Daily Prayer Reflection for Thursday, August 26, 2010

Click Here to Listen

Deep, Living Water: We wish to drink from your springs of life and feel the difference your truth and love make in us as you fill us with yourself transforming us into new-creation-wine. Our prayer-words sound like drunkenness until shaped by grace. We shall speak them until the Word speaks us. Amen.

© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

THE WAY OF INNER SILENCE: Rediscovering an ancient tradition from early Christianity

by Theodore J. Nottingham 

© 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Few western people know that the idea of “inner silence” is at the heart of the earliest expressions of Christian practice and faith. This way of being has a name that has yet to be uncovered in our part of the world. The Greek word “hesychia” has been a fundamental spiritual practice in the traditions of Eastern Orthodox Christianity going back to the first centuries after the appearance of the Anointed One in the hill country of Judea. This mysterious word can be translated as “inner tranquility” or “inner silence” and a complex psychological teaching and set of practices has grown up around it, involving some of the great figures of eastern Christianity such as Saint Gregory Palamas, John Cassian, and many others. Hesychasm is a quality of conscious presence that combines constant inner awareness and prayer with deep stillness. It requires a profound self-knowledge, attentiveness to each breath of the body, and commitment to the reality of the sacred at the heart of life. A synthesis of this teaching can be found in a revered book known as “The Philokalia” (translated as “Love of Beauty” or “Love of the Good”) which is central to Orthodox spirituality.

The teaching on “hesychia” is modeled in many ways by the actions of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, but especially in the strange scene presented in Luke 4:28-33, after Jesus had revealed his mission to the people of his home town:
“All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”

In the midst of violent attack, he maintained an attitude of extraordinary inner peace — as he would later on the way to the cross — and responded to the hatred and fury with silence and a detachment that mystically saved him from harm. Though particularly evident in the humility and inner grounding of the Christ, “hesychasm” is a universal concept. Its parallel can be found in other ideas related to spiritual evolution, such as detachment, freedom from desire, inner peace. The results of this effort are seen in the presence of sages and saints in all times and places.

Inner silence ultimately means self-transcendence. It requires us to overcome a fundamental self-interest that guides everyone’s life in order to accept the difficulties of passing circumstances, and to remember the greater context in which our lives are taking place. Accomplishing such inner freedom which leads to inner silence is no passive effort. It in fact demands “inner warfare” as we seek to become liberated from all that is connected with the inherent selfishness in which we are born which includes the self-absorption of relentless thoughts, most of them based on self-interest. This condition is part of our natural make-up, as basic to us as the instinct to survive. The paradox we all must face is that spiritual and psychological survival requires the opposite of this natural instinct.. The maturing of the human character means turning one’s attention to something greater than oneself, which then offers a basis for inner stability, independence from externals, and a peace that “passes all understanding.”

To be without this inner silence founded on the spiritual consciousness of a greater reality is to literally lose ourselves in the stimuli of the outside world and in the hallucinations of our imaginations, fears, daydreams, and vacuous illusions.

The serenity that is witnessed in the sages and saints of the past is not meant to be some rare or unique nobility of character. It is right alignment with reality, an achievable state for all of us and no less than our birthright, if we are willing to struggle for it.

This inner freedom has nothing to do with emotional disconnection, lack of compassion or disinterest in what is going on around us. In fact, to be rooted in an active state of inner silence gives one the widest scope of vision and makes possible a new awareness and a capacity for unconditional love.

This is very difficult work, as anyone will quickly discover upon making efforts to overcome the noise of our relentless and random thoughts and feelings. It demands moment by moment remembrance of our true purpose in this world, and a constant check on our automatic reactions based on acquired habits and imitations of those around us. The “hesychastic” way calls us to take the state of calm found in deep meditation and carry it with us into the noise and tumult of daily life.

