Contemplative prayer – Page 6

Category: Contemplative prayer

Oh To Be Like A Dove

22 June 2022 blogpastor 1 Comment

With ease the dove nestles in the gap that she calls home. Home is simple, bare yet solid. Sometimes the rain flushes the floor clean. However, life has its headaches. The jarring screech that vibrates the home throughout the day ceases only after midnight, and then restarts at dawn. She gets used to it. Not her ideal home but it will have to do. She feels content with her current life circumstances.

Here she finds rest and safety.

She enjoys unblocked views of the Chinese Gardens. On Sundays, she loves watching the foreign workers playing a game of cricket in the vast green before her.

Though she lives from beak to stomach there is no lack.

Anytime, she is free to take flight into God’s vast world and feel the joy of fulfilling all that God has designed her to be and to do. She feels close to God when she uses all the gifts that God has given her: feathers and wings, lightness of body, natural navigation system, sight, and sensitivity to airflow and predators.

God has graced her with peace, goodness and abundance.

Like the dove, I am thankful that God has put me in a place of grace and peace, of freedom and sweetness, of contentment and fulfilment. The Lord is more than enough. The vista ahead is exciting. The simple life is simply life-giving and life-freeing.

“Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm” (Psalm 45:5-8).

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:2,3).

Selah.

“Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet”: book reflection

18 April 2022 blogpastor Leave a comment

Initially I was intrigued by the title. It stoked my curiosity. As I read the foreword and introduction, I felt drawn to the authors’ thesis as it was something I wholeheartedly agreed with: the tests of authentic prayer are in the fruit of the praying life or community. I was interested in the relationship between prayer and service, the mystic and prophet.

I was not disappointed as the authors describe the symbiotic relationship between the mystic and the prophet in the believer’s life. “The starting point is not as important as that the circle be complete: prayer leading to life, and life leading to prayer. Real prayer lead to involvement; real involvement leads to prayer. Deeper spirituality impels to action; action impels to deeper spirituality, and the circle continues and deepens. The mystic becomes prophet, the prophet becomes mystic” (Dykman & Carrol, 80). For me it has been deeper prayer leading me to more involvement in life and service, and I must concede that deeper involvement in service had driven me often to God in helplessness and hope. It drew me more into prayer.

Spiritual Direction

I liked the authors’ description of spiritual direction. It was not narrowly confined to the guided development of the directees’ prayer life, but a journey with them in their faith development, which includes conversion, struggle, integration, awareness of reality, and a call to radical love. The call to radical love would include immersion in works of service, justice and compassion. “All these holy people are holy not just because they pray or write eloquently about that prayer, but because their prayer leads them to respond to Christ in the given historical cultural moment. All of them respond in a unique way to unique situations in which they find the Lord calling to his people. But all respond outside themselves in service. Each mystic becomes a prophet”(Dykman & Carrol, 82). This reminded me how this emphasis on mission and service is so similar to Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises led people into an experience of forgiveness of sins, and commitment to Christ, and a life of service and praise to the Creator and Redeemer.

Dark Night or Desert Experience

I found the chapter on PRAYING THROUGH THE DESERT is particularly enlightening. The authors gave two descriptions of the desert experience in prayer: one from St John of the Cross, the 16^th Century mystic and poet, and another through Thomas Merton a 20^th Century mystic and poet. St John of the Cross described three signs in prayer that indicated that God was inviting a person to deeper levels of prayer. First, one experiences the frustration and lack of satisfaction from discursive meditation which majored on study, analysis, and abstractions. Words, thoughts, concepts, principles does not quench the spiritual thirst. Second, one finds it challenging to focus or a particular subject or fix the imagination. The logical is dead, the intuition is alive. Third, despite difficulties in prayer, one still had the desire to be with the Lord, to have solitude and prayer. Even though God seems far away. The wise counsel of St John of the Cross is for the spiritual director to help direct to look at his or her larger context and entire life, to see how God had been active and working in and around him or her. “We cannot judge our prayer, whether it be consoling or desolate, by how we feel when we pray, but rather by how we are loving when we live” (62). A person’s prayer life may be desert-like but an examen of his life may reveal God’s loving activities and presence in many areas of his life of service. This helps him see that God’s love is as strong as ever and that the desert may be God’s way of moving on the purification of his faith in and love for God and not the result of his sin.

