spirituality | The Contemplative Writer

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.

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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Contemplative Profiles: Bernard of Clairvaux

Posted on July 7, 2016July 3, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Bernard of Clairvaux is best known for his books On Loving God and The Steps to Humility and Pride, as well as his many sermons. His writings are full of scripture references and move readers toward a deeper experience of God’s love.

This article in Christian History offers the following commentary of Bernard and his legacy:

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Loving God for the sake of what he has done for us is, however, less than perfect. The next step is to love God for God’s sake alone. Simply because God is, we love him. Most of us would stop here; if we ever reached the point where we loved God for God’s sake alone, we would consider ourselves to have arrived at love of God. But Bernard does not stop here.

The final step is love of ourselves for God’s sake. While this is not the main point of the treatise, it is profoundly significant. One of the characteristics of Bernard’s spirituality is the movement from fear to confidence, from false self-esteem to healthy self-esteem.

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We cannot take ourselves too seriously, since we took our first steps in this process by a candid, honest, genuine self-awareness and sorrow for our sins. Yet neither can we denigrate ourselves because the process of repentance and self-discovery is made possible by, and makes possible, the healing of the sin-ravaged image and likeness of God as it is bathed in the compassion and mercy of God. It is out of this mercy, love, and compassion of God that we can confidently know who we are, and offer back to God the love he has shown us. It overflows in love and service to those around us, who, like ourselves, carry that image of God indelibly imprinted on their innermost spirit.

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Featured Article: Steps Toward Experiencing God’s Presence

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

Pastor Ray Hollenbach writes frequently about the disconnect we experience between the promises of Christianity and the struggles that often become reality. How do we bridge the gap between the aspirations of our faith and the distance we feel from God.

Ray offers five first steps toward experiencing God’s presence, and I’ll highlight a few quotes from his post below:

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The first step in experiencing the presence of God is to take the Biblical witness seriously. We are told time and again that God is near—why does he feel so far? Worse still we’ve trained ourselves to dismiss the scripture as inspirational thoughts rather than a description of reality. To know his presence we must honestly evaluate whether our daily life matches God’s revelation of the way things really are.

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Second, we should order our lives in ways that allow us to experience his presence: we must train ourselves to recognize his presence. The spiritual practices of silence and solitude do not conjure up God’s presence; they help us awaken to God’s presence.

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Read the rest here…

Saturday Prayer

Posted on July 2, 2016June 27, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant that all of us may be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; 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 July 1, 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.

I’m Tired of Being a Christian (If you can relate to this, then contemplative prayer may be perfect for you!)

Defining Christianity in a Single Word

When Less Is More on Social Media

Spirituality for Busy People

From my blog: My Most Difficult Shift Toward Healthy Religion

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Contemplative Profiles: 3 Unknown but Essential Mystics

Posted on June 30, 2016June 25, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Contemplative prayer isn’t an experience reserved for the “spiritually elite” or a few well-known masters. In fact, some of the best contemplative writers are still largely unknown, and contemplative prayer has been practiced for centuries by Christians who remain completely unknown.

Carl McColman offers a list with three mystics that everyone interested in contemplative prayer will want to know about. Here is a little sample of the larger post:

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[Walter] Hilton was born probably in the 1340s and died in 1396; little is known about his life, although it is likely he studied law at Cambridge before becoming an Augustinian priest. His writings, mostly in Middle English, were popular during his lifetime and the following century. Hilton reveals a keen understanding of the psychology of contemplative life, and (like The Cloud) reveals considerable talent as a spiritual directer in his work.

The Scale of Perfection concerns the ongoing process of inner transfiguration that marks perseverance in contemplation. Hilton follows the longstanding mystical tradition that understands the human soul as created in the image and likeness of God, and the contemplative life consisting of a gradual reformation of the soul, to restore the image that has been defaced by sin.

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John Ruusbroec was a prolific writer, usually composing his works in Flemish rather than Latin, in order to reach a wider audience. Today his best known work is The Spiritual Espousals, a luminous meditation on how Christ, the Bridegroom, unites human nature with his own, in a sacred marriage officiated by the Holy Spirit.

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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.