To follow this way of inner silence requires the capacity to accept necessary suffering, a fact that everyone must deal with in one way or another. To experience inner pain without falling victim to self-pity or despair is a sign of a new maturity of will and understanding. At the apex of this way of being is the ability to find joy and gratitude for the gift of life even in the face of great turmoil, injustice, or tragedy. Living in that paradox creates a new quality of Self which transcends the ever-shifting scenery of temporal life. This inner silence is the groundwork of unity, constancy, and true freedom.

Daily Prayer Reflection for Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Click Here to Listen

Almighty God of Life and Love: You know us. We matter to you. You wish to make us beautiful on the inside, simple reflections of your self-giving-love. We consent in silence to this interior renovation. Give us courage to observe our un-loving words, gestures and desires so to become increasingly passive to the personality in us that wants to react, attack or respond in the ways we have been taught by others who had forgotten love. Our being belongs to you. The beauty of love is our destination. Begin our second education into love through Christ by the Spirit who teaches us the way, the truth and the life. Amen.

© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

Weekly Scripture Reading for August 24, 2010: 1 John 4

Click Here to Listen

Our weekly scripture reading from 1 John 4 verses 7-14.

Daily Prayer Reflection for Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Click Here to Listen

Abba: You write new stories with old sentences. You transform deep hurts into sources of love. You are the one we seek in all our pursuits. Hold as we weep and whisper strength when everything seems to be falling apart. You are here with us. In this moment, that is enough. Amen.

© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

Daily Prayer Reflection for Monday, August 23, 2010:

Click Here to Listen

 Holy Love, Holy God: With the dawn we rise by the gift of your light in the face of Christ whose love claims us this moment and lifts us up from the confusion of life into the truth of who we are and where we come from.  In the hours of this day, regardless of what we are doing or where we are going, we wish for increasing purity of heart and attention to Spirit, our inner companion of high truth and eternal love. Amen.

© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

The Watch of the Heart

In this video blog, guest contributor Ted Nottingham teaches us the ancient practice of nepsis, which is the guarding of the heart, a mindful attentiveness to God in every dimension of our life through self-observation of inner thoughts and feelings and non-identification with them. Ted is an author and  pastor of Northwoods Christian Church in Indianapolis, IN.

Part 2: A Pastoral Response to Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ Who Question or Attack the Good, True and Beautiful, yet Mistakenly Maligned Spiritual Practice of Centering Prayer

Click Here to Listen

By Rev. Peter Traben Haas

© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

Misperception #2: Centering Prayer is not biblical.

Centering Prayer is as biblical as you want it to be. While the exact words “Centering Prayer” do not appear anywhere in the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, the motivation and purpose of Centering Prayer do. For example, “be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46.10) and “abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15.4).

Just because the method of Centering Prayer is neither explicitly outlined in the Bible nor taught by Jesus does not automatically disqualify it as a legitimate spiritual practice for Christian formation. If a step by step biblical description is needed to legitimate everything Christians do or believe, we would need to cease using the word Trinity, a word not explicitly found in the Bible. Just because the Bible does not speak of a particular word or spiritual practice, does not make it inappropriate. If that were the case, the doctrines of the Trinity and Eucharist would both be far less clear than they are today due to the method of theological correlation and analogy developed over time through spiritual conversation and ecumenical councils. Furthermore, the Bible does not speak of a great many important things which we now take for granted and value very highly, such as DNA, the expanding universe, treatments for cancer, and most importantly as it relates to Centering Prayer, the existence of the unconscious.

Remember, Jesus said that his disciples could not “bear all that he had to teach” (John 16.12) them, but that the Holy Spirit would come after his ascension and continue the teaching he began by leading the church “into all truth” (John 16.13). This means that there is a mechanism in place that allows for the developmental unfolding of knowledge and practice. Remember, it took nearly four hundred years after Jesus’ ascension for the church to generally agree upon the nature of Jesus’ relationship to the Father (at both the Council of Nicaea 325 C.E. and Chalcedon 451 C.E.). They called it the Hypostatic Union; a key element to the doctrine of the Trinity. But did Jesus speak of himself using this word? Absolutely not. He hinted at it in other ways (i.e. John 10.30).

