112 – Success in Spiritual Practices – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Our class was reading some more articles on prayer this week and one article provoked some questions for me about spiritual practices/disciplines.

How do we judge the value of a practice?

Do practices have to be “fruitful” for us to stay with them?

How can we decide if a practice is successful or unsuccessful?

What happens when a practice does not “work?”

I don’t have the sense I have answers today for these questions but I do have the sense these are questions that need asking.  I wonder if the way many talk and write about spiritual practices/disciplines we can come to the place where we trust the practice.  We hear someone tell us what such and such practice has done for them and we “buy into” the practice to get the results we hear about.

One article we read this week, “Prayer in Eclipse” by Ken Massey, pushed me think to think beyond the “quick fix” approach.

In the article Massey writes, “My prayer life, [has been] long eclipsed by emotional pain over my daughter’s tragedy,  . . . I no longer have much faith in the ‘power of prayer’…” (p 76)  “At some unconscious point, I wrote off God’s intervention and went into survival mode.” (p 78)

Does that get your attention?

Let me share one more quote from the article, “Something has changed for me in the past year, however, which I can only attribute to the prayers of Jesus. Apparently, when I could not pray, Jesus never stopped. When I was buried in chaff, he was trying to dig me out. My faith found a resting place in Jesus’ prayers for me rather than in my prayers to him. I no longer have much faith in the ‘power of prayer,’ but my faith in the power of God is emerging from eclipse.” (pp 78-79)

What questions do you have?  What answers do you begin to hear?

 

111 – Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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This past week as I was reading an article from Christian Reflection entitled “Pray without Ceasing” the final sentence caught my attention,

“Explicit address to the Lord, whether in private or in corporate worship, is a moment of filigreed ornament in a deeper and more quotidian process which is identical with the Christian life as a whole.”

I reread the sentence a time or two and then had to look up some of the words to make sure I understood what the the writer was trying to tell me.

Why do I share this with you (other than to confirm my limited vocabulary)?  It got me to thinking back to the question I asked a couple of weeks ago, “What is the best advice on prayer you ever received?”  One piece of advice I remember is “Pray as you can, not as you cannot.”  That strikes me as a simple and profound truth.  I guess it can be used as an excuse to be so satisfied in our prayer life, we are not open to trying new ways of praying or to think that prayer can be more. But I really don’t see it offered in that spirit.  I think it speaks to a humility and honesty we should bring to prayer.  We should not try to pray in other people’s words if they are not our words.  We need not try to look and sound like someone else when we pray.  Prayer is a place we can stand honestly before God.  We stand as we are.  No masks, no put-ons, no hiding.  I don’t always find that easy.  But in my deepest heart I know it is how God wants me to come.  And it is how God meets me.

 

110 – Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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During the next several weeks our class at church will be reading and thinking about prayer (and praying too), so I will be sharing some of what comes from that reading/thinking/praying here.

Let me start by mentioning something that is missing from the material we will be using.  I did not see anything mentioned about the Latin phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi.

I have seen the phrase translated “the law of prayer [is] the law of belief.”  I prefer the translation, “as we pray, so we believe.”  What seems even better to me is, lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, which I take as, “as we pray, so we believe, so we live.”

Should we take this to mean that for everyone prayer/worship must precede belief, which must precede how we live?  I don’t think so.  I think it reminds us about balance.  It is so easy for me to let things get out of balance and overemphasize one thing to the neglect of others.  Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi reminds me that these three flow one into another.  Each must find its place in my life.  At times I see this phrase as if written on the rim of a wheel. As different parts of the wheel touch the ground at different times, so orandi/credendi/vivendi touch the ground at different times as I go through life, but all touch the ground at some point.

