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Scripture Meditation: The Intentional Pursuit of God

Posted on October 11, 2016October 11, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Praise the Lord! I will thank the Lord with all my heart as I meet with his godly people. How amazing are the deeds of the Lord! All who delight in him should ponder them.
Psalm 111:1-2

How do we become aware of God’s presence in our lives?

First, we prioritize time spent in Christian community, giving thanks together for the ways God has been present and provided for us. As our faith struggles or falters, we’ll find encouragement through the stories of God’s faithfulness among others.

Second, we grow in our delight of God by pondering the ways that God has been at work in our lives.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we struggle to see God at work if we don’t take time to ponder his presence each day.

For Reflection

Book of the Month: Everything Belongs

Posted on October 10, 2016October 8, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Two: Replacing Illusion with Reality

In his book Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr writes about the great surrender that must take place before we can find God and our true selves in prayer.

He is quick to note that God is already present. In fact, we cannot escape God’s presence but we can obscure it or overlook it. Our illusions about ourselves or about God can get in the way.

Therefore the great goal of every spiritual practice is to help us move past our illusions, distractions, and oversimplified answers so that we can be truly present for God.

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“We have no real access to who we really are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are. Only when we live and see through God can ‘everything belong.’ All other systems exclude, expel, punish, and protect to find identity for their members in ideological perfection or some kind of ‘purity.’”

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“We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in every breath we take.”

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“All spiritual disciplines have one purpose: to get rid of illusions so we can be present.”

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“When we look at the questions, we look for the opening to transformation. Fixing something doesn’t usually transform us. We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer.”

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“When we avoid darkness, we avoid tension, spiritual creativity, and finally transformation. We avoid God, who works in the darkness—where we are not in control! Maybe that is the secret: relinquishing control.”

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For Reflection

featured-book-october-10

Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on October 7, 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.

This Is How to Resist Distraction

On the Appalachian Trail Combat Veterans Learn to Let Go

3 Truths about Dark Nights of the Soul

Christians Begin to Embrace the Enneagram

From Ed’s Site: The Lie about How to Live the Life You Love

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Featured Article: The Value of Making Time for Rest

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Author Michelle DeRusha writes that Shelly Miller’s new book Sabbath Rest encouraged her with a gentle reminder to make more space for rest and for God in her week. DeRusha writes about the benefits prioritizing the Sabbath in this week’s featured post:

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“I was all in on Sabbath rest a couple of years ago. I believed in it and was committed to it. But somehow, as weeks passed into months and months passed into years, I chipped away at the edges of my Sabbath practice until finally, there was nothing left. Without even being aware of it, my Sundays became another day of chores, errands, social media and catching up on email.”

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“How much of our faith journey is firsthand experience and not just what we know about him? Information helps us know about God, but Sabbath allows us to encounter him.”
-Shelly Miller

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“What I’ve come to understand – and what Shelly’s book reiterated for me — is that in order to know God in the way he desires, we need to make space and time for him. And in order to make space and time for him, we have to quiet ourselves. We have to cease our constant busyness, our constant doing and accomplishing.”

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Scripture Meditation: Worship and Reconciliation Go Together

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

“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
Matthew 5:23-24

How do we enter into prayer and worship? Self-examination is always helpful, especially if we have a reason to confess a wrong to a friend, colleague, or neighbor.

The monks who instructed novices in prayer typically noted that some distractions were a from God. A distraction may illuminate an area of our lives that requires repentance before we are free to pray.

Self-examination preemptively faces our distractions or failures and gives us a chance to take action before we enter into prayer. And if you don’t have time to pray because you’re busy seeking reconciliation, I trust that this obedience is precious to Jesus.

For Reflection

Book of the Month: Everything Belongs

Posted on October 3, 2016October 1, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week One: Surrender to God’s Mercy

If everything belongs in our contemplative practice, then we must give up the charade of denial or wearing a mask to hide our flaws and pain. Our only hope will be completely surrendering to God’s mercy.

Once we face our pain, struggles, and failures, we remove ourselves from religious systems that gain their power from setting moral standards that cannot be violated by their members or call for simplistic answers. This is why those who have faced their own dark sides and found God’s mercy are so able to share mercy with others.

This month we’ll look at Richard Rohr’s book Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, with quotes this week about the process of exposing and moving beyond the obstacles that keep us from intimacy with God:

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“In God’s reign ‘everything belongs,’ even the broken and poor parts. Until we have admitted this in our own soul, we will usually perpetuate expelling systems in the outer world of politics and class. Dualistic thinking begins in the soul and moves to the mind and eventually moves to the streets. True prayer, however, nips the lie in the bud. It is usually experienced as tears, surrender, or forgiveness.”

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“In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.”

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“We do not find our own center; it finds us… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

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“It seems that we Christians have been worshipping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey.”

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“It is much easier to belong to a group than it is to know that you belong to God. Those who firm up their own edges and identity too quickly without finding their center in God and in themselves will normally be the enemies of ecumenism, forgiveness, vulnerability, and basic human dialogue.”

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For Reflection

Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on September 30, 2016September 28, 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.

The Contemplative Outreach Newsletter

How You React to Facebook Likes Is Linked to Self-Esteem

5 Incredible Apps to Maximize Your Attention Span

On the Theology of Sleep

3 Office Realities That Make It Nearly Impossible to Focus

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Book of the Month: The Way of the Heart

Posted on September 19, 2016September 16, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Three: The Roots of Compassion

According to Henrí Nouwen, judgment prevents us from ministering to others, while compassion makes all ministry possible. Compassion comes from the practice of solitude where God can ministry to us with mercy.

Once we have experienced God’s compassion and mercy for us, we’ll be able to share the same with others. Here are Nouwen’s thoughts on solitude from his book, The Way of the Heart:

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“Compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry.”

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“We have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others. To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate.”

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“Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God’s even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry.”

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“When we are filled with God’s merciful presence, we can do nothing other than minister because our whole being witnesses to the light that has come into the darkness.”

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For Reflection

Scripture Meditation: God Expects Lament

Posted on September 13, 2016September 10, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

“Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?”
Psalm 44: 24, NRSV

The writer of this Psalm of lament notes in the the earlier verses that God surely would know if he had lifted his hands to worship another God. It’s just as likely that God wouldn’t be surprised to hear the laments of his people in the midst of their suffering.

Of course God doesn’t literally hide from us or forget our suffering. In our darkest moments it can surely seem that God is distant and hidden, but even if these remain impossible things for God to do, the Spirit guided these poets to share their laments, frustrations, and fears in the starkest language possible.

What do you fear today about God?

What do you leave unspoken about God?

What if today you could be completely honest with God?

It’s possible that the scriptures telling us about God’s knowledge of our thoughts can assure us. God knows our deepest laments and fears but continues to reach out to anyone who is thirsty and heavy-burdened.

For Reflection

Scripture Meditation: Waiting on God’s Generousity

Posted on August 23, 2016November 26, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Jesus taught in the parable of the vineyard laborers:

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Matthew 20:15, RSV

Envy will dismantle the patience that is growing within us, robbing us of the joy of God’s blessings when they finally come to us. God is generous, but we all experience that generosity in different ways and at different times.

God’s generosity will not spare us seasons of darkness and doubt. It’s possible that waiting helps us view his generosity with greater clarity.