Month: February 2010 (Page 3 of 3)

In this post I want again to start with a quote.  This is from William Shannon, “Wordless prayer…..is humble, simple, lowly, prayer in which we experience our total dependence on God and our awareness that we are in God.  Wordless prayer is not an effort to ‘get anywhere,’ for we are already there (in God’s presence).  It is just that we are not  sufficiently conscious of our being there.”  When you are either at the threshold or have now gone through, you are being drawn by the voice of love.  You are there in the presence of love.  Remember it learning to receive this love, not try to analyze or experience love in a certain way.  Just sit there and receive love.  Two of the sure indicators that you are being drawn beyond your usual way of relating to God is first;  the realization that the manner in which you have related to God no longer bring satisfaction.  This is an indication that God is calling you to a different place.  You are being called to leave the safety of the familiar. It is the call to come home.   Many pull back at this point.  The second indicator is the presence of an underlying peace.  Even though you might feel confused, uncertain and even somewhat fearful, there is an unlying peace that you should keep the journey.  Benner makes the interest observation that “the thing we fear the most is what we need to most.”  Of cours, that is the love of God.  A third indictor is the awareness that you can’t go back.  Don’t go back.  Stay there with you gaze upon Jesus.  Make Psalm 27: 4 and Psalm 105:4 your daily prayer.

In a real sense you are leaving the known and going into the “unknown.”  It is like leaving the old country for a new country.  Be assured that someone else is holding you and guiding you. Remember you are coming home.   Paul are reminds us, “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ (I Cor 2:9).  There is much more to reality then you had assumed with your small, isolated, ego-centered minds.  With the mind you have only material eyes to see what is there.  You can get caught up in a “mass cultural trance’  (Rohr)  that causes you to accept the illusions of your own thinking and the culture as reality. You are trapped in a kind of normalcy which says “this is the way it is.”  God is now trying to “wake” you up to what is really there.  He wants you to have spiritual eyes.  You could say that you need to have your spiritual lens cleansed so you can see.  You cannot do this on your own.  You have to allow it to be done to and for you 

Richard Rohr calls this movement the gaining of a “beginner’s mind.”  It involves knowledge that can be felt. He compares it to the first experience of learning for an infant.  It is primarily felt in the body (kinesthetic knowing).  The child knows self by being held and gazed upon by the mother. It infant and mother are not separate but one.   It is not seen, heard or thought.  It’s felt.  It is beyond words and discrption.  It just is.  Similarly God wants us to know him in the same “felt” way.  No separation with our mind but oneness at the heart level.  Our problem is that we are dualistic.  We are split from our hearts, where we experience knowing God’s love.  Instead of usual comparing, judging, and controlling  of our minds, we simple learn to rest in the love of God.  In this regard I have found real comfort in Psalm 130:2, “But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”   

So in this post, I want to assure that one man who I am writing for, that going through the threshold might be rather frightening.  It sure was for me.  All my fears, the illusions of my mind, and the protective attitudes of my fragile ego all cried out to stop and turn back to the familiar.  I was not comfortable with not knowing and walking in the darkness.  It could be that you will pull back at times.  That’s o.k.  But go through again and again.  Learn to stay for a longer period of time.  This is sacred space beyond ordinary normalcy.  Be assured that if you have your gaze upon Jesus, trusting that He is bringing you home to the Father by the presence of the Holy Spirit, and if you are storing up basic promises  from scripture for assurance, and if you hold unto the Apostles’ Creed as your statement of faith, and if you are seeking out the fellowship of like-minded pilgrims, you are being lead by the Spirit of love.  Make Eph 3:16-20 your daily prayer.  Don’t let some well-meaning man or woman who has not crossed the threshold, hold you back with some kind of nonsense about “new age thinking.”  I have fought many of those battles over the years. My journey began as a Lutheran.  Then I embraced fully the evangelical movement.  I have been deeply involved in the charismatic movement.  They are all still a part of my journey.  But it has been the contemplative journey that has allowed me to learn how to receive the love of God and know deep within heart that “I have a Father in heaven who delights in me.”

