how to pray to God | The Contemplative Writer

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: Responding to God with Silence

Posted on August 30, 2016November 26, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

O LORD, I am not proud; I have no haughty looks. I do not occupy myself with great matters, or with things that are too hard for me. But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast, my soul is quieted within me.
Psalm 131:1-3

Do you believe that God desires to nurture, protect, and guide you? Can you accept that God desires you to rest like a child resting with his/her mother?

Stillness and quiet are appropriate, even essential responses to God.

For Reflection

Saturday Prayer

Posted on August 27, 2016August 12, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Today’s prayer is by John G. Whittier:

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.

Source: The Divine Hours

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

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.

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.

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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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.

Contemplative Profiles: Brother Lawrence

Posted on June 23, 2016June 21, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

We best know Brother Lawrence as an unassuming monk who worked hard in a monastery kitchen doing menial chores. It was hardly a step up from his previous occupation in the army, which he only joined because he had grown up in poverty. While serving as a soldier he had a spiritual experience that eventually sent him to a monastery.

Lawrence spent his days contemplating the love of God while washing pots and pan, running errands, and cleaning the kitchen. I have personally benefitted from his writings since I’m the person who washes the dishes in our home, but his example of inviting God to join him in the simplest of tasks is a powerful reminder of how to practice God’s presence today.

This profile in Christian History includes the following quotes from Brother Lawrence:

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Lawrence writes, “Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?”

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“We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king.”

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“As often as I could, I placed myself as a worshiper before him, fixing my mind upon his holy presence, recalling it when I found it wandering from him. This proved to be an exercise frequently painful, yet I persisted through all difficulties.”

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Friday Favorites

Posted on June 10, 2016June 8, 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 Human Cost of Digital Technology

Confessions of a Media Protective Parent

Is Contemplation Dangerous?

I Once Was Lost and Now Am Lost Again…

Productivity Apps for Busy Writers

From Ed’s Blog: Evangelicals Need to Sit in a Room and Say Nothing for a Long Time

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Featured Contemplative Book: The Ragamuffin Gospel

Posted on June 6, 2016June 4, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Two: What the Cross Tells Us

Brennan Manning writes that we can make the mistake of turning salvation into a process or transaction when the cross itself is God’s ultimate act of love for us. The cross tells us just how deeply God loves us.

As I’ve read the works of contemplative Christians, I’ve noticed that many of them had their most profound revelations while meditating on the cross. It’s on the cross that God demonstrated his commitment to saving us through a different kind of power that doesn’t resort to force or degrading others. The cross tells us just how far God’s love will go for us.

The cross tells us that God saw a violent, self-centered people and still preferred to sacrifice himself at the mercy of our religious and political institutions rather than demanding the love and honor that is his due.

We are continuing our feature of Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel this month where he reflects on the love of God and the meaning of the cross:

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“We need a new kind of relationship with the Father that drives out fear and mistrust and anxiety and guilt, that permits us to be hopeful and joyous, trusting and compassionate…

The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions. It calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as falling in love, telling the truth, raising a child, teaching a class, forgiving each other after we have hurt each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence.” Page 77-78

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“In his monumental work The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann writes, ‘We have made the bitterness of the cross, the revelation of God in the cross of Jesus Christ, tolerable to ourselves by learning to understand it as a necessity for the process of salvation.’” Page 108

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“Do you really accept the message that God is head over heels in love with you? I believe that this question is at the core of our ability to mature and grow spiritually. If in our hearts we really don’t believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.” Page 165

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