Christian knowledge and practice is developmental. Grounded in the historical events of the Incarnation and the earliest Christian experiences with and reflections about Jesus, Christian theologians and leaders have tirelessly sought to integrate faith and practice and verify experience with Scripture. There is not a universally accepted formula to do this. It requires listening. Discernment. Intuition. Wisdom. It is a developmental and relational process, meaning that it emerges from the known into the unknown as led by the Spirit. The Scriptures and Tradition teach us that which has been revealed and received. Yet, we do not know what will be. It is the Spirit of Truth who leads us forward bringing about God’s intended destiny for us and the cosmos. This requires trust and faith. For some, the lack of control over the process prompts fear – which only hinders one’s present and future flourishing in Christ.

In the light of the modern discoveries of the unconsciousness, the expanding universe, the relationality of the quantum world, I believe that the Holy Spirit has been calling us to new dimensions of prayer. Dimensions intuited long ago by Christian mystics and insights that resonate with the ancient wisdom of the contemplative prayer practices. Are we listening to the insights? They are shedding new light on the gift of prayer and its extraordinary role in our future unfolding as a human species.

We are instructed to “test the spirits” (1 John 4.1). So, let us proceed to test the spirit of Centering Prayer. We will do so by using the method of theological analogy to reveal the endless connections between the Scriptures and the motivation and purpose of Centering Prayer, and in so doing, reveal the thoroughly biblical foundation for this good, true and beautiful gift of the Spirit for an age in transition.

Motivation (The Why – answering the question, “for what reason?”)

The motivation to practice Centering Prayer is grounded in the reality that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1.26). The breath of God brought us into being (Genesis 2.7) and since then we are ontologically connected with God and long for the fullness of reunion. Thus, the Spirit bears witness to our spirit, as Like calls to like. (Romans 8.5-16). The longing for the fullness of reunion becomes all the more acute when we are united with Christ through faith by the Spirit, for in Christ, nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8.39), and in Centering Prayer we remember and experience this truth again and again.

Centering Prayer is motivated by the longing in the human soul for God (Psalm 42.1-3). The longing is a response to God’s call. It is as if we are hearing beautiful and mysterious music from a distant room. We know it is calling to us. We feel it in every cell. Sometimes we are distracted by the conversation nearby. Sometimes we ignore the music. But it is profoundly present, singing its octave of adoration, shouting its hymns of glory, booming its timpani’s of silent thunder. The music is sheer grace, drawing us to the reality of the truth which is love experienced through prayer. The experience of Centering Prayer is possible because of the grace of God flowing forth from the heart of the Trinity, one for another, and all for us.

This grace is true for all prayer practices. It is true for Centering Prayer all the more because the essence of our response to the call is total surrender. We surrender. We consent in silence to the presence and action of God. We cease trying to get to God with our intercessions and complaints. We say, yes to God’s Yes through the veil of silence. We are motivated not to find God in the center of our being, but to find our center in the depth of God’s love through Christ by the Spirit. Could there be anything more beautifully Christian than that?

Purpose (The Where it will take us – answering the question, “to what end?”)

The purpose of Centering Prayer is grounded in the reality that while we are created in the image of God, we are also “fallen.” To be fallen suggests we were actually created to live at a higher level. Thus, we are in need of healing, of transformation, yes, of salvation (understood as the healing of our human nature in Christ). We recognize that anyone who is in Christ is a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5.17), reconciled to God with whom we are now at peace (Romans 5.1). In addition to this new state of being with God through Christ, we are also invited into a deeper participation with Christ, indeed to participate in the “divine nature” (2 Peter 1.4). Traditionally, this is called the process of sanctification, and the goal of this journey of sanctification (purgation/illumination) is what the Western church calls “union” and the Eastern church calls “theosis,” and what I simply call “becoming love.”

