A week or so ago, I posted an invitation for us to look into Centering Prayer, a form of contemplative prayer that Leighton Ford mentions several times in The Attentive Life. At that time, this is what I said:

I'd like to suggest that we listen and watch Fr. Keating either during class on two Sundays, November 16 and 23, or that we get together at my home for two evenings; if we do the latter, then we can learn from the tapes and then actually put into practice what we see Fr. Keating suggesting as a way of deep prayer. Now, as I hope you know, I don't want to dragoon any of you to watch Fr. Keating's "show and tell," but I would like (in an evangelical manner, with radical hospitality) to present his introduction to CP as an opening to prayer as perhaps you've not envisioned prayer before. So let's chat about the possibilities and see where the Spirit leads us.

Well, the tapes arrived in the mail today, but I'm now aware that June and I will not return from Santa Fe, NM, until November 17, and therefore I won't be with you on the 16th. And, if I remember rightly, Mondays were mentioned as the time best for everyone to meet at our home. Now, however, when I look at our November calendar, it appears that all the Mondays are committed to travel either from Nashville or to Georgia, and I will not be able to meet anytime until December. So can you please take a look at your personal calendars and see if you all are available on Monday, December 8, and Monday, December 15?

Chapter 9: Grandfather Time, When Evening Comes

Although I was not able to be with our class on Sunday, October 26, Harry Smiley told me that all went rather well and that on November 2 we will be discussing Chapter 9 in The Attentive Life. Alas, as I told Harry this morning, June and I will be in Santa Fe, NM, for the next two Sundays, and, as a consequence, we'll need to stay in touch you by prayer and online. Inasmuch as this chapter alludes frequently to the office of Compline, I thought it might be helpful if we might acquaint ourselves with Compline in preparation for the discussion. Here, then, are some places you might like to visit as you read Chapter 9 and get ready for Sunday's discussion:

• Compline as published in The Book of Common Prayer


• The Compline Choir


• The Minnesota Compline Choir


• Compline: Christ Church Savannah


• The Pittsburgh Compline Choir


• Compline at Christ Church


• Compline: New York City

Image: Compline: NTC

Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (5)

On Centering Prayer

Contemplation is not a means to an end. It is not even a goal sought for itself. It is so utterly simply that they very desire for it becomes an obstacle to achieving it. And when you achieve it, you haven't really achieved anything. You do not get some place where you were not. You are getting where you always really are: in the presence of God. You have achieved nothing. Yet you have achieved everything. For you have been transformed in consciousness so that you recognize yourself for who you really are. [William H. Shannon, Seeking the Face of God; qtd. Paul Harris, The Fire of Silence and Stillness, 16]

Image: Edward Hopper, Sun in an Empty Room

Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (4)

As promised on my posting of October 21, I'm continuing with daily comments about Centering Prayer. Take a look at the photograph on the left. Fr. Basil Pennington, one of the instrumental pioneers in re/introducing Centering Prayer to the Church, sits between my friend Jon Kessler and me. Jon played a big part in my return to the Church, and I will tell that story sometime later. As a fervant practioner of Centering Prayer, Jon was desperately ill when this picture was taken. Yet during all his illnesss, he centeringly prayed each day, morning and evening. At the time this picture was taken, May 29, 2000, Jon and I were attending a Centering Prayer retreat with Fr. Basil, somewhere in Minnesota, if I remember rightly. For three days Fr. Basil spoke about Centering Prayer, providing us with its origins and history in the Church, its theological and Biblical foundations, praying with us in a small group, and offering his counsel as we met with him privately. While I can't remember any of the exact words Fr. Basil spoke, I can provide you here with a quotation from one of his books, a quotation which is so quintessentially the voice of Fr. Basil:

Centering Prayer is very simple, very pure, and for that reason very demanding, indeed totally demanding. We should not go to the Prayer seeking to achieve something, to succeed in making a Centering Prayer, in doing it right. We simply seek to be to God and let happen what may. Here Dom Chapman's oft-repeated words are relevant: "Pray as you can, don't pray as you can't" (Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form, 97).

If you are unintroduced to Centering Prayer, that may not make a lot of sense to you. Once, however, you come to know a little bit about the Prayer, Fr. Basil's words and encouragement will come home to you in understanding and practice. Our Sunday class hopes to give you that opportunity soon.

Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (3)

With this posting I'm hoping to prepare us for a discussion on Centering Prayer, a way of praying which Leighton Ford has mentioned and commented on in The Attentive Life. Last night before going to bed I read "The Origins of Centering Prayer" in Thomas Keating's Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer and found this little factoid:

Fr. Basil gave the first retreat to a group of provincials, both men and women, of various religious congregations at a large retreat house in Connecticut. It was they who suggested the term Centering Prayer to describe the practice. The term may have come from their readings of Thomas Merton, who had used this term in his writings.

Inasmuch as I was priviledged to know Fr. Basil, the mention of his name brought back wonderful memories. Nine years ago, in August, 1999, driving from St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, to where I was staying, Fr. Basil spent a day with me in quiet conversation. I remember especially that when he left, I asked him to bless me, and he put both of big hands on my head and blessed me, praying for what seemed like five minutes, asking God to strengthen me in my resolve to learn how to be with God intimately. As I listened to his blessing, I promised myself that I would begin to practice Centering Prayer, to learn how to to pray without images, without words, and without any preconceptions as to what to expect; all I would do is let God would know of my desire to enter fully into his Presence.

Fr. Basil Pennington died on June 3, 2005, at age 73, and each year on that day I remember him and give thanks to God for the privilege of knowing him a little bit. I've gotten to know him even better by reading nearly all that he has written; among them are these favorites:

• Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form
• Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer
• True Self/False Self: Unmasking the Spirit Within
• On Retreat With Thomas Merton

Recently for a birthday gift, my children--Kirk, Lisa, Amy, and Chelsea--gave me a gift certificate for some purchases at http://www.amazon.com/, and I have chosen to buy a book about Fr. Basil that I've not read: As We Knew Him: Reflections on M. Basil Pennington. I'm really looking forward to its arrival in the mail. In the meantime, here's a word for you from Fr. Basil about Centering Prayer:

The word "contemplatio," contemplation, etymologically has three sections to it. "Tion" means abiding state. All of us have those, if we are alive, wonderful moments when suddenly God touches us, and we experience him and so on. What we are looking for is a way that will help us to begin to live more and more constantly in that wonderful communion with God. And that’s what "con" is about. Con means with. And "templa." Well, in the early Roman times the templa was a particular segment of the heavens, and the priests of the temple, the priests of the people, would try to revive that and try to see how the birds flew, and so on, and from that come to know the will of God, the presence of God. Now that time, that templa, got projected on earth and became the templum, the temple, a place we went to commune with God. So contemplation is abiding with God where His will is known, where His love is known, where He is present in His temple. [From A Centering Prayer Retreat with Fr. M. Basil Pennington]

Image information: I set the camera on a pile of books on a table, set the timer, pushed the button, and ran around to get close to Fr. Basil; then we both smiled and the camera took the picture.

Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (2)

Leighton Ford comments on Centering Prayer on page 179 in Chapter 8 of The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things. Here is what one Christian who practices Centering Prayer says concerning her practice:

We do not need to go to Calcutta to find Christ in the poor. If we have not found Him in our very midst, if we have not learned to love those who share our daily oives more than ourselves, preferring their needs to ours, then we will not find Him anywhere else. As Mother Teresa has daid: "Do not search for Christ in far off lands. He is not there. He is in you."

We find Christ in every moment, which is truly present to use and we to it. The present moment is, therefore, always the moment of Christ. Our neighbour is, therefore, always the present Christ. Saying the mantra [the sacred word many use in Centering Prayer] restrains our ego and roots us in the present; likewise turning to the poorest of our neighbours restrains our egoism and shatters our illusions, revealing to us the only wisdom we can hope to acquire--the wisdom of humility. Humility is to be ground in the truth about ourselves--that we are poor.

Lee-Moy Teresa Ng, "Meditation and Working among the Poor"

Image: Roman Catholic priest and champion of the poor, Abbe Pierre

Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (1)

I've just finished reading this chapter and am delighted to see that again Leighton Ford makes mention of Centering Prayer, this time a half-page comment wherein he says, "I have found it helpful both at the beginning and at the ending of a day to spend a few minutes in this kind of quietness . . . ." (179). While I realize that a few Sundays ago I passed out a small descriptive brochure providing you with an introduction to Centering Prayer, I hope it's all right with everyone that this week I begin a more earnest introduction to its practice. Let me be openly professing: I practice Centering Prayer quite regularly and would like to share its praxis with you in more detail. To that end, I'd like to share two "talks" by Father Thomas Keating that are available on video tapes in late November. The first is The Method of Centering Prayer; the second, The Psychological Experience of Centering Prayer; they are both from a larger series, "The Christian Contemplative Heritage: Our Apophatic Tradition."

I'd like to suggest that we listen and watch Fr. Keating either during class on two Sundays, November 16 and 23, or that we get together at my home for two evenings; if we do the latter, then we can learn from the tapes and then actually put into practice what we see Fr. Keating suggesting as a way of deep prayer. Now, as I hope you know, I don't want to dragoon any of you to watch Fr. Keating's "show and tell," but I would like (in an evangelical manner, with radical hospitality) to present his introduction to CP as an opening to prayer as perhaps you've not envisioned prayer before. So let's chat about the possibilities and see where the Spirit leads us.

As we read Chapter 8 and then come to Ford's comments on Centering Prayer near the end of the chapter, I'll be posting quotations, scrapes of sayings, and some poetry along the way. Here's one by Thomas Merton:

Our real journey in life in interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an every greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.

[From The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends; qtd. The Fire of Silence and Stillness, ed. Paul Harris, p. 10].

Image source: Silent Prayer

Chapter 7: When Shadows Come, Darkness Comes Early (continued)

At the end of Chapter 7, Leighton Ford tells the story of Jerry Sittser, who “lost his mother, his wife, and their youngest daughter” in one tragic moment. In some sort of a “waking dream” Jerry found himself completely unable to find any kind of solace; his was a great inability to chase and grasp any light of a sinking western sun. After he “felt a vast darkness closing in,” Ford tells us that Jerry’s sister, Diane, “told him that the quickest way to reach the sun was “not to go west” into the diminishing sunset, “but instead to head east, to move fully ‘into the darkness until one comes to a sunrise’.” That “counterintuitive insight” helped Jerry find “a road to recovery.” He allowed himself to “walk into the darkness” and so “be transformed” by his suffering “rather than to think that somehow [he] could avoid it” (162).

All of us in our class who are reading The Attentive Life have some inkling, some knowledge of what it means to “walk into the darkness.” If ever you should get to know my wife June and me well, you will come to know that both of us have gone through, like you, a lot of darkness. In addition you will find out that twice a day June and I sing three or four (sometimes more) psalms, making our way through the Book of Psalms once a month. So it is that on the morning of the sixteenth of each month, we turn to Psalm 88 and quietly chant it to a very simple tune or psalm tone. The end of Psalm 88 ends with these words: “and darkness is my only companion.” In the short silence that follows our psalm singing, June and I are reminded on each month’s sixteenth day that we’ve not been alone whenever we've entered darkness. Long before us, some Hebrew poet (maybe it was David) has previously gone eastward at sunset. Psalm 88 is a very dark poem, full of foreboding, weighed down with a sense of loneliness and despair. And yet June and I sing it. I chant it quietly because like the “counterintuitive insight” of Jerry’s sister, we need the reminder that it’s genuinely all right to walk into the eastward darkness at day's end because that’s where our Lord Jesus has been. He too has gone into the Dark, and in the Dark my Lord will be with June and me.

The Dark, of course, can take many shapes. Sometimes death, sometimes divorce, sometimes addiction, sometimes guilt, and sometimes a profound personal dissatisfaction with the way one’s life is going. In one form or another, I, perhaps along with you, have experienced nearly all of these Darknesses. Now that I’m in my seventies—strange as it may seem—it’s at times the realization that my life has been unsatisfactory to me (and to God) that presents itself as a Darkness into which I must enter. I have a postcard I use as a bookmark in my prayerbook that says “Jesus joins us in our human difficulties at the point which we dislike ourselves the most.” That place "where I dislike myself the most" is the Dark into which I take one step at a time as Jesus Christ carries a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. As I enter that darkness I'm discovering that my Lord is transforming me into his likeness. It's all very slow and not very dramatic, but it's happening. It's happening as Paul promised in his second letter to the Corinthians when he says, "So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace."

I don't know what your darkness is, but like Jerry, like the Psalmist, and like Christ, you may go eastward at sunset and be transformed by whatever suffering in darkness you experience because God is with you on the way.

Acedia

Last Sunday in our discussion on Chapter 6, we spent a few minutes talking about acedia, the Greek word Ford says is "a state of soul marked by sluggishness, moodiness and distaste for spiritual things." According to Ford, "the fourth-century monk John Cassian called acedia "the noonday demon" (121).

