Weekly Meditations

The mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.  Rom. 8:6b

We learn much about the peace of God through the practice of silent prayer.  We also learn about ourselves and how difficult it is to remain in this peace.  Significant transformation is needed before we truly come to rest in God.  What is your experience of this type of conversion—from a restless heart to one that has become stilled in God’s presence?   Here is how I see it unfold in my own prayer life.

Usually the first ten to twenty minutes of my daily prayer are spent working through the more immediate and pressing issues of my life.  My heart, it seems, still needs to process the residue from recent events.  Since my mind is too active to pray in stillness, I pray instead according to whatever presents itself, including the concerns and petitions I carry for others.  I allow my heart to feel whatever it feels as I consider, in the presence of God, whatever needs to be considered.  Like a massage therapist working out the tension in my muscles, God gently loosens the knots in my heart until these initial issues have all been acknowledged. Eventually, this first agenda exhausts itself and my inner life becomes more settled. I can now begin to negotiate stillness.

Curiously, it is at this point—once the initial flurry of thinking has stopped—that I find myself most challenged.  I am no longer sure where to put my focus.  What am I supposed to do now that I have run out of things to talk about with God?  It feels like the prayer must be over.  In order to proceed I have to now face the challenge of an emptiness that I feel quite anxious to leave.  Where prayer began with the mind, it now continues as an act of the will in which I choose to remain in the disposition of formless prayer as I wait and watch for God.

Silly thoughts now appear out of nowhere.  Anything and everything seems to offer itself as fodder to fill the uncomfortable vacuum left by silence.  Each new thought, though knowingly unimportant, vies for undue attention.  It feels like I am in a room full of children who know they’re being ignored, and I have to make a conscious effort to remain detached from my thinking.  To try to stifle these thoughts would only serve to warrant the attention they seek.  Instead I have to let them be, not allowing them to monopolize my attention.

The focus of my prayer now shifts to the stillness and silence I am being invited to.  At this stage I am more aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit between and below the activity of my thought life.  I have more of a sense that I am participating with God—that I am being led and taught how to pray by the Lord Himself.  My inner life slows down.  At times, it seems to come to a standstill where I get to gaze, if only for a few seconds, at the shimmering nature of my existence in God.  Like Julian of Norwich, who understood God’s creativity in the universe by meditating on a hazelnut, I understand, in the microcosm of my own inner workings, something of God’s intimate ways with all creation.

From this disposition, I am better able to witness the subtle ways of the Holy Spirit.  My attention now turns to how I participate, or not, with this stillness.  Every movement of my own initiative I treat as suspect.  No longer am I seeking myself but I am now seeking God, which I must do at the expense of myself.  As I catch myself wrapped again in the blanket of an attractive thought, I gently break its grip.  I let it dissolve, unrequited by my validation.  Though I grieve the loss of whatever delight these thoughts promise me I must choose, over and over again, the uncertainty of what awaits me in silence over the self-created life I have in hand.  And in the process of such conversion, I am led to a deepening relationship with the stillness of prayer from which I come to better “know that He is God”   (Psalm 46:10).

The desert fathers taught their disciples to  “pray with the mind descended into the heart.”  Perhaps this is also what the apostle Paul means when he speaks of “the mind controlled by the Spirit.”  As our self-generated life becomes more submissive to the life of the Spirit within us, we will experience something of the peace and life that can only come from yielding to God’s ways.

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.

Heb. 4:9-10

Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?  Job 2:10

The book of Job begins with the same rhetorical question that it ends with— “shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  To discern God’s sovereignty in all our circumstances is a mature form of wisdom.  And the submissive posture that it implies suggests a trusting faith whereby God’s goodness is not solely measured by our own sense of personal loss or gain.  We are prepared to accept both from His hand.

Consider how this applies to your own experience of life.  How do you relate to loss and gain in your life?  How do you interpret God’s hand in your changing circumstances, or even in the changing vitality of spirit that you feel from day to day?

On some days we feel strong, and on others we feel weak.  For a season we might wax courageous, only to find ourselves, in another season, weak and plagued by doubt and fear.  We enjoy times of uncanny grace when all things seem to be going our way, and then are dismayed when everything seems to fall apart.  We naturally accept the one set of experiences as from God, and yet immediately reject the other as not part of the divine plan.  But might even our difficult situations be an invitation to a maturity of faith that is more disposed to “find God in all things?”

When I go from one success to another I am quick to acknowledge the Lord’s hand in this.  But as soon as something is taken away from me, I am just as quick to assume that this is not from God.  Does the same Lord who gives me life, not also take it away?  If I bless God when I feel strong and attribute to His purposes when I am inspired to faith, should I not also bless Him when I am weak and uninspired?  Does not the same God allow for both strength and weakness in my life?  On some days my thinking can be very sharp while on others it is dull.  Some of my prayer times are very focused whereas others wander aimlessly.  Should I not recognize and accept the Lord’s purposes in the ways He limits me, as much as in the ways He opens my path?  If I praise God for giving me seasons of spiritual passion and zeal should I not also thank His wisdom for the fallow times, even if these are the result of my own negligence?  Should I not welcome the discomfort that my waywardness produces in me as a sign of God’s grace?

