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Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on August 19, 2016August 12, 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.

Contemplation in the Age of Trump

The Common Prayer app is FREE. See the link under the video.

Pray as You Go. I’ve mentioned this before, but if the app is new to you, check it out. It’s great for imaginative scripture contemplation.

Two Things Are Killing Your Ability to Focus (also featured on Wednesday’s post)

How to Get Into a Rhythm at Work if You Can’t Stick to a Schedule

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Featured Book: Thoughts in Solitude

Posted on August 15, 2016August 13, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Three: Prayer as Slow Conversion

This week’s readings from Thoughts in Solitude remind us that even when it seems that nothing is happening while we pray, God is present and working in us even as we struggle to break free from our worries and routines.

If you’re new to contemplative prayer, it’s tempting to start measuring and observing yourself as if something big and momentous is about to happen. However, Thomas Merton assures us that our work is to turn away from our cares and to trust ourselves to God’s care:

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“One cannot then enter into meditation, in this sense, without a kind of inner upheaval. By upheaval I do not mean a disturbance, but a breaking out of routine, a liberation of the heart from the cares and preoccupations of one’s daily business.”

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“There is no such thing as a prayer in which ‘nothing is done’ or ‘nothing happens,’ although there may well be a prayer in which nothing is perceived or felt or thought.”

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“All real interior prayer, no matter how simple it may be, requires the conversion of our whole self to God.”

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Learn more about Thoughts in Solitude…

For Reflection

Featured Article: Tips for Overcoming Distraction

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

Whether at work with our writing or seeking the quiet of contemplative prayer, distractions will become a major challenge. Thankfully, there are some tried and true ways to approach our days and to organize our tasks in order to make the most of our time.

This article in the Harvard Business Review offers a great summary of the latest research in overcoming distractions in our day to day lives:

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“Start trying a simple mindfulness practice when you wake up, which can be anything from quietly taking a few deep breaths to meditating for 20 or 30 minutes. Dr. Seppälä explains why this is so important: ‘Meditation is a way to train your nervous system to calm despite the stress of our daily lives.'”

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“Instead of struggling to accomplish what matters, you can take advantage of your body’s natural rhythms. Focus on complex, creative tasks in the morning; these things will tend to be ones you accomplish individually or with 2–3 other people. Push all other meetings to the afternoon.”

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“If you want to avoid wasting time and burning out, add buffer time between each meeting. For every 45–60 minutes you spend in a meeting, make sure to take 15 minutes or more to process, reflect, and prioritize.”

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Book of the Month: Thoughts in Solitude

Posted on August 8, 2016August 8, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Two: Transformation in Solitude

Can you make yourself more loving, holy, or virtuous?

I suspect that you could try, but Thomas Merton suggests that you’ll fail and feel quite bad about it. His alternative is far from flashy: solitude.

In solitude we can rest fully in the love of God and trust the rest to God’s presence within us. Merton writes:

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“If man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. Everything must be elevated and transformed by the action of God, in love and faith.”

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“There is no hope for the man who struggles to obtain a virtue in the abstract—a quality of which he has no experience. He will never efficaciously prefer the virtue to the opposite vice, no matter how much he may seem to despise the latter.”

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“What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?”

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Learn more about Thoughts in Solitude…

For Reflection

Saturday Prayer

Posted on July 30, 2016July 2, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

“Why should I want to be rich, when You were poor? Why should I desire to be famous and powerful in the eyes of men, when the sons of those who exalted the false prophets and stoned the true rejected You and nailed You to the Cross? Why should I cherish in my heart a hope that devours me—the hope for perfect happiness in this life—when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair?”

-Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Featured Article: The Church Fathers on Mindfulness

Posted on June 29, 2016June 25, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Mindfulness has been a favorite of psychologists and behavioral researchers. In a purely secular sense, mindfulness simply means becoming aware of your thoughts or thinking about thinking. However, mindfulness has also been a part of the prayer practices of the historic church.