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Books and Culture which contains a review of Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me. Dennis Okhom, the reviewer, reporting from Norris, helps us understand the history of the word and its meaning:

The Greek word acedia simiply means "a lack of care." But as Norris excavates the concept we find that it is deeper and richer. She rightly traces the Christian discussion to the 4th-century ascetic Evagrius Ponticus and his list of eight "thoughts" that characterize the human condition. One of the eight--acedia--was the "noonday demon" (Ps. 91.6) that attacked the monk who kept checking the angle of the sun to see if was time for the afternoon meal as he languished in the tedium of what seemed like a 50-hour day. John Cassian (5th century) carried forward the list of eight to Gregory the Great (6th century), who transposed acedia (along with tristitia) into "sloth" as he reconfigured the list into the "seven deadly sins."

Okholm goes on to report much, much more of what Norris aims to do in Acedia & Me, indicating that her consideration of acedia is highly nuanced, well worth the purchase of the book and a consequent careful reading. Carmen Acevedo Butcher provides another review. After I read two or three more reviews to make sure I want to read the book, I may be off to the bookstore to locate a used copy.

Image: 12:00 noon

Chapter 7: When Shadows Come, Darkness Comes Early

In Chapter 7, Ford makes extensive mention of Ronald Rolheiser's The Holy Longing (146 ff.). It's a book I read about six years after my son's death in 1993. Although I've given away, sold, and lost lots of books, The Holy Longing is one book I've always kept within easy reach. And inasmuch as Ford's meditation on the monastic office of None and its associative linking with "the third hour" of Christ's death day, and all those times when the shadows lengthen, ushering us into considerations of death, I reached for Rolheiser to re-read what he says about the ways in which we die. Most of us experience dying in preparation for death, Rolheiser reminds us, in at least five ways:

1. the death of our youth


2. the death of our wholeness


3. the death of our dreams


4. the death of our honeymoons


5. the death of a certain idea of God and Church

These are serious dyings, and I have time here only to reflect on one of them: death to living with a pre-critical faith. What you are about to read I'm taking from a posting I made several months ago in response to Alan Jamieson’s Chrysalis: The Hidden Transformation in the Journey of Faith:

Grateful to Scott McKnight for an opportunity to share thoughts about Jamieson’s Chrysalis, I’m one, now seventy years old, who has experienced a good bit of transformation in the journey. I have for years appreciated James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, built upon the contributions of thoughtful developmental psychologists such as Piaget, Erickson, and Kohlberg. Thinking that perhaps I could understand the turnings of my life somewhat more perceptively, I read Chrysalis with considerable
interest.

In the end, however, I found it disappointing. For all its allusions and descriptions of “the dark night of the soul,” Jamieson’s rehearsal of the “cacooning” stage is far too domesticated for those of us whose faith journey was seriously interrupted so as to be profoundly exilic, a devastating wilderness trek, radically separated from anything resembling the Church’s life. ithout getting unwisely too confessional here (although I now highly prize the Sacrament of Confession and Absolution; see The Augsburg Confession, Article XXV), Jamieson’s use of the pupal stage of a butterfly as a supposedly apt metaphor to describe “a period of hyper-critical faith” (96) hardly describes the harsh realities that many Christians experience in their transformation from pre- to post-critical faith. To be swaddled, wrapped, and enveloped in the hard-shelled pupa of a butterfly (no matter how life-changing the hibernation) is simply too insipid a metaphor for an often protracted and public middle stage migration many Christians experience.

My own experience and that of several other Christians whom I know requires that whatever happened between pre- and post- was certainly not pupal in nature. Yes, at times Jamieson comes close to what can only be described as an absolute middle-stage rejection of all things Christian, but he never quite gets there. For example, he says that “it is journey from an effortful faith to a doubtful faith and on to a restful and thoughtful faith” (97, Jamieson’s italics). My middle stage was not “doubtful”; it was no faith. Everything went, it was kaput, gone, absent. And by the way more than one of my friends describes his and her experiences, they too say that they were completely out of the loop.

A few lines of Henry Vaughn’s “The Retreate” from Silex Scintellans come to mind. In “The Retreate” Vaughn describes his “first” life; it was a time

Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinfull sound,
Or had the black art to dispence
A sev’rall sinne to ev’ry sence.

Within the middle stage that I and others experienced, we too defied conscience and (to say things as delicately as possible) learned a good many of the black (well, at least very dark “grey”) arts that made appeal to “ev’ry sence.” For such missteps and wanderings, the aptness the Bible’s description of Israel’s exilic sinning surely seems more accurate than some quiet (at least by connotation) pupal life. In some instances we were “deported”—and deported ourselves–from the Church and became expatriates.

Although the stories of our returnings are varied, the one constant is that God managed to intervene so strongly that after a while we had no other option than to come home, albeit in bodies that harbor spirits fundamentally different from early moorings. For me that homecoming arose from a son’s death, an introduction to the desert fathers and mothers by a Cistercian abbot, a wife’s and children’s forgiveness, the gift of an adopted child, and the renewed friendship of two seminary buddies, one of whom walked in my shoes.

All of this is not to say that Chrysalis will not be helpful to many whose journeys, like that of Phillip Yancey have been from pre-critical to post-critical faith—yet inward and hidden. Others, however, may perhaps find it helpful to envision themselves like seeds that fell on hard ground and were gobbled up by a bird. In that bird’s gizzard they stewed around for a good while until that raucous bird shat the seeds out, and they dropped on good fertile soil. In the end they discovered that the Sower, that Crazy Farmer, was quite aware that some of his seeds would now and then return to earth to be nourished by the warm, odorous manure of the Church. They have since grown up, to switch parables, to be old fig trees, whose fruit is ready for plucking, ready for the making of fig preserves. Some of my preserves are now being shelved at Praying Daily and Peaceful Christians.

Well, there you have one form of dying. And in the None of my life--resurrection.

Image: House of the Dying, Casa de la muerte, Benares, India, 1998

Book Recommendation

In this morning's discussion, mention was made of Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it matters what Christians believe, ed. Ben Quash and Michael Ward (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007) as a good book to read. Here's how the publishers describe it:

Ten top theologians, all practising Christians, tackle ten ancient heresies and show why the contemporary Church still needs to know about them. Christians need to remember what these great early heresies were and why they were ruled out, or else risk falling prey to their modern-day manifestations. The contributors show how present debates in the Church are often re-enactments of battles which the Church thought it had won against heresies many centuries ago.

The book contains key scriptural passages relevant to each heresy, a glossary of terms, and summaries of historical Church documents in which these heresies were defined and outlawed.