Some enter the life of faith by prayer, some by belief some by living, but once the life of faith is entered that life will eventually touch and be touched by all three.  The danger is that we sometimes emphasize one (or two) to the neglect of the other(s).  From where I stand now and look back over my journey of faith, I see that for many years I put so much energy and emphasis into belief, I had little energy (or interest) left over for the other aspects of the journey.  During that time, I might have thought about prayer and read about prayer, but let “thinking” become a substitute for prayer.  At another time, I was in a community that was “into action” and “doing what we as Christians must do.”  Don’t misunderstand me, there is much we need to do, but at that time in my journey I was so into doing things that I not only minimized prayer and belief, I thought them of secondary importance and at times as unimportant.

How hard is it in life to find balance?  At times, it has been very hard for me.

Maybe a little Latin, lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, can remind us of the importance of the right kind of balance.

109 – Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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I was looking over some material on prayer we are going to be reading in our class at church and came across this statement from Don Saliers,

“Prayer is essential to ‘the call to holiness at the heart of the Christian gospel,’ Don Saliers has reminded us. Indeed, it ‘constitutes the focal point of Christian existence: Christ’s own life is one of active prayer and prayerful action.  It is thus fitting to speak of his whole life as a prayer — a continual self-offering in love and obedience to the Father.’”

(from “Prayer” issue of Christian Reflection )

Over the years I have read a number of books on prayer and seen many, many quotes about prayer, but recently I asked myself a new question, “What is the best advice I have ever received on prayer?”

It’s one thing to read what people write about prayer but is another to hear some word of advice you know you have to take to heart.  How about you? What is the best advice you have ever received on prayer?

If you are inclined to share your answer with me, I would love to hear from you.  Just reply to this email if you want to share your answer with me.

108 – Rule of Life – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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I hope you found something interesting and helpful in the links I sent last week.  I trust I did not overwhelm you.

Before we leave our thinking about “Rule and Rhythm of Life” for the moment, I want to share a link to an article about “sharing a common rule of life.”  Kyle Childress writes, “The rule of life is not confessional, creedal, or doctrinal … but it makes plain how the members live and serve together.”

It is helpful for us to always remember we are part of a community (probably more than one) and live and mature as disciples in community.

You can find the article, “Ties that Bind: Sharing a Common Rule of Life”  here –

http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/116016.pdf

There is also a study guide for the article here –

http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/116163.pdf

The article comes from an issue of Christian Reflection devoted to the subject, “Monasticism: Old and New.”  You can find information about that issue and the table of contents here –

http://www.baylor.edu/ifl/christianreflection/index.php?id=75853

107 – Rule of Life – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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What does a Rule of Life look like?

If you and I were to write out our Rule of Life what might we write?  To begin to think about that I want to point you toward several Rules written by some groups.  These rules come from several sources and some are very detailed.  Please do not be put off by the length of some but read them to see the underlying commitments that form these bodies.

Society of St Francis – go over half way down the page to “The Rule of Life of the First Order” (just past “The Principles of the First Order”)

http://www.oremus.org/liturgy/ccp/18ssf.html

The Order of St Luke

http://www.saint-luke.net/index.php/who-we-are/rule-of-life-and-service

Fellowship of Saint John

http://www.ssje.org/fsjrule.html

Society of St John the Evangelist

http://ssje.org/ssje/personal-reflection/

The Berkeley Divinity School at Yale

http://berkeleydivinity.net/community/rule-life/

The Rule from Berkeley Divinity School closes with this –

“The ultimate intent of the pattern of life described in these chapters is to enable the cultivation of a disposition toward godliness that will equip each of us, trusting in the mercies of God, for the service of Christ in the world as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit.”

 

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106 – Spiritual Practice – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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What nourishes you?  What spiritual practice or practices are the most treasured sources of nurture for you?  What do you return to again and again to “connect” you with God?  What, is missing during the day, makes the day feel incomplete?

I have listed below some the practices we have mentioned here.  Look over the list with the above questions in mind.  Let me know what you find out.