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”   Richard Rohr encourages us to repeat this mantra throughout the day:  “God’s life is  living itself in me.  I am aware of life living itself in me.  God’s life is living itself in me.  I am aware of life living in me.

I want to begin this post with some thoughts from M. Basil Pennington, a Cistercian monk, who taught on Centering prayer, “God is infinitely present.  He will not push himself into our lives.  He knows the greatest thing he as given us is our freedom.  If we want habitually, even exclusively, to operate from the level of our own reason, he will respectfully keep silent.  We can fill ourselves with our own thoughts, ideas, images, and feelings.  He will not interfere.  But if we invite him with attention, opening the inner spaces with silence,  he will speak to our souls, not in words or concepts, but in the mysterious way that love expresses itself – by presence.”   What Pennington so wisely is describing is the experience of “knowledge through  love.”  For years that thought bothered me.  But now I know some of its reality in my life.  I have a burden then you who read this post might experience “knowledge through love.”  That is the contemplative journey.

To finally know God’s love at the level of the heart, we will need to learn the practice of silence and solitude.  In silence we  move away from the distractions and demands of our daily life, finding a quiet place to just be.  Men, you will simply have to take the time.  Not a lot but some.  Have a short devotion and then just sit there.  We will talk more about this later.  This practice will then begin to produce inner solitude in our hearts, a quiet space that allows God to speak to us.  In the words of Leanne Payne we learn to “see that which is invisible and to hear that which is inaudible”, seeing with the eyes and ears of our heart, that which is the “unseen Real.”  In the silence comes a growing awareness of the “still, small voice” coming from deep in his heart. There is a growing discontent with the ordinary, creating a hunger to experience God in deeper, personal ways.  It is like a longing and desire for more of a connectedness to God.  

If you are a man who is already practicing silence before God, then you have passed the threshold.  You know some the joys and struggles of “letting go” of the controls of the mind, the need be be in charge, and facing the fears of the unknown.  It is a practice that has to be learned through intentionality. At first you will have to be disciplined to stick with the time alone.   Others might not be aware or even care to pay attention to the longings of your heart.  I have to say honestly, these posts have little relevance to where you are on the journey.  Basically you are stuck in “the control tower” of the mind, afraid to risk being loved.  But it is especially the men, who know they need to go deeper, to move beyond what has been their normal practice in devotions, to finally come to a place where they know they are loved and accepted by God just as they are, not as they should be.  If only one man is at that place, and he is reading this blog, I want to be a voice of encouragement in your life.  I would like to be another man “who is willing to fight for your heart.”  In the words of Richard Rohr, “you can trust yourself” ; that is, follow the longing and desire.  The first step is to start quieting down and learn to listen.

In listening we are learning to be attentive and aware of our hearts.  We “sink” with our minds into our hearts.  This is wordless prayer in which we are not making a effort to “get anywhere,” because we are already there (in God’s presence).  It is just that we are not conscious of our being there.  So my best advice is to learn to just be there in the presence of God.  You don’t have to think any thoughts or do any spiritual practices.  Just let God speak to your heart.  You are learning to let go of the controls of thought and practice. Instead of learning in the usual sense, you are “un-learning”; that is you are getting acclaimated to not knowing.  It is similar to spiritual sitting in the dark, yet knowing that you are being loved in the darkness.   Don’t let the distractions that come discourage and frighten you.  This is only an indication that you are slowing down.  All of what has preoccupied your attention is demanding your awareness.  Learn to just sit with the distractions, treating them like  ‘cobwebs’  you simply learn to blow away.  Most of all, continue the practice just being there.  With the eyes of your heart, look up and  out at Jesus as you weather the storm of  your mind wanting attention and control.  Again I am warning you, it will take time to get used to the storms of your mind.  After awhile you will get used to it.