Archive for the ‘Silence’ Category

Spiritual Formation 101: A Preview

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

On Sunday, September 5, at St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia, we begin a thirteen-week series of seminars designed to deepen our prayer lives.  In the first seminar my responsibility is to introduce the series and provide an overview of what we’ll be studying, discussing, and practicing.   For those of you who are interested, here is a preview of the preview:

On September 12:  Sacred Reading
On September 19:  Fixed-hour Praying, Daily Prayer Books
On September 26:  Centering Prayer: Silence and the Contemplative Tradition
On October 3:  Using the Church’s Lectionary and Calendar
On October 10:  Praying the Psalter,  the Quiet Singing of Psalms
On October 17:  Fasting and Prayer as Jesus Recommends Them Together 
On October 24:  Praying with Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength, and Body
On October 31:  Praying without Ceasing: The Orthodox Jesus Prayer 
On November 7:  Praying with Icons (A Gift from the Orthodox)
On November 14:  Prayerful Journaling and Keeping a Chapbook 
On November 21:  Prayerful Money Management, Making Prayerful Decisions
On November 28:  Praying in a Community and Global Intercesssions

If you are interested in broadening and deepening your present prayer life, come and join us on these Sunday mornings.  The seminars will be held between our 8:15 and 11:00 a.m. services, from 9:45 to 10:45.   Bring your Bible and a desire to deepen and broaden your life with God in prayer.

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Praying before praying

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew

Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew

Now that June is away for the week with her daughter and friends, I am at the lakehouse by myself until Saturday.  There are certain pleasures and blessings in being alone for a while, and even more of them when the solitude is extended.   Retired and in the house by myself, I have the privilege of planning my own days; and as a consequence I’m able to experiment somewhat with what goes on in my prayer life.   Having established a daily round of “fixed-time” Morning and Evening Prayer for many years now, I’m able to try some adjustments that may be for the better.

On most days my wife and I do our “fixed-time” praying at 8 in the morning and 5 in the evening.  Most of the time we simply drop whatever we’re doing, sit down, open up our prayerbooks, and, as we sometimes say, “go to it.”  What we really mean, of course, is that we want to “go to God.”   Our going usually takes about twenty minutes (a little more in the evening when we make our intercessions), and then we return to whatever else we need to do.   Daily prayer is thus something of an twice-daily interruption, two short openings in the day.

When I’m alone, however, I’m finding that my sense of “fixed-time” praying is under expansion so that more of each day is now opening up to “going to God.”  One addition to my habit of prayer is especially proving helpful, and I like to share how it is that I came upon it.

On a Friday two weeks ago a group from St. John Lutheran Church and I spent the evening at B’nai Israel synagogue in Fayetteville, Georgia, joining our Reformed Jewish brothers and sisters in their Sabbath worship.  Using their service book, Gates of Prayer, I mumbled my way through transliterations of Hebrew, listened to a good talk by the rabbi, and managed, at least a little bit, to acquaint myself with a spattering of Jewish prayer life.  As I opened Gates of Prayer, I found this sentence on page 3:

The pious ones of old used to wait a whole hour before praying, the better to concentrate their minds on God.

Reading that sentence took me back a bit!  Instead of dropping everything and jumping into prayer, the “pious ones” apparently spent considerable prayer time preparing for prayer.  Since reading that observation, I’ve tried to put its suggestion into practice by slightly changing how I begin evening and morning prayers now that I’m alone at the lakehouse. 

Here’s how it is working for me.  Instead of turning off the TV or coming in from some outside chore and entering prayer a few seconds later, I’m now deliberately settling into prayer with more preparatory silence.   First, I light the votive candle before icons of the Lord Jesus and His Mother.   Then I sit down and carefully preview what I’ll read in my prayer book and place my book marks accordingly so that I won’t need to fumble around later on.  I check my church calendar to make sure that I’m not overlooking something or someone special to the day.   Next I turn the day’s pages and find out what psalms and lessons are appointed for the day so as to alert myself as to reading surprises I may encounter.   Next I see what hymn is to be sung (or chose one), and if I don’t know the tune, I take the time to finger a nearby keyboard, learning the melody if that’s necessary.  All of this I do slowly.  I’m in no rush. 