Breath Prayer
Celebration
Centering Prayer
Chastity
Confession
Daily Office
Examen
Fasting
Fellowship
Fixed Hour Prayer
Frugality
Gratitude
Guidance
Holy Week
Jesus Prayer
Journaling
Lectio Divina
Lent
Meditation
Morning Prayer/Quiet
Octave of Easter		 Patience
Poetry
Praise
Prayer
Presence
Retreat
Rhythm and Rule of Life
Sabbath
Sacrifice
Saints’ Calendar
Secrecy
Service
Silence
Simple Prayer
Simplicity
Solitude
Study
Submission
Study
Waiting
Watching
Worship

105 – Prayer – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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A few days ago I came across these few sentences of Kallistos Ware and it struck me at the time as some how very appropriate as we celebrate Independence Day.  See if you agree.

‘The principal thing is to stand before God with the intellect in the heart, and to go on standing before him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life.‘ The words are those of a Russian bishop in the nineteenth century, Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894), but they reflect accurately the understanding of prayer to be found also in Greek and Syriac writers of the first eleven centuries. Three points of basic significance for early patristic spirituality stand out in Bishop Theophan’s statement. First, to pray is to stand before God-not necessarily to ask for things or even to speak in words but to enter into a personal relationship with God, a meeting ‘face to face;’ which at its most profound is expressed not in speech but in silence. Second, it is to stand in the heart, in the deep center of the person, at the point where created humanity is directly open to uncreated love. It is significant Theophan avoids making any sharp contrast between head and heart, for he tells us to stand with the ‘intellect’ or ‘mind’ in the heart; the two are to be united. Third, this attitude or relationship of ‘standing’ is to be continual, ‘unceasingly day and night, until the end of life.’ Prayer is to be not merely one activity among others but the activity of our entire existence, a dimension present in everything else that we undertake: ‘Pray constantly’ (1 Thess 5:17). It should constitute not so much something that we do from time to time as something that we are all the time.  Since prayer is in this way a direct encounter between living persons, it cannot be restricted within precise rules; it remains free, spontaneous, unpredictable. (From “Ways of Prayer and Contemplation: I Eastern” by Kallistos Ware in Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century by Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff and Jean Lecercq, pp 395 – 396)

Does “free, spontaneous, unpredictable” describe prayer for you?

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104 – Rule of Life – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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I am still thinking about Sabbath this week and I am wondering if it has ever been fully part of my routine.  And that got me to wondering what is my normal routine through the day, through the week, even through the year.  Do I even have a “normal” routine or am I just at the mercy of what happens to me each day.

A couple of weeks ago, I found this remark form Evelyn Underhill in my inbox,

“A simple rule, to be followed whether one is in the light or not, gives backbone to one’s spiritual life, as nothing else can.”  (Evelyn Underhill, The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, Charles Williams, ed., p. 312).

I have read in a number of places the advice to consciously establish a “Rule of Life.”  You may or may not have thought about a “formal” Rule of Life but there is already a rhythm to your life.  Why don’t you notice that rhythm this week?  Pay attention to what you do during the day and from day to day and you may see the rhythm that runs though your days and weeks.  Are there any surprises?  Is there any thing you want to change in that rhythm?  If so, you may already be thinking about what you want your Rule of Life to be.

 

103 – Sabbath – Intention on the Spiritual Journey

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Have you ever heard someone say, “I just got back from my vacation, and I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!”  Maybe you have said that?  Or, you take time out of your regular schedule to go to what is called a “retreat” and the event is so crowded with lectures, or talks, or group sessions that you “wear yourself out” while at the retreat?

Do we sometime think of Sabbath in the same way?  As a vacation from our normal work schedule or as a retreat?  To carry the question to the next step, “Do we wear ourselves out on the Sabbath?” Or, is a Sabbath for you a day on which to do “nothing?”  Or maybe Sabbath is merely another name for Sunday (or Saturday or Monday)?

As I am drawn to more and more consider Sabbath, I think I am discovering, Sabbath is not really part of my routine.  Is is a word I throw around but it is not something I experience or, dare say, enjoy.  I wonder why?

Let me share something Wendell Berry wrote about Sabbath,

“Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world’s beauty and abundance.”

What has Sabbath been in your life?  Is it all you want it to be?