hard to pray | The Contemplative Writer

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 Article: Develop Healthy Habits for Working Alone

Posted on August 17, 2016August 15, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

I personally write best in a public space with a reasonable amount of activity around me, although I do sometimes work early in the morning, alone at my desk some days. It’s those days in solitude that prove especially difficult when I don’t have clear plans and habits to guide my actions.

Solitude is a learned practice, whether for writing or prayer, we will do best if we have some guides to help us experiment with what works best for us. This week’s featured article dives into the practice of writing alone.

According to Paul Jun at 99u, working alone also poses these challenges:

“When finally alone, it’s easy to allow a wave of self-doubt and insecurities to begin to flood your mind. Sitting in solitude for even five minutes makes you get up to grab a snack. Or to check Twitter. And perhaps the most challenging of all, you don’t know when to call it a day; the constant polish and re-polishing when your energy is low masquerades as productivity — or so it goes if you’re not prepared.”

What should you do about these challenges? Here are a few suggestions…

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“Your work must be challenging enough to keep you engaged but easy enough to prevent frustration. Additionally, an ability to allow this ‘deep work’ to occur requires you to be vigilant about outside interruptions.”

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According to Greg Ciotti, “Researchers have shown that a moderate noise level can get creative juices flowing, but the line is easily crossed; loud noises made it incredibly difficult to concentrate. Bellowing basses and screeching synths will do you more harm than good when engaging in deep work.”

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“Be very clear and deliberate about what you should, can’t, or wouldn’t do. Without boundaries while being alone, you will work into the night with dark circles under your eyes, falling under the seductive illusion that you’re being productive. You’re dogged, yes, but at what cost?”

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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

Saturday Prayer

Posted on August 13, 2016August 12, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

The following prayer by John Veltri, S.J. comes from the Ignatian Spirituality website:

“Teach me to listen, O God, to those nearest me, my family, my friends, my co-workers.

Help me to be aware that no matter what words I hear, the message is, “Accept the person I am. Listen to me.”

Teach me to listen, my caring God, to those far from me– the whisper of the hopeless, the plea of the forgotten, the cry of the anguished.

Teach me to listen, O God my Mother, to myself. Help me to be less afraid to trust the voice inside — in the deepest part of me.

Teach me to listen, Holy Spirit, for your voice — in busyness and in boredom, in certainty and doubt, in noise and in silence.

Teach me, Lord, to listen. Amen.”

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 August 6, 2016July 2, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that I, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of public worship, and grant as well that my Sabbath upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Source: The Divine Hours

Featured Book: Falling Upward

Posted on July 25, 2016July 6, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Four: Second Half of Life Enlightenment

Falling Upward challenges us to stop seeking enlightenment. The more we try to create spiritual breakthroughs, the more frustrated we’ll become. We can only seek God and then take whatever enlightenment and breakthroughs result.

Religion can be healthy or unhealthy. While we begin our religious journeys by learning rules and facts, the deeper Christian experience is a union with God–Jesus called this abiding. Richard Rohr speaks of these two movements as the two halves of life. Both are necessary, but the first half of life can become toxic and unhealthy if it’s all we ever know.

Once we fail, doubt, and struggle, we are most ready to experience God on God’s own terms. Rohr writes:

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Any attempt to engineer or plan your own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. You will see only what you have already decided to look for, and you cannot see what you are not ready or told to look for. So failure and humiliation force you to look where you never would otherwise.

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Many people are kept from mature religion because of the pious, immature, or rigid expectations of their first-half-of-life family. Even Jesus, whose family thought he was “crazy” (Mark 3:21), had to face this dilemma firsthand.

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By the second half of life, you have learned ever so slowly, and with much resistance, that most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot, and incites a lot of push-back from those you have attacked.

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“The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” I learned this from my father St. Francis, who did not concentrate on attacking evil or others, but just spent his life falling, and falling many times into the good, the true, and the beautiful. It was the only way he knew how to fall into God.

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For Reflection

Are you encouraged or discouraged to read Rohr’s thoughts on reaching enlightenment?

Take 5 minutes today to rest in God’s direction for your life.

Saturday Prayer

Posted on July 9, 2016June 27, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

I called upon the LORD in my distress* and cried out to my God for help. He heard my voice from his heavenly dwelling;* my cry of anguish came to his ears. The earth reeled and rocked;* the roots of the mountains shook; they reeled because of his anger. Smoke rose from his nostrils and a consuming fire out of his mouth;* hot burning coals blazed forth from him. He parted the heavens and came down* with a storm cloud under his feet. He mounted on cherubim and flew;* he swooped on the wings of the wind. He wrapped darkness about him;* he made dark waters and thick clouds his pavilion. From the brightness of his presence, through the clouds,* burst hailstones and coals of fire. The LORD thundered out of heaven;* the Most High uttered his voice. He loosed his arrows and scattered them;* he hurled thunderbolts and routed them. The beds of the seas were uncovered, and the foundations of the world laid bare,* at your battle cry, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. He reached down from on high and grasped me;* he drew me out of the great waters. He delivered me from my strong enemies and from those who hated me;* for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster;* but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into an open place;* he rescued me because he delighted in me.
Psalm 18:6-20

Source: The Divine Hours

Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing

Posted on July 8, 2016July 2, 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.

7 Ways Thomas Merton Changed the World

Letters from a Devastated Artist

How J.R.R. Tolkien Found Mordor on the Western (A powerful story of how writing can help us face the worst parts of the world.)

How to Create an Internal Mindset Conducive to Writing

The Slowest, Best Conversion (My guest post for Emily P. Freeman, whose blog and books I highly recommend!)

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