I then look over my list of names of people who have asked for intercessions.  Now and then I’ll pencil in an additional name that comes to mind.  With my list updated, I then begin to review my own life for several minutes.  If I’m in Morning Prayer, I reflect upon what happened since yesterday’s Evening Prayer.  Did I do or not do anything that needs to be brought before God.  In the evening I review the whole day, examining personal motives, examining my conscious, noting especially where repentance is required and necessary.  I make a mental list of thanksgivings and praises I want to offer to God.   Once in a while I’ll look over my daily planner’s “to do” list to see if something was left undone that may need immediate attention during and after prayer.

What used to be about twenty minutes or so of “fixed-hour” praying is now turning out to take about twice as long.   Everything is slowly down.  I find myself more relaxed, centered, and settled.  It’s certainly not “a whole hour before praying,” but it is way of coming before God with more awareness and attention.  Perhaps it’s close to what the pious ones meant when they recommended praying before praying.

In Gates of Prayer, there’s this little story, also on page 3:

The REBBE [rabbi] of Tsanz was asked by a Chasid [Hasidic friend], “What does the Rabbi do before praying?”  “I pray,” was the reply, “that I may be able to pray properly.”

Two Fridays ago in their synagogue, God showed me how He can help me in my prayer life, and I learned a lot from my Jewish friends.  This week I’m beginning to realize that some time spent praying before praying helps my prayer life.

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The Day Alone: Solitude and Silence (continued)

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Bonhoeffer_3Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together for his “illegal” and clandestine seminary hidden in the Bavarian Forest from the Nazi regime.   This posting is a continuation of a series begun several days ago; the text is from Chapter Three, “The Day Alone.”

There is an indifferent, or even negative, attitude toward silence which sees in it a disparagement of God’s revelation in the Word.  This is the view which misinterprets silence as a ceremonial gesture, as a mystical desire to get beyond the Word.  This is to miss the essential relationship of silence to the Word.  Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God.  We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father’s room.  We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us.  We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God.  We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word, and therefore not in order to show disrregard for the Word but rather to honor and receive it. (79)

With these words Bonhoeffer shares with us his conviction that the Word of God requires our utmost attention, so much so that we might well frame the Word of God with silence:  silence before hearing so that we listen all the better, and silence after the hearing so that we may allow the Word of God to fall deeply within our thinking and hearts.   The observance of these silence is not to be  ”a cermonial gesture,”  even though it may become among us a liturgical practice when, for example, the reader may pause after the reading of a first lesson before he or she moves forward to the reading or another, perhaps a psalm spoken antiphonally by reader and congregation.  One pastor I know goes so far as to sit down for a full two or three minutes after he has finished his sermon, signaling to the congregation that he will sit with them as together they “ponder” the Word of God which they have heard.   Such silence does much to accentuate the importance of genuinely hearing the Word of God.   “Let him who has an ear, hear!” says Jesus.

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The Day Alone: Solitude and Silence (continued)

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

BPK 30.013.695Silence does not mean dumbness, as speech does not mean chatter.   Dumbness doese not create solitude and chattr does not create fellowship.  “Silence is the excess, the inebriation, the victim of speech.  But dumbness is unholy, like a thing only maimed, not cleanly sacrificed . . . Zacharias was speechless, instead of being silent.  Had he accepted the revelation, he may perhaps have come out of the temple not dumb but silent” (Ernest Hello).  The speech, the Word which estabishes and binds together the fellowship, is accompanied by silence.  “There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Eccles. 3:7).  As there are definite hours in the Christian’s day for the Word, particularly the time of common worship and prayer, so the day also needs definite times of silence, silence under the Word and silence that comes out of the Word.  These will be especially the times before and after hearing the Word.  The Word comes ot to the chatterer but to him who holds the tongue.  The stillness of the temple is the sign of the holy presence of God in His Word. (Life Together, 78-79).