The early church and the desert fathers and mothers in particular routinely practiced a form of mindfulness that they used in conjunction with prayer. This practice has continued throughout the history of the church, although it has been called different things over time, such as the Ignatian Examen that I use each evening. Here is one analysis of this prayer practice and its Christian background:

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The early fathers of the Eastern Christian Church talked about the vigilance of the mind and heart [nepsis], which is similar to the cognitive-rational-emotive therapy technique employed by psychologists in helping patients to be ‘mindful’ and thus learn to control their thoughts and feelings. In response to this technique Beck (2011) writes that “. . . mindfulness techniques help patients nonjudgmentally observe and accept their internal experiences, without evaluating or trying to change them.”

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A vigilance and watchfulness of the mind and heart somewhat similar to the cognitive-rational-emotive therapy technique employed by psychologists in helping patients to be ‘mindful’ and thus learn control of thoughts and feelings is a frequent theme in the writings of the early Fathers of the Eastern Christian Church.

These early Christian spiritual teachers taught their disciples to develop nepsis, that is, to be wakeful and attentive (from the Greek verb nepho: to be vigilant, mindful)iii to that which was inside and around them. Thus, we also need to practice being completely “present” to our thoughts and surroundings.

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Featured Book: Falling Upward

Posted on June 27, 2016June 23, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Two: Moving Beyond Control

Contemplation creates a space in our lives for God to settle and perhaps speak without our intellects trying to control our religious experience. In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr writes that the first half of life is particularly hostile toward contemplation because we are struggling to define our identities and beliefs.

However, many find that the boundaries we’ve devoted our first half of life to constructing are never as solid as we thought. This is where the falling comes in. Most importantly, this is where we can find true spiritual growth.

The loss of control over our spirituality can open us to new movements of the Spirit of God. Here’s what Richard Rohr has to say in Falling Upward:

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The very unfortunate result of this preoccupation with order, control, safety, pleasure, and certitude is that a high percentage of people never get to the contents of their own lives! Human life is about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, creating tribes, and teaching impulse control.

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Very few Christians have been taught how to live both law and freedom at the same time. Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well. Without a contemplative mind, we do not know how to hold creative tensions.

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God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. That is perhaps why the best word for God is actually Mystery. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace.

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For Reflection

What are you trying to control today?

Take 5 minutes to surrender that part of your life to God today.

Saturday Prayer: Trusting God Who Never Fails

Posted on June 25, 2016June 20, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

This Saturday’s Prayer:

Lord, make me have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Source: The Divine Hours

Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on June 24, 2016June 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.

One Small Square [On justice and contemplation]

How to Create an Internal Mindset Conducive to Writing

Are You the Listener You Think You Are?

Why Does Running Appeal to Writers?

Experience God’s Presence: Five First Steps

From my blog: Creating a Contemplative-Friendly Smartphone

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Contemplative Profiles: Pope Gregory I

Posted on June 16, 2016June 10, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

The divide between the “professional” religious people and the lay people is nothing new for Christianity. In fact, Pope Gregory I struggled with the urgency of his ministry as Pope and his inner desire to make more time for contemplative prayer. He spent considerable time bridging the divide between the Christians who attempted to elevate the office of monk over the ministry of lay people.

His words remain helpful for us today as we seek to join our contemplation with action and to guide our action with contemplation.

Here are a few highlights from a recent profile:

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Gregory (ca. 540-604) was a contemplative mystic at heart who struggled all of his days with the conflict between busyness and intimacy with Christ. And this struggle gave him great pastoral sympathy for a group of people who had become “second-class citizens” in Christendom: married layfolk. His meditations on the busy life—the life he associated both with Jesus’ friend Martha and Jacob’s wife Leah—led him to formulate a spiritual theology that blasted monastic elitism and freed busy laypeople to enjoy the contemplative life.

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[While Pope] He wrote, “I am being smashed by many waves of affairs and afflicted by the storms of a life of tumults.” But whatever the dangers to his soul, the new pope felt obliged to spend himself in labor for his people, healing and calming whom he could among a populace battered by war, plague, and famine. His heart still aching for the contemplative life of the monastery, the shepherd devoted himself to his sheep.

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…The contemplative life equips us for the active life, and the active life grounds us in acts of love to our neighbors, to keep us from floating off into spiritual pride and irrelevance.

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