Thomas Merton demystified the term. Merton sees in what he prefers to describe as a “desert experience”, a call to be faithful to a life of prayer despite spiritual dryness and blandness. It required a faith that was unsupported by a sense of God’s presence, a faith that blindly, faithfully, persistently continues its quest of intimacy despite dryness, feeling of hopelessness, meaninglessness and even discouragement and anguish. Often the person in the desert will blame himself for “moving away from God” through his sin, idols or failures. He or she needs a director to discern God’s loving and quiet action in the larger perspective of a whole life, not just the current period of desert experience.

I enjoyed this book and found myself underlining many sentences and paragraphs. These definitely deserve further study, reflection and meditation.

When Doing Nothing Does Wonders

14 March 2022 blogpastor Leave a comment

I was dipping into a book titled “Soul Keeping” that Pastor Thomas gave me. John Ortberg is a gifted writer, and I must add a gifted preacher too for I had heard him live a few times. In the chapter on “The Soul Needs Rest” he writes about entering soul rest and how we can experience four cycles of grace: 1) Acceptance – to know that you are loved apart from deserving or earning it; 2) Sustenance – the need to develop habits and practices that replenish us spiritually, 3)Significance – a cycle where grace we have received flows out from us to others. This is about who we are before it is about what we do. 4) Resting in Achievement – bearing spiritual fruit by God’s grace and then resting in it. Ortberg then talked about the important practices of solitude and “doing nothing”(rest). Here is where it got me into an experiment.

“The capacity of doing nothing is actually evidence of a lot of spiritual growth. The French writer Blaise Pascal wrote centuries ago: “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own room.” In solitude we liberate ourselves from the pressure of the world. You don’t do that by going into solitude with a list of things you want to work on. You don’t even approach solitude with the expectation that you will come away with some deep spiritual insight. It’s not about what you’re going to do; it’s about what you’re not going to do. In solitude you rest” .
(Ortberg,137,138)

“Whether with an entire day, or periods of time set aside every day, your soul needs rest. Not a change of scenery or a spiritual retreat – those are fine and may contribute to rest. But to remain healthy, our souls need solitude with no agenda, no distractions, no noise. If someone asks you what you did in your “time apart’, the correct response should be, “Nothing.” Doing nothing does wonders for the soul.”
Ortberg,140

A Little Experiment

I was reflecting on this and asked myself, Can I idle? Do nothing. Not touch the phone. Not reach for a book or a screen. Not do anything productive, useful, helpful, purposeful. Can I let my mind idle; let my hands be free of holding anything? Can I cease fidgeting and be still? Breathe. Do nothing. I actually set a timer to one hour and tried this. I saw an empty space on the wall and almost got up to nail and hang a frame. I saw the dust on the window pane and thought of getting the Windex and a cloth from the yard to clean it. It was too quiet and I wanted to play some instrumental music. I saw my phone and wanted to look through the WhatsApp messages. It was not easy to sit in my chair and look out into the distance at the swathe of green that was once the Jurong Country Club. After a while I got fidgety and looked at the timer. The minutes moved too slowly.

Then I noticed my breathing. I noticed the sound of the KDK wall fan in the room. The wandering of my mind slowed down and I was thinking nothing in particular. Just looking into the distance and doing nothing. At the end of the hour, I realized it was not easy to do nothing and rest the soul. However, when I later read and meditated on Scriptures I found myself more alert and present to the words I read, and to the presence of the Lord. Wonderful.

For more ideas on methods of prayer go to RESOURCES