how it works. Although I don’t usually say so emphaticly, I’m personally and often quite secretively convinced that my thinking is generally a little better than your thinking; my politics slightly more on target than yours; my spiritual life, especially when seen in the right light, is at least a tad better than most others. And, of course, my use of silence more productive than yours.

Homo curvatus in se among us humans is insideous. Dangerous. If left unchecked, it marginalizes others, struts our own egos, and eventually discounts as little or nothing what—or better yet, who!-- is our True Self: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Heading in one direction by the dynamics of homo curvatus in se, we desperately need to go in another direction. Curving, arching, and habitually swerving toward one’s self, we need to aim ourselves—minds, hearts, strength, and soul--toward someone other than ourselves: each one's True Self, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God in his grace gives us our True Self in Christ. In prayer we turn from our false selves and meet the Center of our lives, the True Self. Whenever we review our day and discover where repentance is necessay, we are going in the right direction.

God’s gift of a good prayerbook works wonders in this redirectioning. Here’s how it works. Just before we get ready to pray the Psalms for the day, my prayerbook suggests that I observe “silence for meditation.” That where and when I sit quietly for a while to review the day. This extended review invariably reveals numerous occasions when I sinned against family members, neighbors, strangers, and God. I didn’t do what I should have done, and I did what I should not have done. And all in the interest of promoting my false self, my egotistical, self-protective self.

After the “silence for meditation” June and I offer this prayer, echoing images from Psalm 141:

Let in incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever.

Aware that God’s loving kindness is descending upon us, we then sing the Psalms for the evening and end the day in God’s grace, centered in Christ, the True Self.

Images: Evangelical Lutheran Worship

A post-script: If an exploration of the undercurrents of self-deception and the management of false selves interests you, perhaps like me you may wish to purchase and read Gregg A. Ten Elshof's I Told Me So, recently published by Wm. B. Eerdmans.

The closing of our eyes in prayer

Last Saturday (during the Week of Pentecost 15) during Morning Prayer many of us read Chapter 8 of I Kings: it’s the story of Solomon’s dedication of the new constructed Temple. At one point, the story’s narrator says,

And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Then Solomon said,

The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.

This is a remarkable detail of the dedication story because it turns up-side-down and inside-out our usual thinking about God’s glory. Usually we imagine God’s glory as a great brightening Light, a kind of blinding whiteness that bursts radiantly from God’s presence. Here, however, the glory of God comes cloud-like, a foggy darkness so solid that the priests had to grope their way around, unsure about their whereabouts, unable to stand and do their work. In short, God’s glory is also an enveloping darkness.

Those who practice Centering Prayer know that teachers like Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington make it a point to recommend that we sit comfortably “with eyes closed” when introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.

To close one’s eyes is one way we allow God’s darkening glory to come upon us. Jesus himself recommended such environmental darkness for prayer when giving us guidelines, he recommended that we into our closet, shut the door, and pray to our Father who sees in secret (Matthew 6). As I have said elsewhere, inasmuch as first-century Jewish homes had no closets as we know them, it likely that Jesus is suggesting that go off somewhere alone, pull a prayer shawl over our heads or at least pull down our eyelids so that we enter a personal darkness to be with God--or better said, that God may be with us.

That is the experience of many when God meets them: Moses on Mt. Sinai, Paul when struck blind, Joseph in his dreams. The fourteenth-century classic on contemplative prayer is titled The Cloud of Unknowing. The anonymous author of that book tells us that it is when we enter a "cloud" and remove as many distractions as possible, even to the diminishment of following thoughts themselves, that God speaks His healing silence.

Yet even in darkness one may experience what appears to be simply darkness. A friend of mine recently told me about his contemplative practice this way:

Having a subjective “felt experience of God” would be nice, but I don’t really don’t look for that. Just sitting for twenty minutes or so and then listening to the healing silence that dwells behind all of the noise and chatter in the world is enough for me! Centering Prayer is a tool which quiets the mind and then allows a person to rest in silence for a short period of time every day. And for me that silence is not empty -- but it’s alive and good and has something to do with eternity and with God. Perhaps we should not expect more than that.

In the closing of our eyes, in whatever darkness we enter, we always sit as the guests of God who comes as and when He wishes. Fr. Keating has somewhere noted that that he "continues to meet people who are very advanced in the spiritual journey who insist that they have never had the grace of contemplative prayer as a felt experience of God.” Certainly my own experience has been something of the kind. My “felt experiences” of God have been terribly (I use the word carefully) brief, sometimes awefully (again I use the word carefully) brief. More often in God’s silence I find myself almost always wrapped in some kind of pervasive Love, healed, cured of anxiety, dissipation, and worry. In my "unknowing," without words in some strange way I am aware of God’s presence. At the same time, like those priests at the dedication of the temple, I sit gropingly, many times unsure as to where to stand and go. Nevertheless, as I raise my eyelids and look around (sometimes to see the difference between night and dawn), I realize God in his great dark glory has been with me.

Isn’t it so with you?

Image: Jack Baumgartner, Self-Portrait with Closed Eyes

Recent new about Fr. Thomas Keating

As some of you may know, Fr. Thomas Keating was hospitalized last week with a pulmonary embolism. On Saturday, September 12, he had a simple surgical procedure to ensure the clots do not move into his lungs. On Sunday evening, September 13, he returned to his home at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, and is resting and in good spirits.

Fr. Keating is the author of many book on the theology and practice of contemplative prayer.

Listing Prayer

Many Christians look forward to those times during the day when they can find a time of silence for sacred reading, morning and evening prayer, and some form of contemplative practice, perhaps Centering Prayer. It may require that they rise earlier in the morning than others or go to bed a little later than some. To turn their intentions into action they also find it helpful to mark in advance their daily calendar for such times. Along with making a list of daily things to be done (don't forget to get eggs!), not a few find it helpful to write the word Prayer at the beginning and end of each day’s listing. All such habits help us keep time sacred, enter the Presence of God, listen to Our Lord, and respond to the Holy Spirit through the whole day--all twenty-four hours.

By the way, I found this observation earlier in the day while reading The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware:

It is common to regard contemplation as a rare and exalted gift, and so no doubt it is in its plenitude. Yet the seeds of a contemplative attitude exist in all of us. From this hour and moment I can start to walk through the world, conscious that it is God's world, that he is near me in everything that I see and touch, in everyone whom I encounter. However spasmodically and incompletely I do this I have already set foot upon the contemplative path.