As we acknowledge the Lord in all our ways we are more apt to find God in all things.  Though we do what we can to prosper, faith always presumes that the loving hand of God is secretly at work for the good of His purposes in all the ebbs and flows of our lives.

Consider the following prayer.  Can you welcome these words as an invitation to a more contemplative posture of faith?  They will encourage a greater dependence on God as the One who gives to each, according to what is needed for His good purposes in their lives.

A Prayer, In All Circumstances Of Our Life

If I am weak, I will accept the life You give me.
If I am ineffective, I will accept the life You give me.
If I am uninspired, unmotivated and unable to save myself,
I will accept the life You give me.

I will not presume upon the strength I have
but will accept the spirit I receive each day
as the very measure of life You grant me.

I will welcome even the poverty of my spirit
and offer it as an instrument through which
Your purposes unfold in and through my life.

The Lord gives, and the Lord withholds
Blessed be the name of the Lord.

The Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2Cor. 12:9-10

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?  Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.   Mat. 7:16-17

When you are feeling anxious about life it is always good to ask yourself what spirit has led you to the state of soul you now find yourself in.  Is it a spirit of faith or one of fear that is prompting you to think, interpret, act or react as you are?  We will have a very different experience of life depending on which spirit we choose to follow.  The voice of the shepherd will lead us to a healthy state of soul, whereas the voice of a stranger will usually lead us to a state of spiritual dis-ease.

Jesus gives us a very immediate means of discerning the origin of whichever spirit we are following when He teaches that “you will know a tree by its fruit.” By observing the effect a spirit has on us—whether it produces figs or thistles—we will soon know if it is from God or not.  And the more attentive we are to its effects, the more we will be in a position to choose whether to continue following this spirit or to heed Jesus’ teaching that His sheep “will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” (John 10:5-6).

You will know a spirit by its fruit. If you were to write a list of the “symptoms” you experience when you are in a spirit of either faith or fear what would it look like?  Here is a quick itemization I made for myself.  How would you answer these questions for yourself?

What effect does fear have on you? When I am operating from a motivation based on the spirit of fear I usually feel anxious.  I tend to obsess and worry more.  I feel alone.  I live with more dread of the future.  I try to overly control my situation.  I tend to experience my life more as a burden or as a problem that needs to be solved.  I am less patient with myself and with others.  I tend to over-react in my interpretation and responses to life.  I am less inclined to trust.  I feel more self-protective.  I tend to interpret myself and my circumstances more negatively.

What effect does faith have on you? When I am operating from a motivation that is based on the spirit of faith I feel more free.  I feel more inclined to risk.  I receive life more as a gift than as a problem.  I feel more trusting.  I am more gentle with myself and with life in general.  I feel more at peace regarding things I can’t see or understand.  I am more detached and less reactive to my circumstances.  I feel a greater sense of abandonment and courage.  I am more willing to wait and see how things unfold rather than prematurely respond to my limited sense of what is happening.  I am more able to trust God with the outcome of my circumstances.  I am more hopeful about the future.

Recognizing, by the effects it has on you, the character of the spirit you have been following will help you to now choose more intelligently whether to continue following this spirit or not.  Is it the voice of the shepherd or that of a “stranger” that has led you to the state of soul you find yourself in?  My sheep will hear my voice and they will not follow the voice of a stranger We are wise, as the apostle John teaches us, to “test the spirits to see that they are from Christ” (1Jn. 4:1).  As we do so, we will be all the more shielded from the anxious effects of the stranger’s voice.

Above all guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
Prov. 4:23

He leads me beside the quiet waters.  Psalm 23:2

For the Israelite, the essence of good life is measured by the quality of menuha it enjoys.  Menuha means “tranquility.”   Psalm 23, for instance, translates this word as “the quiet waters.”  Menuha is what the practice of Sabbath promises to bring to our lives—still waters which restore our souls.

The Sabbath ennobles not only the soul, but also the body by giving us rest in which to recover our sense of primal truth.  Physical comfort and delight are a big part of the experience of such restoration.  As the ancient Midrash Tehillim counsels us,

Call the Sabbath a delight: a delight to the soul and a delight to the body.  Sanctify the Sabbath by choice meals, by beautiful garments.  Delight your soul with pleasure and this very pleasure will reward you with life.