Contributors

• Professor Denys Turner, Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale


• Dr Janet Martin Soskice, Fellow of Jesus College and Reader in Philosophical
  Theology


• Dr. Anna Williams, Fellow of Corpus Christi College and Lecturer in Patristic
  and Medieval Theology


• The Rev. Dr Ben Quash, Fellow and Dean of Peterhouse


• The Rev. John Sweet, Fellow of Selwyn College


• The Rev. Dr Michael B. Thompson, Vice Principal of Ridley Hall.
  

Topics

• Adoptionism: did Jesus become the Son of God at his baptism?


• Docetism--was Jesus really human or did he just appear to be so?


• Nestorianism--was Christ one Person or a hybrid with a divine dimension and a human dimension?


• Arianism--was Christ divine and eternal or was there a time when he did not
  exist?


• Marcionism--is the God of the New Testament the same as the God of the Old?


• Theopaschitism--is it possible for God to suffer in His divine nature?


• Destroying the Trinity--does God have a simple or a complex nature?


• Pelagianism--can people save themselves by their own efforts?


• `The Free Spirit'--are there two kinds of Church membership, one for the elite and one for the rest?


• Donatism--do Christian ministers need to be faultless for their ministrations to be effective?

I've read the first four chapters and highly recommend it.

Chapter 6: The Noonday Demon: Our Distractible Selves

One of the longer ones in The Attentive Life, Chapter 6 (as least to my sensibilities) rambles a bit. While there’s nothing wrong with a good ramble, I nevertheless I sometimes find myself wishing that Ford would get to the point more quickly than he tends to do so. And, if I may, another quibble: more and more I’m finding that Ford provides citations of sources quite selectively. More than once I wanted to see the source of a quotation only to be disappointed. For example, Ford tells us that John Cassan is responsible for defining acedia [sloth, indolence] as ‘the noonday demon” (121); but when I went to the notes to see where, I found no documentation. Or again, when Ford tells the little story of the conversation between a “woman trying to practice centering prayer” and Thomas Keating (129), there’s no citation in the endnotes. Such disappointments, I suppose, for quite natural for the likes of me, a retired professor who over the course of more than thirty years has tried to teach thousands of students the joys of citation--especially for readers! But, as I say, these are minor quibbles.

More importantly, I do appreciate Ford’s repeating the story about centering prayer. In case you need to remember it, here it is:

A woman trying to practice centering prayer told Thomas Keating: “I try to keep my mind on God, and to pay attention. But it seems as if I am always being distracted. I must be distracted a thousand times in twenty minutes.”

His response to her is a a good final word in making peace with our distractibility: “Wonderful,” He replied, “You have a thousand opportunities to turn back to God.”

Upon reading that story (worthy of inclusive among any told by modern Desert Mothers and Fathers), I thought it might here be helpful if I share with you something of what I wrote to a friend this morning about my experiences with Centering Prayer. I hope my friend does not mind if I excerpt the following from my letter to him. Here it is, albeit considerably edited:

Normally in the morning, like you, I rise fairly early. Quite frankly, it’s often because I have to go to the bathroom. At seventy-one my bladder is a pretty good alarm clock. Gratefully I no longer have to shower immediately after getting out of bed and dress for teaching at the university; as a consequence, I usually put my legs into a pair of old jeans, slip on a shirt and sweater, and make my way to the kitchen where I ritually make a carafe of coffee, an old-fashioned way, with a French press. Liking strong coffee, as close to industrial strength as possible, I grind the beans up fine, and fix about four cups. While the water is boiling, I check my liturgical calendar (today, for example, the Church is remembering the life and witness of St. Francis) and look over my prayerbook (in this instance, the Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary) to make sure that the pages are ribbon-marked at the rights spots; after the coffee has steeped, I go outside on a cement patio just off the kitchen and light up a Coleman lamp so that I can read. Whenever possible I pray outdoors, under the stars. When it gets too cold to do that, I go into my workshop across the yard and beginning the morning there. My first prayers are marked as Vigils: some opening versicles, a hymn (which I sometimes sing if I know a melody to the text, but more often read as poetry), three to four psalms (spoken quietly), a reading from Scripture, concluding prayers in the form of a litany with self-announced intercessions, and a final benediamus and blessing. During the Vigil I let things happen slowly and often simply sit quietly as I move through things.

After the Vigil, I enter Centering Prayer, usually for twenty minutes. By now my internal ticker knows about when thirty minutes has gone by, but nonetheless I set a little red timer to 30 and place it on a shelf in the corner of the patio. To enter this time of prayer, I begin with the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us”), saying the prayer over and again slowly for about five minutes; from the Trisagion, I move to the Jesus Prayer (again, an Orthodox form of prayer), again repeating it for about five minutes; and from there I slow down into Centering Prayer with the word “Abba,” saying it to as to present myself to God with the intention of coming as fully as possible into His Presence. During much of this I use a one-hundred knotted Orthodox prayer rope, passing my fingers over a single know as I pray the Trisagion, the Jesus Prayer, or quietly say God's name, "Abba."

Back in 2002 Archbishop Rowan Williams in an interview with Roland Ashby, described what I and countless others experience while in this kind of praying:

By entering prayer this way, my mind is stilled and my heart beat and breath slow down, I am become more present to the place and time I’m in. It’s really an anchorage in time.

During this time I don’t always become aware of the presence of God’s Spirit. All I know is that I am being held or attended to. I suppose I can express it by saying that there comes a level of prayer where it is no longer a question of “Am I seeing something?” Rather, “Am I aware of being seen?” Even though I’m sitting in the pre-dawn, it’s a sitting in the light and of just being and becoming aware of who I am. Often my thoughts wander all over the place as I mentally run after this or that. When I become aware of these meandering, I simply begin saying “Abba,” and so do quietly again and again. This part of the prayer time is the sort of steady and quiet drawing in and settling of all the tendencies that are wriggling out to lay hold of the world. The Spirit encourages me to gather them back into my heart which the Orthodox writers describe in their prayer stories. It’s what western writers mean by the simplification of the heart in prayer. By this we simply become what we are and just sit there being a creature in the hand of God.

Often I have no overtly discernable feeling during my prayer life. It’s here that I have found St. John of the Cross so helpful; he helped me understand prayer as being present before God with more than feelings. I realize, of course, that you can misunderstand that; you can say, I suppose, that prayer is nothing to do with feelings; that is, it’s matter of will and practice (something St. John encourages). But that is not what I think he’s ultimately saying. Prayer is a habit of being. It is a sinking of our own identities into something deeper which goes on whether or not we think we are consciously praying. This means that how we feel in not unimportant, but it doesn’t tell you all that you need to know about prayer. I may be feeling terrible and God may be active; I may be feeling nothing in particular, but God may be very active; I may be feeling wonderful, and that may have nothing at all to do with God’s doing. So a bit of distance from my feeling, not hostility to them, but a realism about them, and an ability to tell the difference between what God is doing and how I am feeling—that is, I think, fundamental to St. John of the Cross. (St. Mary Mary Magdalen Oxford, qtd. Anglican Communion News Service, July 2002 parish bulletin).