The end of Centering Prayer is love. Not the love of our selves, not even the love of God or neighbor. But the transformation into love, for God is love (1 John 4.7-8) and we are children of God and heirs with Christ (Romans 8.12-17). Love is the God-intended destiny of the creation and Centering Prayer is simple, peasant-bread for our nourishment on this most holy and mysterious journey home.

Method (The How – answering the question “what is the means to get there?”).

The method of Centering Prayer is grounded in the reality that the disciples of Jesus asked him how to pray (Luke 11.1-2). Their question gives us permission to continue to ask, seek and knock for the fullness of an answer. We have been doing so ever since they first asked. In this most confusing era of human history, thanks to the tireless ministry of Father Thomas Keating, Father William Meninger, Basil Pennington and Contemplative Outreach, the method of Centering Prayer is widely known. These holy spiritual elders have released from the heart of their monastic experience a simple tool for all Christians.

The method of Centering Prayer is grounded upon one’s intention. We express our intention to love, surrender, consent, follow, trust, believe, hear, listen, taste, see, know…by sitting in silence and using a simple word to guard our heart and mind from its chatter and wandering. Intention. It is everything in the Christian journey. Intentional moments of surrender are modeled after the template of the Prodigal Son, who in a moment of intention “came to his senses” and returned home to father (Luke 15.11-32). It was a difficult journey home, and when he returned he discovered that his father had been waiting all along, probably sending out his own intention for the son’s return. Somehow, the intentions met like magnets and the miracle of return occurred. Intention is completely different than attention, and this distinction makes all the difference.

While the Lord’s Prayer provides a three-fold model for prayer (adoration, petition, contrition), it is not the end of prayer. Word based discursive prayer like the Lord’s Prayer over time, leads one to a deeper awareness of prayer beyond words to simply being with God (Psalm 46.10). John of the Cross summarized all the different kinds of prayer into two categories: discursive and contemplative. Development or progress in prayer is often characterized by the slow transformation of our wordy prayers into silence. We simply rest before God’s I Am-ness, consenting with the wordless intention, Abba, “here I am” (Exodus 3.4; Isaiah 6.9) or with Mary, “let it be in me according to thy word” (Luke 1.38).

The Word of God is the living presence of Christ conveyed by the Spirit through scripture, sacrament, nature and silence. What was the Word of God who became flesh doing alone at night in prayer? Was the Word of God as the Eternal Word of God using words? What word would need to be spoken by the One Eternal Word that is all words? Ignatius, 2nd Century church father, said it best: silence was God’s first word. The method of Centering Prayer rests upon such ancient wisdom.

To be continued…

Daily Prayer Reflection for Friday, August 20, 2010

Click Here to Listen to the Daily Prayer Reflection for Friday, August 20, 2010

Eternal Listener: You touch our lives with a heavy grace opening our hearts to surrender. It is impossible to explain. Awaiting our return, again and again is the presence of Christ asking “will you now love me?” You listen to our confessions and failures. We are forgiven. We are healed. We are awake; only to sleep and fail and fall again. The process continues for years. Then, under the shadow of light, the darkness is no more – but I Am is. Inspire us to such devotion so that the shepherd might know our voice by heart. Amen.

© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

A Pastoral Response to Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ Who Question or Attack the Good, True and Beautiful, yet Mistakenly Maligned Spiritual Practice of Centering Prayer

Click Here to Listen

August 19, 2010
By Rev. Peter Traben Haas
© 2010 www.ContemplativeChristians.com. All Rights Reserved.

While the contemplative disposition often prefers silence, sometimes it is useful to speak up. In the next several posts, I will respond to 5 major criticisms and misperceptions about Centering Prayer. I will then articulate 3 invitations to Centering Prayer. I offer this resource in the spirit of Christian love, which surpasses all ideas and disagreements of perspective. I wish for all who read this article the maximum grace, goodness and growth in Christ.

