The Contemplative Writer

Featured Contemplative Book: 100 Days in the Secret Place

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Two: Overcoming Distraction During Prayer

When I ask subscribers about their greatest struggles for prayer, I routinely hear about distraction. If we aren’t already struggling with feeling worthy before God, focusing our attention on prayer is extremely difficult. The quotes from our book of the month should prove helpful with their simple advice.

The short version is this: Are you distracted during prayer? Of course you are. Just try again.

Gene Edwards, author of Divine Romance, has gathered together key writings from three notable Christian mystics from the seventeenth century: 100 Days in the Secret Place: Classic Writings from Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon, and Michael Molinos on the Deeper Christian Life by Gene Edwards. Here are several quotes to consider today:

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Your imagination may ramble over an infinite number of thoughts, yet, I assure you, the Lord has not left. Continue your perseverance in prayer. Remember that He prays within you, and He prays in spirit and in truth. The distraction of the mind—which is not intended—does not rob the prayer of its fruit.

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Faith and intention are always enough.

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If you should sin (or even if it is only a matter of being distracted by some circumstances around you), what should you do? You must instantly turn within to your spirit.

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Do not become distressed because your mind has wandered away. Always guard yourself from being anxious because of your faults. First of all, such distress only stirs up the soul and distracts you to outward things

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Learn more here.

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For Reflection

Saturday Prayer: God the Father, Heavenly Light

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Today’s prayer comes from the Divine Hours:

God the Father, Heavenly Light
O Trinity of blessed light, O Unity of princely might, The fiery sun now goes his way; Please shed within our hearts your ray To you our morning song of praise, To you our evening prayer we raise; O grant us with your saints on high To praise you through eternity. To God the Father, heavenly Light, To Christ revealed in earthly night, To God the Holy Ghost we raise Our equal and unceasing praise.
Latin, 6th C.

Follow this updated page of the Divine Hours.

Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on May 6, 2016May 5, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Each Friday I share some of my favorite finds related to praying or writing. If I think it could help you pray or write better, then I’ll include it below.

Do you have someone else’s article or post to share? Join the Contemplative Writers Facebook group, comment on today’s post on my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter (@edcyzewski) to nominate your favorite articles, blog posts, and books by Thursday at noon each week.

One Googler’s Take on Managing Your Time (I included a really helpful bit below)

Your energy levels run the course of a wave throughout the week, so try to plan accordingly: Aim to do the following:

Monday: Energy ramps out of the weekend — schedule low demand tasks like setting goals, organizing and planning.
Tuesday, Wednesday: Peak of energy — tackle the most difficult problems, write, brainstorm, schedule your Make Time.
Thursday: Energy begins to ebb — schedule meetings, especially when consensus is needed.
Friday: Lowest energy level — do open-ended work, long-term planning and relationship building.

Always bias your Make Time towards the morning, before you hit a cycle of afternoon decision fatigue. Hold the late afternoon for more mechanical tasks.

How to Pray through Interruptions via Lisa Deam

The Curious Blessing of Rejection via Tanya Marlow

What Slowing Down Teaches You That Rushing Never Will via Amy Julia Becker

Off Brand by Sarah Bessey (Let’s just give the entire Internet to Sarah.)

Religion Is the Only Hope for the American Church by Morgan Guyton

The Slant Letter by Stephanie Smith

Looking for more recommendations? Check out our Prayer Resources page.

Contemplative Profiles: Rejoicing in the Wilderness

Posted on May 5, 2016May 5, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

The monks of Palestine throughout the 400’s and beyond played a critical role in guiding the early church in Jerusalem and the surrounding region. While these monks valued solitude and contemplative practices, they also traveled throughout the desert, converted bedouins, and ministered to anyone they encountered.