After the twenty or so minutes of such prayer go by, the little red kitchen ticker goes off (sometimes unexpectedly with a slight shock of noise; sometimes not), I say “Thank you, God,” get up, go inside, have a hot cup of coffee, and begin the day. It’s usually about this time that I do some writing, wake June up, fix a little breakfast, watch a bit of the Today Show with June. After breakfast, together we pray Morning Prayer, using a Lutheran office (again, much like Vigils, but at this time we sing the psalms, alternating with one another, psalm by psalm; read from the lectionary, make our intercessions, and so on). Then it’s off for the day. June to whatever she has plans (this morning, she going to visit some garage sales and buy an inexpensive item or two; last week she got a blender for the lakehouse real cheap) and I to the garden, maybe some photography, a good bit of writing, a coffee chat with a friend, some reading, bill paying, yard work, house repairs, and so on.

Well, that’s my sharing for this morning. Like the woman trying to practice centering prayer, I've had (well, maybe not a thousand!) lots and lots of opportunities to turn back to God. How about you? What are your mornings like?

Attentive Living and Centering Prayer

This morning at First United Methodist Church, we continued our discussion of Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life and talked a good bit about distractions (“those ‘many things’ of a busy life [that] pull me away from the ‘main thing’ that I should be paying attention to (Luke 10:41-42)?” (100). Ford discusses distractions at length in Chapter 5, stressing how difficult it is to pay attention to what matters in a world of hyped-up information, “events communicated at warp speed,” and multitasking. We expressed some curiosity about the Ford’s comment that distractus (the Latin origins of the word) literally means “to draw or pull apart” (101). My old Latin dictionary agreed with Ford, saying that distractus is a participle derived from distraho which means to pull asunder, tear into pieces, divide, separate, and remove. Its root traho means to drag.

If distractions prevent us from paying attention, Ford suggests that they are negative influences in our lives. In retelling the story of Jesus' visit to the home of Martha and Mary wherein Jesus tells Mary that "only one things is essential," (Luke 10), Ford interprets the story so as to suggest that "we all have 'Martha' and 'Mary' parts in us, and we all are called to pay attention both of action and contemplation" (107). We are, as Mother Teresa explains, "contemplatives in the midst of life" (qtd. 107).

The topic of contemplative living, essentially one of "paying attention," brought us to a discussion of contemplative practice. Sharing some of my previous effrots at Buddhist-based meditation at a Zen monastery, I described at some length the mentally difficult effort expected of me in Renzai koan study, extended efforts designed to break down my overly intellectural apprehension of reality. During such meditation, I was encouraged to do zazan and focus on koan work and avoid mental distractions at all costs. Even lwith help of an experienced Zen master, it was difficult work. As I look back upon that set of experiences, I am grateful that God helped me, with the aid of my Buddhist friends, to learn a good bit about quieting the inner life.

After the death of my son in 1993, however, I was (by the grace of God) given an introduction to contemplative practices within the Christian tradition (notably Centering Prayer encouraged by Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington, among others). With the help of Christian friends, God showed me how not only to “settle” myself interiorly but also to settle into Himself. With the continual help of the Holy Spirit who cries "Abba, Abba, Abba!" even as we pray ever so weakly (Romans 8), it was given to me to realize that mental, emotional, and memory-based distractions within Silent Prayer are not disasters. With God nothing is a disaster, not even distractions, not even those times when we seem to be coming apart. When one realizes that he or she has been distracted within foundamentally "wordless" prayer, one simply returns—ever so gently--to the “sacred word” that signals an intention to be in God’s presence. Distractions are thus presented to God for his blessing, care, and healing.

While this description of what happens in centering contemplative prayer may sound simplistic, the overall dynamics of Centering Prayer are profound, best left for a fuller exposition by Thomas Keating in Open Mind, Open Heart, Basil Pennington in Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form, and Murchadh O Madagain in Centering Prayer and the Healing of the Unconscioius.

For more on Centering Prayer, visit

• Centering Prayer


• Centering on the Presence


• Contemplative Outreach Ltd


• Kyrie: Centering Prayer Index


• Centering Prayer: Uniquely, powerfully Christian meditation


• Introduction to Contemplative (Centering) Prayer

For an eight-minute introduction to Centering Prayer, listen to Fr. Thomas Keating:



Near the end of our discussion Mason asked us to look at Psalm 131; it surely sums up most of what we were trying to say this morning:

1 My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.

Centering Prayer

In the previous post, I mentioned Centering Prayer as one way of entering the wonderful and healing Quiet of God. This morning I received news about blog coverage of the 2008 Annual Conference and Enrichment Weekend: Unity: Oneness in Contemplation, sponsored by Contemplative Outreach. By visiting the blog, you will find out more about Centering Prayer and meet some of the people who include its practice in their prayer lives.

Chapter 5: Active Life, A Slower Pace in a Faster World

While going about his day's work, when Jesus realized that the time was about "terce" (Latin for three), he knew that it was mid-morning, the third hour, that is, about 9:00 a.m. as we calculate the hours. Already at work, Jesus--and his disciples and the millions of disciples ever since--knew and know that about 9:00 we need to "take a break from busy work," as Leighton Ford puts it. And inasmuch as Ford likes to compare the passing of a single day to the passing of a whole life, he suggests that mid-morning thoughts might well be compared to some more-or-less early or mid-life (and mid-work) considerations. Ford especially would like for us to think about the many ways we "put off" getting down to the business of real living with distractions, those things that literally "draw or pull [us] apart" (101).

Living in a world of "overload" (102), we multi-taskers now take it for granted that modern life must be lived in speed, highly organized so as to be efficient, and relentless in its demand that time be filled up with unpunctuated activity. We rush from this to that, from pillar to post, from minute to minute. Ford would like for us to think and live otherwise.

In "A Little Story about Attentiveness," Ford invites us into the story of Jesus's visit to the home of Martha and Mary. Rich with interpretive possibilities, the story has been retold to suit many audiences. Monastic communities in particular like to identify themselves with Mary, supposing that they have chosen "the better part." Maybe. Personally, I like the way Ford breaks open the story's significance when he says that "we all have 'Martha' and 'Mary' parts in us, and we all are called to pay attention both to action and contemplation." His use of Mother Teresa explanation "about the work of her Sisters of Mercy in caring for the dying poor" really gives all of us something to chew on mentally and spiritually. Mother Teresa said, "Do not think of us as social workers. We are contemplatives in the midst of life. We pray the work" (107).