Bonhoeffer’s writing here is pregnant with insight.   First, he makes the crucial distinction between silence and simply not talking.   The latter, either the physical inability to talk or merely “clamming up,” is not true silence.  Genuine silence comes out of hearing the Word and then quietly listening with the heart.  Second, Bonhoeffer observes that “the Word comes not to the chatterer but to him who hold his tongue..”   When we talk too much, are too yakkedly, and continually fill other’s ears with constant trivia (especially when in the temple, that is, the parish church–and by extension in chatrooms, listservs, telephone conversations, and at coffee tables), we make our chatter a barrier keeping us away from the Word, who is Christ.  I don’t know about you, but I have been to services within a church where not of ounce of silence was presented either before and after the coming of the Word; even the prayers demands some background music, an organ tickling away at some melody reminiscent of what I hear in department stores.  It’s a sure sign that many Christians are uncomfortable with silence.  “The stillness of the temple is the sign of the holy presence of God in His Word,” says Bonhoeffer.  In contrast to the constant noise in many services of worship today, how good it is, for example, to participate in a contemplative Eucharist wherein quiet sitting, a time for reflection, is a gift given to us after Scripture readings, after the sermon, and during prayers.   Surely the churches need to encourage and make room for more silence in worship.  And surely we too need to make more room for silence in our personal lives.

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The Day Alone: Solitude and Silence (continued)

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

contemplative_outreachToday I’m posting a third quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, Chapter Three, “The Day Alone.”   Perhaps a little background about this posting might prove helpful.   Life Together is considered a classic, well worth serious reading, among those who read about Christian spirituality.  I have read it many times.   During the past few weeks, I decided to read it once  more very slowly as a “sacred text,”  pages made exceptionally valuable by way of lectio divina.     This way of reading requires I slow down so that I read only a paragraph or two at most, concentrating on one  idea, perhaps one image, perhaps one word, so that during the day I can return to the idea, image, word, or phrase many times during the day.  By reading slowly and letting the Holy Spirit impress me something foregrounded—a word, image, phrase, idea—I ‘m given the privilege of “chewing” (like a cow, some say)  over and over a single, sacred, and sacramental ”something” so that I can turn it over, sense its implications, digest it, taste it, and so take a good deep look at its meaning for my life. 

Already I done such reading with the earlier two chapters in Life Together: Chapter I, Community; Chapter II, “The Day with Others.”   At the end of last week I began reading and sharing with you Chapter III, “The Day Alone.”   Today I’m reading the following two paragraphs and will be chewing the following words in my cud throughout the day.  Perhaps you’d like to chew with me.

Along with the day of the Christian family fellowship together there goes the lonely day of the individual.  This is as it should  be.  The day together will be unfruitful without the day alone, both for the fellowship and for the individual.

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community.  Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community.  One does not exist without the other.  Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.  (78)

Bonhoeffer’s insight into the relationship between solitude and community is an exceptionally good one.   As I reflect on its application in my life, I have come to realize that I simply cannot live a balanced and fully spiritual life in Christ without entering silence and community in almost equal proportions.  It’s for this reason that I try hard to wake up early, often around 4:30 or 5:00, in order to sit outside (if possible) and enter contemplative prayer for an extended period of time.  And in the evening, whenever possible (sometimes it  just isn’t), I again set aside a chair for myself in an empty room and, sitting  comfortably and closing my eyes, allow myself to reduce all anxieties, worries, and thoughts about myself so that I may be fully in the presence of the Most Holy Other, the Beloved.  Practicing Centering  Prayer in the morning and evening, twice daily, is now for me as necessary as breathing and eating, sleeping and walking, reading and writing, working and resting.  I pray that it may be so for you too.

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The Day Alone: Solitude and Silence

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

david-winston-solitudeLet him who cannot be alone beware of community.  He will only do harm to himself and to the community.  Alone you stand before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle to pray; and alone you will die and give account to God.  You cannot escape from yourself; for God has singled you out.  If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called.  “The challenge of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another.  Everyone must fight his own battle death by himself, along . . . . I will not be with you then, nor you with me.”  (Luther)

But the reverse is also true:  Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.  Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray.  You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ.  If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you.  “If I die, then I am not along in death; if I suffer they [the fellowship] suffer with me.”  (Luther).

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Chapter Three, “The Day Alone” (New York: HarperCollins), 77.

Image:  David Winston, Solitude.

