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
Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing
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.
Hiking Actually Changes Your Brain
Gratitude Changes Your Brain (How about a gratitude hike???)
The Rebel Virgins and Desert Mothers Who Have Been Written Out of Christianity’s Early History (Prepare to have your mind blown)
A Daily Exercise that Can Revolutionize Your Writing… and Prayer (My guest post for Jane Friedman)
Why the 8-Hour Work Week Doesn’t Work
Lessons from Weakness with Elizabeth Maxon
NEWS: Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together is $.99 on Kindle
Keep the Contemplative Writer Sustainable
The Contemplative writer is ad-free and never shares sponsored content, but it is a lot of work to maintain. We rely on affiliate links from the books we share and the generous gifts of our readers. An automated monthly gift as low as $1 per month or a one-time gift of $5 goes a long way to sustaining our mission to provide contemplative prayer resources for our readers. Thank you!
Choose a recurring monthly donation:
Make a one-time gift via PayPal (credit cards accepted!)
Learn more about how to support us.
Featured Article: Multitasking Drains Us, Kills Focus, and Leads to Anxiety
You may have applied to a job that values “multitasking,” but the latest research tells us that regularly switching between work, email, and social media can kill focus and lead to a sense of anxiety. Even worse, we can train our brain to crave interruptions.
While working on this post I even had to close my email tab because checking email has become a regular habit. Researchers suggest that we need regular breaks away from our screens in order to recharge and set aside focused time to address email and social media without constantly interrupting our days.
Read more from the article in Quartz:
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“When we attempt to multitask, we don’t actually do more than one activity at once, but quickly switch between them. And this switching is exhausting. It uses up oxygenated glucose in the brain, running down the same fuel that’s needed to focus on a task.”
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“Gloria Mark, professor in the department of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, says that when people are interrupted, it typically takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to their work, and most people will do two intervening tasks before going back to their original project. This switching leads to a build up of stress…”
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“The solution is to give up on multitasking and set aside dedicated chunks of time for each separate activity. So only check your email first thing in the morning and again at midday, or set aside 10 minutes per afternoon for Twitter.”
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Keep the Contemplative Writer Sustainable
The Contemplative writer is ad-free and never shares sponsored content, but it is a lot of work to maintain. We rely on affiliate links from the books we share and the generous gifts of our readers. An automated monthly gift as low as $1 per month or a one-time gift of $5 goes a long way to sustaining our mission to provide contemplative prayer resources for our readers. Thank you!
Choose a recurring monthly donation:
Make a one-time gift via PayPal (credit cards accepted!)
Learn more about how to support us.
Scripture Meditation: Waiting on God’s Generousity
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.
For Reflection
Featured Book: Thoughts in Solitude
Week Four: Contemplation Is a Gift
Contemplation is a gift from God that we could not even attempt in the first place if God hadn’t given it to us. This approach to prayer reminds us that we truly do rely completely on the grace and kindness of God.
However it’s also all too easy to turn the pursuit of contemplation into it’s own end. Merton warns us against seeking mountain top experiences or assurances of God’s love because these pursuits can overtake our greater pursuit of God’s loving presence. He writes in Thoughts in Solitude:
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“The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.”
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“There is a stage in the spiritual life in which we find God in ourselves—this presence is a created effect of His love. It is a gift of His, to us. It remains in us. All the gifts of God are good. But if we rest in them, rather than in Him, they lose their goodness for us.”
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“If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”
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Learn more about Thoughts in Solitude…
For Reflection
Saturday Prayer
Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins has translated the following prayer from St. Francis Xavier for us this week:
I love thee, God, I love thee—
Not out of hope for heaven for me
Nor fearing not to love and be
In the everlasting burning.
Thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me,
And thou couldst see me sinning:
Then I, why should not I love thee,
Jesu so much in love with me?
Not for heaven’s sake, not to be
Out of hell by loving thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that thou didst me
I do love and will love thee.
What must I love thee, Lord, for then?
For being my king and God. Amen.
Found in: Excerpt from God’s Passionate Desire by William A. Barry, SJ.
Friday Favorites for Prayer and Writing
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
Keep the Contemplative Writer Sustainable
The Contemplative writer is ad-free and never shares sponsored content, but it is a lot of work to maintain. We rely on affiliate links from the books we share and the generous gifts of our readers. An automated monthly gift as low as $1 per month or a one-time gift of $5 goes a long way to sustaining our mission to provide contemplative prayer resources for our readers. Thank you!
Choose a recurring monthly donation:
Make a one-time gift via PayPal (credit cards accepted!)
Learn more about how to support us.
Featured Book: Thoughts in Solitude
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
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.”
Book of the Month: Thoughts in Solitude
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
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