Haggai 1:1-5(NKJV)
In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by Haggai . . . saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider your ways!
O Lord, have mercy! We intercessors speak with unclean lips, and we dwell among a nation of unclean lips. We exalt ourselves rather than You. We trust the devices and desires of our hearts rather than Your sacred word. Have mercy, Lord. Have mercy.
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It will do no good to “consider [our] ways” until there has first been a tranformation by Grace of mind, heart and will.
The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
–Soren Kierkegaard
PRAYER
Prayer is so simple,
It is like quietly opening a door
And slipping into the very presence of God.
There in the stillness
To listen to his voice;
Perhaps to petition,
Or only to listen;
It matters not.
Just to be there
In his Presence
Is Prayer.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
I think the contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular or rational worldview, because it really is a different mind—a different point of view.
The mind that I call the “small self” or the “false self” reads everything in terms of personal advantage, short-term effort, “What’s in it for me?”—and “How will I look?”, “How will I look good?” As long as you read reality from the reference point of the small self of “how I personally feel” or “what I need or want,” you cannot get very far. The lens never opens up.
Thus the great religions have taught that we need to change the seer much more than just telling people what to see—that is contemplation.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
“Contemplation,” or “meditation” in some groups, was rediscovered in contemporary times beginning with the writings of Thomas Merton in the 1950s and 1960s. The word most Christians are more familiar with is simply “prayer.”
Unfortunately, in the West, prayer had become something functional; something you did to achieve a desired effect—which too often puts the ego back in charge. As soon as you make prayer a way to get what you want, you’re not moving into any kind of new state of consciousness. It’s the same old consciousness, but now well disguised: “How can I get God to do what I want God to do?” It’s the egocentric self deciding what it needs, but now, instead of just manipulating everybody else, it tries to manipulate God.
This is one reason religion is so dangerous and often so delusional. If religion does not transform people at the level of both mind and heart, it ends up giving self-centered people a very pious and untouchable way to be on top and in control. Now God becomes their defense system for their small self! Even Jesus found this to be true of the scribes, Pharisees, and teachers of the law.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
I think some kind of experience of God is necessary for mental and emotional health. You basically don’t belong in the universe until you are connected to its center, and one word for that center (and everything else by implication) is “God.” When you live in the false self you are “eccentric” or off center. You’re trying to make something—yourself—the Center that is not the center. It will never work in the long run, because it is not true. A part can never pretend to be the Whole.
So I would call the false self your “relative identity,” and I would call the True Self your “absolute identity.” A relative identity is not bad. The false self is not bad either. It’s simply not the True Self! If you do not have some experience of your True-Self-in-God, by which to relativize and limit your false self, it has to pose as the real thing—and tries to get away with it. But it cannot work. It is not true. An edge can never pretend to be the Center.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
Presence is a relational term, and it implies at least two parties who both give and receive. The “Real Presence” is the Catholic term for Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine, but if we don’t know how to be present to another presence there is no Real Presence—for us! There must be an opening from both sides for presence to exercise its transformative effect. What we’re doing in contemplation is learning, quite simply, how to be present. That is the only way to encounter any other presence, including Jesus in the Eucharist.* The change is all and always on our side. (There really is not much point in arguing about IF and HOW, just be present and you will know what you need to know.)
We know that God is always given from Jesus’ side, but we have to learn how to receive such total givenness. Believe it or not, that is major work on our part, because we are all filled with blockages to pure, naked presence. It is too vulnerable a position.
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
Contemplation is meeting as much reality as we can handle in its most simple and immediate form, without filters, judgments, and commentaries. Now you see why it is so rare and, in fact, “the narrow road that few walk on” (Matthew 7:14). The only way you can contemplate is by recognizing and relativizing your own compulsive mental grids—your practiced ways of judging, critiquing, blocking, and computing everything.
This is what we are trying to do by practicing contemplative prayer, and people addicted to their own mind will find contemplation most difficult, if not impossible. Much that is called thinking is simply the ego’s stating of what it prefers and likes—and resistances to what it does not like. Narcissistic reactions to the moment are not worthy of being called thinking. Yet that is much of our public and private discourse.
When your mental judgmental grid and all its commentaries are placed aside, God finally has a chance to get through to you, because your pettiness is at last out of the way. Then Truth stands revealed! You will begin to recognize that we all carry the Divine Indwelling within us and we all carry it equally. That will change your theology, your politics, and your entire worldview. In fact, it is the very birth of the soul.
Adapted from CAC Foundation Set: Gospel Call to Compassionate Action
(Bias from the Bottom) and Contemplative Prayer
(CD, DVD, MP3)
Starter Prayer:
Clear my mind for Your Truth.
Carol, I disagree with Kierkegaard
The function of prayer is to love God. In the context of that love affair, the Holy Spirit swells up within us and teaches us to intercede. In an incredible mystery, we are able to come up under the blood covenant of Jesus and participate in the interplay between God’s mercy and God’s righteousness. Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses interceded for the children of Israel. They both sought to influence God.
I also disagree with the CAC Foundation
If my daughter were dying, and I could choose between Mother Teresa and Adolph Hitler to pray for her, I would choose Mother Teresa. Teresa and Adolph were quite possibly created with the same capacity for divine indwelling, but God was more consistently invited into that dwelling place in Teresa’s life, rather than in Adolph’s.