Praying the work: that's what we do in mid-morning, in mid-life (and even near the end of life, like a few of us in this class). Although Ford does not give us any point-by-point guidelines for living contemplatively, it seems to me that we readers might naturally want to know more about it; that is, how might we answer the question: How as a contemplative do I "pray the work"? If this is something of your question, I'd like to suggest that you take a look at the possibility of what is now known as Centering Prayer. For introductions, sitting with Mary, here are two good places to visit:

• Centering Prayer
  Centering Prayer (Wikipedia)

On the off-chance (or on the chance!) that you're interested, I'll bring some printed information about Centering Prayer with me to class on Sunday.

Image credit: The Turtle Island Project

Surrendering to Sheer Grace

During last Sunday's discussion on Chapter 4, Harry asked that Luther's comments on the difficulty Luther experienced in "surrendering to sheer grace" be posted so that everyone might read it. Here's what Luther said "On the Sum of the Christian Life" (Luther's Works, American edition, vol. 51):

Even though [faith] is taught in the best possible way, it is difficult enough to learn it well . . . . We cannot . . . think anything except that, if I have lived a holy life and done many great works, God will be gracious to me . . . . The heart is always ready to boast of itself before God and say: "After all, I have preached so long and lived so well land done so much, surely God will take this into account . . . ." When you come before God, leave all that boasting at home and remember to appeal from justice to grace. But let any body try this and he will see and experience how exceedingly hard and bitter a thing it is for someone who all his life has been mired in his work righteousness, to pull himself out of it and with all his heart rise up through faith . . . . I myself have now been preaching and cultivating it through read and writing for almost twenty years and lstill I feel lthe old clinging dirt of wanting to deal so with
God that I may contribute something, so that he will have to give me his grace in exchange for my holiness. Still I cannot get it into my head that I should surrender myself completely to sheer grace; yet this is what I should do and must do.

Some More Thoughts about Roots

In Chapter 4, Ford asked each of us to ponder this question: “What is the root system of my life?” (82). In my last post, I said that I'd say something more about our being rooted and grounded in God's baptismal waters. Inasmuch as my wife (God bless her!) comes from the Southern Baptist tradition, you can well imagine that she and I have had not a few conversations about our understanding of and appreciation for baptism. Among Christians, it is popularly thought that there are basically two views: one held by those who baptize infants (Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, among others); another held by those in the anabaptist tradition (Baptists, Mennonites, Assembly of God Christians, and so on). Actually there are more than two views as Tom Nettles et al. make apparent in Understanding Four Views of Baptism. But as good as that book is (it is at times superficial), I would argue that its four views are too strictly derived from the so-called Protestant tradition; the book says nothing about the views of our Roman Catholic and Orthodox sisters and brothers. Yet although there are more than four views, the book nonetheless moves us to understand that within the Church our understandings of baptism are diverse and nuanced.

Because I best understand and appreciate the Lutheran understanding to Holy Baptism (reflecting the "catholic" view), I agree with Four Views when it describes the Lutheran approach as one which emphasizes the saving activity of God in baptism. As always with our relationship with God, the Holy Trinity initiates and brings to completion our salvation. Baptism is like being born. When my mother delivered me, she did all grunting and pushing, heavy breathing, and muscle contracting; all I did was gasp for a breath of air and start living. So with baptism, "being born again"; God, like a mother, does all the saving work, delivering me; all I do is feel the mighty Word and the water coming down over me, and I catch the Breath.

Interestingly, in a Bible class I attended a year ago we discovered (not unsurprisingly in a Methodist church) that about 50% were baptized as infants and the other 50% were baptized as adults. We talked about our baptisms at some length and then asked each other, "Does the kind of baptism by which you entered the Church now give you deep satisfaction? That is: if you had to do things over again, would you want to be baptized as before or differently?" Not a few of those baptized (and re-baptized) as adults said that they now wished that they had been baptized as infants. Those who articulated this view said that they envied those who from infancy on, from their first memories forward, knew themselves to be baptized Christians even as toddlers and very young children. They wished that they too could have had that sense of identity from birth, from the time of their infancy in baptism. As I now think back on their responses to the question, it really doesn't surprise much at all that so many in the class, baptized as adults, said they would have like to have been baptized as infants.

Knowing that I was a Christian from my earliest memories has been for me a great source of comfort. Thinking about my baptism, I have often been reminded what the Lord Jesus said to my "patron" Saint--Saint Andrew and to me, "Andy, you did not choose me; I chose you." Because God is my Sovereign Savior, I have never felt the need to be "re-baptized." When God acts, he acts decisively! God's placing me by baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus (Romans 6) happened before I was able to remember the watery event, "before the foundations of the world." Like a child who has been adopted shortly after birth, I grew up knowing only God as my True Parent. In baptism the Most Holy Trinity gave me his Name. As I grew older and went to three years of Saturday-morning confirmation instructional classes, learning what it meant to be immersed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and was then confirmed in my faith at the age of fourteen, I steadily grew in understanding and appreciation of God's decisive love. That's not to say that I always lived out my baptismal identity. I didn't. Even when I forgot who I was and left the Church later in life, going into spiritual exile for something over a decade, I was however so "vaccinated" with that identity that upon returning to the Family of God, my return was, properly understood, "easy." All I had to do was walk home, reclaim my God-given identity, and live in my baptismal life. There was no need to get "re-baptized," for God, once and for all times, had brought me into his family, given me his Name, thrust me into the life of the his Son and the embrace of the Holy Spirit. I may have left God, but God never left me. Just as I have children who will always be my children (no matter what!), so God called me his child in baptism, and he has always said, "You are mine."

So when I think of the roots of my life, there you have it. I am rooted, grounded, and watered in the love of God and always have been since my baptism on November 30, 1937. Now each day, during my Morning and Evening Prayers, and at the beginning and conclusion of each Eucharistic Liturgy when my Pastor says to the Family, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," I remember when God put me, like the Israelites at the Red Sea, into and out of the water and saved me. When remembering, I mark my body with sign of the cross and live out my identity as God's child. I look around and see many in my Family also marking themselves with the sign of the cross, and I thank God that by God's grace I am a member of the Body of Christ. God has really gotten my attention.

Some Thoughts about Roots

In Chapter 4, Ford asked me to ponder this question: “What is the root system of my life?” (82).