While some of these monks lived in solitude as hermits, many began to welcome guests who came to them for advice. They also began small communities who gathered for worship together from time to time. Two of these monks were particularly sought out for advice and took up writing letters to the neighboring churches. From Christian History:

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“By the sixth century, monasticism in Gaza was thriving, primarily due to the reputation of two elders, Barsanuphius the Great (“the great old man”) and John the Prophet (“the other old man”). The first was from Egypt; the latter was possibly from the region of Beersheba. From the seclusion of their cells, these two elders communicated with visitors only by letters dictated through secretaries. Barsanuphius and John were not eccentric miracle-workers, extreme ascetics, or charming visionaries, but practical advisers. They offered teaching, encouragement, and hope to people in their day-to-day struggles: “Simple advice according to God is one thing; a command is another. Advice is counsel without compulsion.”

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Some 850 examples of their remarkable correspondence survive, written in response to questions from church leaders, monks, and laypeople about issues ranging from personal temptation to interpersonal relations, from employment to property, from spirituality to superstition, from dealing with heretics to taking a bath! The letters were filled with encouragement: “Rejoice in the Lord! Rejoice in the Lord! Rejoice in the Lord!”

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For Reflection

Is there a wilderness that you’re facing today?

Where have you found joy this week?

Why We Need the Restoration of Silence

Posted on May 4, 2016May 3, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

I’m somewhere in the middle of the Highly Sensitive spectrum, so I’m very aware of how noise impacts my anxiety levels and ability to concentrate. However, some of the most recent research in neuroscience is finding that we don’t just need silence as a break from the noise. We need silence in order for our brains to process information and to more or less “recover” from the noise of life.

Studies are finding that children who grow up near airports, highways, and other noisy environments have higher levels of stress and tend to struggle to concentrate in school. Without down time, our brains become overloaded.

One of the most important benefits of practicing contemplative prayer has been a greater awareness of my mental state and when I need to take a break. Prayer is much easier when my brain isn’t spinning out of control! Here are a few helpful quotes from a LifeHacker article on the importance of silence:

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When the brain rests it is able to integrate internal and external information into “a conscious workspace,” said Moran and colleagues.

When you are not distracted by noise or goal-orientated tasks, there appears to be a quiet time that allows your conscious workspace to process things. During these periods of silence, your brain has the freedom it needs to discover its place in your internal and external world.

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It has been found that noise can have a pronounced physical effect on our brains resulting in elevated levels of stress hormones. The sound waves reach the brain as electrical signals via the ear. The body reacts to these signals even if it is sleeping. It is thought that the amygdalae (located in the temporal lobes of the brain) which is associated with memory formation and emotion is activated and this causes a release of stress hormones. If you live in a consistently noisy environment that you are likely to experience chronically elevated levels of stress hormones.

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According to the attention restoration theory when you are in an environment with lower levels of sensory input the brain can ‘recover’ some of its cognitive abilities. In silence the brain is able to let down its sensory guard and restore some of what has been ‘lost’ through excess noise.

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Read the rest of the LifeHacker article here.

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Scripture Meditation: God Sees Us Fully and Loves Us Completely

Posted on May 3, 2016May 3, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

O God, you know my foolishness,* and my faults are not hidden from you.
Psalm 69:6

Meditation

How often have you hesitated to pray because you feared you were too sinful, prideful, or just not in tune with God?

How often have you disqualified yourself preemptively?

Perhaps this Psalm comes as bad news to some. Some may read this as a kind of “surveillance God” peering into our lives, seeking any kind fault or reason for judgment or exclusion.

However, what if God’s awareness of our hidden faults is the best kind of good news, the good news we all need. Jesus spoke of himself as a doctor who has come to heal, and the prophets are filled with accounts of God mourning that Israel will not turn back to him.

What if God is a lover who sees our foolishness and faults and still remains enamored with us? God sees our secret sins and wants nothing more than our healing and redemption.

There is grace and mercy for us before we even acknowledge our failings. In many ways, confession is more for us than it is for God. Confession convinces us that God has known who and what we are all along and still wants to call us his beloved.

Reflection

What is your greatest barrier to God today?

In what way is God’s knowledge of your faults good news for you?

Featured Contemplative Book: 100 Days in the Secret Place

Posted on May 2, 2016April 30, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week 1: Healing through Our Suffering

If you’re looking for a book that will offer a challenge to seek the deeper spiritual life with God and to make prayer a higher priority, 100 Days in the Secret Place is at the top of my list.

