Posted on by Kurt Bodling

practical notes on silence

“Some spiritual leaders have the privilege of regularly incorporating silence into their spiritual routines. Most people would find it difficult, in the course of their work routines and family obligations, to carve out a day of silence every week or even once a month! Nonetheless, all followers of Christ would benefit from incorporating this practice into their schedules and rhythms of life. For some, it might mean setting aside a Saturday a month to spend time in the discipline of silence. For others, it may mean asking a friend to come and watch the kids for a few hours during the afternoon so that one can enter into silence without the responsibilities of parenting during that time.”

Cannon, Mae Elise. Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 2013, p. 31.

Note: ALL followers of Christ would benefit

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

take these one sentence at a time

“Do not, then, stir yourself up to useless interior activities. Avoid everything that will bring unnecessary complications into your life. Live in as much peace and quiet and retirement as you can, and do not go out of your way to get involved in labors and duties, no matter how much glory they may seem to give God. Do the tasks appointed to you as perfectly as you can with disinterested love and great peace in order to show your desire of pleasing God. Love and serve Him peacefully and in all your works preserve recollection. Do what you do quietly and without fuss. Seek solitude as much as you can; dwell in the silence of your own soul and rest there in the simple and simplifying light which God is infusing into you. Do not make the mistake of aspiring to the spectacular ‘experiences’ that you read about in the lives of the great mystics. None of those graces (called gratis datae) can sanctify you nearly so well as this obscure and purifying light and love of God which is given you to no other end than to make you perfect in His love.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. (NY: HarperOne, 2003), pages 96-97. (NOTE: the text belongs to 1959!)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

meditative prayer

“In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart–it is the orientation of our whole body, mind and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958. (pbk ed 1999), p. 40.

This is how we can finally get away from the Sears-catalog-Amazon-wish-list type of prayer that so many Christians are boxed in by.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

prayer first of all

Note:
It’s funny how everyone wants to claim our mornings. Studies now show that the “best” time for exercise is in the morning. Productivity mavens say that our most creative work hours are in the morning. Writing teachers (often) hold up examples of this or that famous writer who wrote prolifically by regularly taking advantage of the morning hours. And here Bonhoeffer (as well as elsewhere other writers on the spiritual life) writes about the benefit and even necessity of using the morning hours for prayer. So unless we decide that we will take a morning run in the spirit of continuous prayer while dictating our creative ideas for our novel’s next chapter into our cell phone, I guess we have to pick and choose. Or try to justify alternating a prayer morning with an exercise morning. Or find a way to stretch the morning. One can only get up so early before one is destroying one’s sleep; and one can only delay lunch for so long (especially if is actually also breakfast) before one is destroying one’s nutrition and metabolism cycles.

Quote:
“The prayer of the morning will determine the day. Wasted time, which we are ashamed of, temptations that beset us, weakness and listlessness in our work, disorder and indiscipline in our thinking and our relations with other people very frequently have their cause in neglect of the morning prayer. The organization and distribution of our time will be better for having been rooted in prayer.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 71. (original German pub in 1939)