Common Misperceptions about Centering Prayer

Misperception #1: Centering Prayer is not Christian.

Centering Prayer is Christian because it is a spiritual practice that helps people relate with God the Father, through Christ the Son, by the presence and action of the Holy Spirit. Centering Prayer is not only Christian, it is also Trinitarian. It is designed to lead us into deeper consent to the Father, through Christ by the Spirit. Its means is sheer grace. Its end is sheer grace. It requires sheer faith – not in oneself, but in the love of Abba who wishes to “transform us by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12.1) further into the image of Christ, who is being formed in us through the space of grace we call silence (Galatians 4.19).

Not only was the method of Centering Prayer developed by Christian monks, it falls well within the general Christian contemplative tradition. It is kissing cousins with the well respected and universal Christian practice of Lectio Divina, the slow, attentive spiritual practice of reading and listening to the scriptures. And just who might be kissing us? Well, if you must know, it is our Divine Lover, the Spirit of God, who woos us into the abundant life of Christ through love.

Centering Prayer is also a new branch on the great tree of contemplative Christian prayer. It is not identical with the teaching of the 14th Century anonymous book The Cloud of Unknowing, but their significant connections have been widely articulated. The family tree of Centering Prayer can also be traced to the teachings of Christian saints such as Meister Eckhart, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Thomas Merton. While none of these masters teach the specific method of Centering Prayer, they all articulate the presuppositions of Centering Prayer- consenting to God, the need for unknowing, the role of silence on our spiritual journey, and the grace driven destination of union with God through Christ by the Spirit.

One of the reasons the method of Centering Prayer is necessary and so helpful to modern people is that the method of contemplative prayer has not normally been taught in books. The method was taught by oral tradition, from teacher to student, usually in monastic settings. In our era, at a time when humankind desperately needs practical methods to help us in our world of division, fear and crisis, the doors of the monasteries opened and a beautiful gift was released – a simple method of generous scope, available to all.

Centering Prayer is a further evolution of the classic “Jesus Prayer” universally practiced in the Eastern and Russian Orthodox Christian communions. While different, they share the similarity of resting with God and using a brief word/sentence to guard the heart from the provocations of thoughts, feelings and perceptions. In all the wisdom teachings, East and West, it is widely agreed that all spiritual growth requires dealing with the ceaseless thoughts that arise in our thinking and feeling. The Jesus Prayer addressed this with the phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.” Centering Prayer addresses this by the consent to God’s presence and action using an individually chosen “sacred word.” Keep in mind Centering Prayer is just the first step toward Contemplative Prayer, a key point that I will adress in a later post.

Finally, Centering Prayer is Christian because it is practiced by Christians. Prayer, words or music are not intrinsically Christian. These become Christian when spoken or sung by Christians. In a sense, they are sanctified by those who in good faith and obedience to God use a human method to surrender more of their self to God so that they “might decrease and he might increase” (John 3.30). Centering Prayer is Christian because Jesus Christ uses it by the Spirit to bear the fruit of righteousness and peace, transformation and healing, hope and love in countless lives, including this one. If one is guilty by association, Centering Prayer is guilty of being thoroughly Christian.

To be continued…
______________________________________________________________________________
Peter lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Christina. Peter serves as an associate pastor at Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. Peter received his M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and is currently writing his D.Min dissertation. Peter practices Centering Prayer and seeks to articulate the forgotten contemplative dimension of Christianity to Christianity. He is nurtured by the presence, teachings and writings of Father Thomas Keating, Tim Cook, Bernadette Roberts, the writings of Maurice Nicoll, and the extraordinary Cistercian Studies Series on the Church Fathers published by Cistercian Publications. Peter’s first book, The God Who Is Here, will be published in March 2011 by Lantern Books www.lanternbooks.com

PastorPeterHaas@gmail.com. Peter welcomes conversation.