Gene Edwards, author of Divine Romance, has gathered together key writings from three notable Christian mystics from the seventeenth century: Miguel de Molinos, Madame Jeanne Guyon, and Francois Fenelon: 100 Days in the Secret Place: Classic Writings from Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon, and Michael Molinos on the Deeper Christian Life by Gene Edwards.

This week I’m highlighting a series of quotes on the ways that God works with us in the midst of suffering, failure, and disappointment.

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Do you want to experience true happiness? Submit yourself peacefully and simply to the will of God, and bear your sufferings without struggle. Nothing so shortens and soothes your pain as the spirit of nonresistance to your Lord.

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Let God use trials to help you grow. Do not try to measure your progress, your strength, or what God is doing. His work is not less efficient because what He is doing is invisible.

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With people you love you do not need to continually say, “I love you with all my heart.” Even if you do not think about how much you love Him, you still love God every bit as much. True love is deep down in the spirit—simple, peaceful, and silent.

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Do not disturb yourself by trying to manufacture an artificial sense of God’s presence. Slowly you will learn that all the troubles in your life—your job, your health, your inward failings—are really cures to the poison of your old nature. Learn to bear these sufferings in patience and meekness.

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God wants to build a relationship with you that is based on faith and trust and not on glamorous miracles.

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These mystics don’t suggest that God intentionally brings suffering to us. Rather, God remains with us in the midst of our sufferings, bears our burdens, and ministers to and through us as we bear hardships.

Keep in Touch

Get our latest blog posts delivered to your inbox or sign up for the weekly contemplative email and receive a free eBook: The Contemplative Writer.

For Reflection or Sharing

How is God reaching out to you today?

Saturday Prayer from St. Francis

Posted on April 30, 2016April 30, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

This Saturday’s prayer from St. Francis comes from Jon Sweeney’s biography: The Road to Assissi:

“Great and glorious God, and you, Lord Jesus,

I pray you, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. . . .

Be found in me, Lord, so that in all things I may act only in accordance with your holy will.”

Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on April 29, 2016April 23, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Each Friday I share some of my favorite finds related to praying or writing. If I think it could help you pray or write better, then I’ll include it below.

When the Darkness Lifts by Kelly J. Youngblood

The Liturgists Podcast: An Interview of Richard Rohr

How Our Salvation Begins by Kelly Chripczuk

Rest Easy, You’re Loved No Matter What by Aundi Kolber

Keep Showing Up and Finishing Stuff by Me (Read the comments!)

13 Powerful Women Mystics Who Helped Shape Christianity

Looking for more recommendations? Check out our Prayer Resources page.

Contemplative Profiles: Margery of Kempe

Posted on April 28, 2016April 27, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Some of the most important reforms (or attempts at reforms!) in the history of the church came from women who not only held themselves to far more rigorous standards than men but who were rarely trusted. In fact, many female contemplatives were threatened with death, exile, or imprisonment.

Margery Kempe was one of the spiritual leaders of the Medieval Church who predated many of the critiques leveled by the Reformation, calling Christians to love and devotion to Christ rather than relying on external practices.

Today’s contemplative profile of Margery Kempe comes from a list of Women in the Medieval Church featured in Christianity Today:

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“Accused by her contemporaries of fraud or heresy, and often ridiculed by later scholars as hysterical or even crazy, Margery Kempe was born in Lyon, England, c. 1373, and died after 1438. She was an illiterate laywoman turned religious enthusiast who dictated her spiritual autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe. It is the earliest known autobiography in English…”

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“Margery’s message is the exhortation to a simple, direct relationship with Christ based on unconditional faith and fervent love. She repeatedly downplays the importance of externals (such as fasting and the wearing of hair shirts), which, as Christ teaches her, are nothing compared to fervent love and devotion.”

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Reflection

In what ways can external practices become a substitute for devotion to Christ today?

Take 5 minutes to receive the love of Christ for you without precondition or limits.