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Keeping the Sabbath holy: A word from St. Augustine

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Janice Vancronkhite, Your Kingdom ComeThe third commandment (“Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.”) enjoins quietness of heart, tranquility of mind.  This is holiness.  Because here is the Spirit of God.  This is what a true holiday means, quietness and rest.  Unquiet people recoil from the Holy Spirit.  They love quarrelling.  They love argument.  In their restlessness they do not allow the silence of the Lord’s Sabbath to enter their lives.   Against such restlessness we are offered a kind of Sabbath of the heart.  As if God were saying, “Stop being so restless, quieten the uproar in your minds.  Let go of the idle fantasies that fly around in your head.”  God is saying, “Be still and see that I am God” (Ps. 46).  But y0u refuse to be still.  You are like the Egyptians tormented by gnats.  These iiniest of flies, always restless, flying about aimlessly, swarm at hyour eyes, giviing no rest.  They are back as soon as you drive them off.  Just like the futile fantasies that swarm in our minds.  Keep the commandment.  Beware of this plague.   [Sermon 8, On the Third Commandment, in The Works of St. Augustine III/I, trans. E. Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press), 244.]

Image:  Janice Vancronkhite, Your Kingdom Come.  The Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem. Genesis to Revelation. This painting represents the completed circle of God’s redemption and restoration of His beloved creation. It is a celebration of His true Sabbath rest as we live our lives abiding in the completed work of Jesus Christ.

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Entering Centering Prayer

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Everyday I realize that I’m simply a beginner in the practice of contemplative prayer.  Each morning is a brand new start.  Each day has its own dawn, its own evening, its own midnight: all of which are beginnings.  I say this fully aware that I’ve been practicing Centering Prayer, a form of contemplative prayer, for nearly fifteen years.  Again, I repeat: I’m a beginning.

Nevertheless, there are some small things I’ve learned along the way that help me in all my beginnings.  I’ve found, for example, that it’s good to read what my elders others said about contemplative prayer, and for that reason I do a lot of reading in and around the Desert Elders, the abbas and ammas of the fourth century.    Here, for instance, is something that gave me pause several years ago ; it’s a saying by St. Diadochos of Photiki as quoted by Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation:

St_Diadochus_of_PhotikiWhen we have blocked all its outlets by means of the remembrance of God, the intellect requires of us imperatively some task which will satisfy its need for activity.  For the complete fulfillment of its purpose we should give it nothing but the prayer “Lord Jesus.”

When I enter the Prayer of Stillness, like St. Diadochos, I  find that my intellect does indeed require some task to satisfy its need for activity when entering centering prayer.   Unlike the saint, however,  I have discovered that it is very difficult for me to settle down with a very short word or two like his shortened Jesus Prayer.   My mind seems to require more settling time, often a half-minute or before I come to that place where I can enter the Simple Prayer of Quiet.  It’s for this reason that I have found it best over the years to slowly, and with some mindful praying, pointedly to ease myself into the silence of God’s presence.  To do this, I begin with prayer rope in hand and quietly murmur the Trisagion several times:  “Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us.”  I find this prayer one of direction, helping point me toward God.   Finding myself slowly bending toward centering, I then pray the Jesus Prayer a number of times; it’s a prayer I frequently use during the waiting times of my life, waiting for sleep, waiting in the grocery line, waiting whenever.  By this time, my body has nearly always found its attentive spine, and I am ready, with the Holy Spirit, to say, when helpful, the sacred word of my continued intention to be with God.

I realize that these prefatory prayers are indeed a small collection of petitions which, by God’s grace, will usually fall away as God centers me within his quiet presence.  For me nothing extraordinarily spectacular ususally happens; my quiet breathing finds itself with the Breath of God’s Spirit.  My Centering Lord, infinite circle though he is, draws me to him through concentric perforations, the spaces of which I need to quietly walk on my way to his healing Stillness.  When the Centering is as complete as God wishes, I then walk backwards, as it were, saying, as many do, the Our Father slowly, carefully.  And so begins my day.  Later on, after breakfast on most days, my wife and I sing and pray Morning Prayer together.

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Silence and God

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

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.

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Reflective Silence during Evening Prayer

Friday, September 25th, 2009

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.

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