Because such opportunities for physical and spiritual delight await us each week, we are to eagerly prepare ourselves for our Sabbath day.  We anticipate it, and welcome it as we would welcome someone we love who was coming to visit us.   The Rabbi Shimon, in the first century, wrote of the Sabbath customs of his day saying,

For the Israelites the day is a living presence and, when it arrives, they feel as if a guest has come to see them. And, surely, a guest who comes to pay a call in friendship or respect must be given a dignified welcome.

On this day—a day the Lord Himself calls holy—we have opportunity to meet with God in a special way   And the way we anticipate this meeting can be an expression of the very relationship we desire to have with God’s presence.

In some Jewish traditions, the Sabbath is also spoken of as a bride.  It impresses that we are, in a sense, to espouse the seventh day. The root of the Hebrew word le-kadesh, which we translate as “sanctify,” means “to betroth.”  As another ancient rabbinical Midrash states,

Just as a groom is dressed in his finest garments, so is a man on the Sabbath day dressed in his finest garments; just as a man rejoices all the days of the wedding feast, so does man rejoice on the Sabbath; just as the groom does no work on his wedding day, so does a man abstain from work on the Sabbath day.

These ancient traditions depict something of the joyful quality of relationship that is ours to anticipate each week as the sacred day approaches us.  Consider how you might look forward to your next Sabbath, whatever day you have put aside to welcome God in your week.  How can you treat this day as a special guest that you look forward to hosting into your house?  How might you more fully anticipate the goodness that God has prepared for you to receive in your coming day of rest?

If you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable…, then you will find your joy in the LORD.

Isa. 58:13-14

I want to test the sincerity of your love.
2Cor. 8:8

In his book, Drinking From A Dry Well, Thomas Green SJ suggests that there are three stages to a growing life of prayer that can be defined according to what we most seek in our relationship with God.  These three stages can also be understood in terms of the natural evolution of love—from a desire for knowledge, to one for experience, and then to a growing acceptance of the need for transformation.

In the courtship stage we mostly seek knowledge of God.  As Green states, “We cannot love what we do not know.  Thus the first stage in any love relationship is getting to know the person we are drawn to.”  But facts about a person do not, in themselves,  constitute a relationship.  Even our feelings about God can, at this stage, be misleading.  As Green says,

There may well be infatuation at the beginning of a relationship.  But infatuation is not love, precisely because we do not really know the object of our infatuation.  We are in love with our own romantic notions of the person rather than with the reality of the person before us.

As love progresses beyond the “getting-to-know” stage, we find in ourselves a growing desire for intimacy with the object of our love.  Green calls this the “honeymoon” phase.  He writes,

The courtship eventually leads to the honeymoon.  In terms of what we now seek in our relationship with God, we note a transition from knowledge to experience.  The relationship moves from the head (knowing) to the heart (experiencing, loving).  We no longer seek insight about God as much as the joy of being with the One we love.

As our desire for intimacy with God grows we might also find that we are not as inclined to reflect or meditate on the Scriptures as we did before.  Instead, we are more drawn to the presence of God, to simply sit before Him and bask in His love.  As pleasant as this stage is though, it too must evolve to a maturity beyond itself.  As Green says,

This whole purpose of the “getting to know” stage of meditative prayer is to lay a solid foundation for love.  At the “honeymoon” stage, it will be good to remember that this too will eventually come to an end, because what looks like true love on the honeymoon still contains a great deal of self-love.  I love you, yes; but to a large extent this is because you fulfill me and all my desires.

Unfulfilled needs are, of course, a valid reason for the early stages of relationship.  As Green would say, “There is real growth in discovering that I cannot fulfill myself, that I need to go out of myself in order to find my own happiness.”  But this stage is still not true love since my “love” is focused primarily on my own needs, my own fulfillment.  A mature relationship will wean us from love that begins and ends with me, to one that has its source and goal in the other person.  And this weaning will often feel like a loss compared to the subjective delights we once knew.  Green puts it this way,

When the honeymoon ends, we have to come to terms with the ordinary days that do not always make us feel good and fulfilled.  We then begin to realize the true meaning of the “better or worse” clause of the marriage vows.  In the “better” we learn the joy of loving; in the “worse” we learn how to love unselfishly, not because I feel good about it, but because the other’s happiness and well-being are important to me.

So, if in the first stages of love we seek a growing knowledge of God’s love.  And in the second stage we long to rest in the experience of that love.   In this third stage we find ourselves joyfully submitting to the transformation that love invites us to.  No longer satisfied with only insight or experience, we now give ourselves more fully to the transforming work of Christ’s love in us.  It is a love that is now rooted in the Other.  And it is at this stage that we finally discover what love’s objective has been all along—to fashion us to Itself, in order that we might then become Its instrument in the lives of others.

The beauty of submitting to the Potter’s molding is that the transformation God works in me also benefits others.  If I allow the Lord to transform me I can be a more effective instrument of his love—what Ignatius calls “an instrument shaped to the contours of the hand of God.”

–Thomas Green, Drinking from a Dry Well