For the past three or four days I’ve been asking myself that question, letting the image of roots, especially tree roots, lead me to my thoughts for this posting. Before beginning, however, let me confess that I’m fascinated with tree roots. Whenever I have an opportunity (and a camera), I go looking for tree roots, especially when they’re exposed by severe erosion or when they twist themselves around rocks and plunge themselves into crevices of granite and limestone. As I drive along the highway, I’m constantly amazed at where tree manage to grow and how far down their roots go to seek nourishment. So when Ford asks me to consider my roots, I imagine myself something of a tree among the rocks, the roots of my life going down deep where the nourishment is, where there’s water.

Trees are are “grounded” in water. And so is the root system of my life, because I’m grounded in the waters of my baptism. Born on October 21, I was baptized by my father, a Lutheran pastor, on November 30, on St. Andrew’s Day. On that day I God baptized me into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God adopted me into his family, and He marked me with His name--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. My baptism into the divine life of the Most Holy Trinity is the most important gift I have ever received. With Martin Luther (as he says in the Large Catechism), I realize that "to be baptized in God's name is to be baptized not by men but by God himself. Although it is performed by men's hands, it is nevertheless truly God's own act.”

I am rooted in God’s loving action. "God himself stakes his honor, his power, and his might on it. It is not simply a natural water, but a divine... water ...it contains and conveys all the fullness of God" (LC). Rooted from infancy in God’s love, a t the beginning of each day I draw nourishment from my roots, my baptism. I make the sign of the cross over myself (the sign my father first placed on my body on November 30 when god watered me in Holy Baptism). When I worship and hear the Eucharistic Liturgy’s opening words, “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” I once again mark myself with the Holy Cross and remember and thank God for my baptism. When I’m tempted to despair of my sinful self, I have learned to say, “But I am baptized!” If I am baptized, I have the promise that I shall be saved and have eternal life, both in soul and body. I belong to Christ.

The implications are enormous, and in a day or so I’ll say something about them.

Chapter 4: Prime Time: Our Root System (81-98)

Tomorrow morning June and I leave on A bus trip, along with some forty-six other “senior citizens.” Our destination is New York City, but along the way we’ll be stopping in Henderson, NC, Cherry Hill, NJ; on the way back we stop off at Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, and again in Henderson. Although I’m packing lightly, I’ll be sure to take along Ford’s Attentive Life. But because I’m not sure how often I can get myself to a wireless connection, I’ve decided this afternoon to begin reading and writing about Chapter 4, which our group will be discussing on September 14.

Although Ford doesn’t give us the etymology for the word prime, it might be helpful to remember that prime comes from the Latin primus and refers to the first hour of daylight (i.e., dawn). Counting six a.m. as prime (first) , terce (three) signifies 9:00 a.m.; sext (six), noon; and none (nine), 3:00 p.m. Thus when Scripture says that Jesus hung on the cross from the sixth to the ninth hour (Matt. xxvii, 45; Mark xv, 33; Luke xxiii, 44), we sometimes translate that ancient time-reckoning to mean that he was dying from noon to 3:00 p.m.

Although, as Ford helps us see the Mepkin Abbey monks going off to work after observing Prime, it's helpful to know that today Prime as one of hours for prayer is observed, with few exceptions, only in monasteries. Prayer at Prime tells the monks that it's time to begin their day’s labor.

Prime has an interesting history as to its origins: “around the year 382, in one of the monasteries near Bethlehem, a problem arose, because after the night offices (which corresponded to the more modern Matins and Lauds), the monks could retire to rest. The lazier ones then stayed in bed until nine in the morning (the hour of Terce) instead of getting up to do their manual work or spiritual reading. The short office of Prime, inserted a couple of hours before Terce, solved the problem, by calling them together to pray and sending them out to their tasks” (The Structure of the Liturgy).

Prime (or a close cousin to it) can still be found in some prayerbooks today. The Book of Common Prayer provides a short “Order of Service for Noonday” (103-107), and my Lutheran prayerbook gives me a few pages of “Responsive Prayer” if we want to pause to speak to God at noon or in the afternoon, or before travelling. By and large, however, most “prayerbook” Christians no longer observe Prime; instead, with psalms and scripture readings they make an effort to pray and stay with God twice a day: in the morning and in the evening.

But with that said, Ford provides a quite wonderful meditation on Prime in Chapter 4. He finds “a metaphor for this hour of beginning” —remember: prime has to do with “first things!”—in the way the root systems of trees grow near the Glen Burney Falls and “snake down and around rocks, finding their way into the ground through a cleft to gain firm support” (82). As Christians, Ford suggests, we like those trees. We have such beginnings, and at the beginning of the day, we do well to ask: “What is the root system of our lives? Is it deep and wide and long and strong enough to withstand the pressures of each day? That is the paramount question at the hour of prime?” (82-83).

Ford asks us to contemplate such questions, that is, to “look at life in the presence of God,” and then adds this insightful clarification: “with the eyes of God, or through the eyes of Christ—at any time, not just at special times; anywhere, not just in certain places; toward anyone, not just ‘special’ people” (83). In this way, Ford breaks open the ancient understanding of Prime so that it becomes atany time, any place, and with any person prime time, primary, premiere.

In the next few pages Ford continues his reflections on Prime with this question: “What does it mean to be contemplative? (83-85). Tomorrow in my bus seat as I watch the countryside go by, I’ll be musing over and pondering what are the "first things" in my life. With some good luck, I’ll try to post a few more words on Sunday or Monday evening. In the meantime, think about what's prime in your life and perhaps share your thoughts with a comment.

Image Source: http://www.matthewfelton.com/Photos/Yosemite/TreeRoots.jpg

Chapter 3: Daybreak: The Hour of Beginnings (64-80)

Chapter 3: Daybreak (The Hour of Beginnings) is a meditation on “lauds,” that monastic time of day which, at Mepkin Abbey, begins at 5:30 in the morning.

While I use a number of books that contains “lauds” as one of the “hours” of the day, my Lutheran tradition does not ordinarily use the term lauds as a time for that fixed-hour hour of prayer. What Ford and the Mepkin Abbey monks call Lauds, Lutherans call “Matins” or “Morning Prayer.” And, trust me, it doesn’t come at 5:30 a.m. (except at St. Augustine's House, a Lutheran Benedictine community in Oxford, Michigan); it’s more like 7:30 or 8:00 when most of us Lutherans do Morning Prayer. Whether we come to prayer at 5:30 or 8:00, Ford is quite right to say that at some point (he calls it the pointe vierge, the virginal point of the day), we Christians may well want to greet “the dawn of the day” and “of new life” (64).

With Lauds in mind, Ford introduces us to considerations of our own “awakening to God” (65). He tells us how Billy Graham and his wife Ruth came to know God. For Billy, it was within a discernable moment; for Ruth, a gradual lightening, like “the almost imperceptible coming of surise” (66). Having discussed his own beginning with his spiritual director, David (I wonder if this is David Steindl-Rast, about whom Ford speaks in Chapter 1), Ford tells about his early life with/out God, about his learning to preoccupied so as to be inattentive, about his life as an adopted boy whose parents were on and off again with their love. Eventually at fourteen years of age, he hesitatingly came to pray, paraphrasing verses from the psalms. Awakenings, Ford tells us, come in a variety of ways. For one friend, it happened in a chapel in Taos; for Francis Collins it was C. S. Lewis who opened the door. Ford himself used to tape psalm-like prayers to his bathroom mirror to help him comes into mornings with attention to God. Today, he says,

Often in the morning I will sit in a favorite chair in my study with a cup of coffee, with classical music playing, not trying to form a prayer with words but waiting, listening, until perhaps I sense the Spirit bringing to the surface a word from God. Then I offer a simple “Thank you.” I have found this time of silence, even it is is very short, to be a key to staring the day with attention.

Waiting is important for Ford, and he wishes it to be good for you too.

“Prayer is Like Watching for the Kingfisher” (a prayer by Ann Lewin that Ford suggests might “speak to you”) turned out to be especially appropriate for me and my understanding as to what Ford is driving at in this chapter. I have seen a kingfisher only once in my life; it happened last summer when I was out on my pontoon boat, well into evening, with Kurt, June’s nephew, who had every expectation that we might see one. I was doubtful. But sure enough, after we had slowly entered a cove whose banks were lined with overhanging trees, there we saw it: a streak of flashing colors, iridescent greens and blues. For maybe a minute I watched it fly back and forth across the shallow water. I had wanted to see one for decades. That evening I got my glimpse.

Since that glimpse I had gone out a number of times to resee the kingfisher. But without luck. I get to see great blue herons, turkey vultures, and warblers whose exact names I don’t know, but I still have to wait to see that kingfisher for a second time.

Ford tells us that prayer is like that: it’s a lot of waiting, birdbook (prayerbook) in hand, binoculars hanging on the shoulder, eyes more or less riveted on the trees, the psalms, the Scriptures. One needs to be fairly quiet. One needs to wait. Morning, Ford is convinced, is a really good time for waiting; it’s time for Lauds, for Morning Prayer, the opening of the day.

Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (60-61)

Inasmuch as Chapter 2 is about getting up in the pre-dawn darkness, it's surely appropriate that Ford should give us some good news about sleep. He recommends it, especially as a spiritual exercise! For two reasons: first, as "embodied spirits" we need to pay attention to our bodies which God has designed for the pleasures and joy of rest; and second, God, who does not sleep, gives himself as our model for rest and sabbath. So inasmuch as God "made us to need sleep" and He himself knows how to relax, we find it a joy to slow down and periodically close our eyes as a spiritual exercise expressing our trust in God.

Somewhere I've read that Martin Marty, the University of Chicago's distinguished church historian, lies down seven times a day (on the floor, I'm told, with his feet up on the coffee table) so as to take seven short naps throughout the day. Envisioning Marty so, I think of him as the patron saint of nappers, someone to emulate.

So here's my witness: this morning I went out to the workshop for Vigils about 5:00 a.m. Since today the Church is remembering St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, after Vigils I read a few pages from Augustine's Confessions, Chapter 9, wherein he tells us what we know about his mother. After some long pauses to reflect on things, I crossed the yard (now wet with the night's soft raining) and came back into the house and went back to bed for an hour. Absolutely delicious!

Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (55-59)

Ford's telling of his family story is quite remarkable. How fortunate for him to have read the journal of his biological mother so that he knows how much she loved her baby and his father, Tom, whom Ford never met. And how honest to tell us about his adoptive parents, Olive and Charles. As the father of an adopted daughter, I hope my Chelsea will be able in her late days to look back upon her birthing hours and come somehow to cherish her birth mother who indeed loved (and, I imagine) loves her now, day by day.

Ford's story is, of course, prelude to urging us to ponder over our own lives in our mothers' wombs. After reminding us how the bewombed John greeted the bewombed Jesus when Mary came to visit Elizabeth, Ford tells us that admittedly his and our own entry "into the world may not have been so dramatic. But as Elizabeth and the baby within her greeted Mary, God greets each of us and calls us to be special personal who live by purpose-drawn lives" (56).

And then Ford lets us in on what it's like to do womb-like Vigils at Mepkin Abbey, first with a half-cup of hot coffee with honey, then the middle-of-the-night waiting, a birthing time for psalm singing. While I've had the privilege of rising with monks for Vigils many years ago, I like to remind myself that wherever I am I too can share the Church's early singing and praying. It's for that reason that, whenever possible, I slip out of bed before dawn, heat up the water kettle on the stove, measure out four tablespoons of ground-up Haitian coffee beans into a French press (my "coffee ceremony"), pour the steaming water over the beans, let things steep for a few minutes, push down the press, fill up a mug of the milk-soaked brown delight, go outside and then settle into Vigils. It's a wonderful way to begin the day, well before dawn, in the birthing hour of each day. To say an early good-morning to God and the day, I generally use one of two books: Phyllis Tickle's The Night Offices: Prayers for the Hourse from Sunset to Sunrise or my Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary. I try not to be in a hurry, doing a good bit of waiting, sometimes just watching the sky light up or the birds in and around the feeders begin their morning chorus and seed-snacking. A good bit of the time I just like to be quiet, sort of empty, sitting in near silence. For me--and may well be for you too--it's the best part of the day.

While describing his own Vigil time at Mepkin, Ford does it just right to emphasis that he's "part of something bigger, wider, deeper than [his] individual experience" (58). That emphasis and understanding of prayer is on the mark. There's no special piety in all of this; nothing remarkable is happening; "performance matters little," Ford says. We're simply letting God open up the day for us. When we sing (or say) the psalms, there's lots of quiet, "long silences," Ford calls them, so that we can attend to the Spirit's slipping us into the verses of Psalms and Scripture. The whole of Vigils is a sort of easing into the day, a slow stretching of our souls, certainly "no rush to fill emptiness with words" (59). We might read a sermon or homily. I often read a bit of a book, one like this one we talking about. Prayers and intercessions rise up and are offered. And when things are done, we go back to the kitchen (perhaps to bed if that's best), maybe a walk, whatever. So God has delivers you and me into the day.

Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (50-54)

Chapter 2 is not nearly as long as Chapter 1 and therefore a tad easier to digest; only eleven pages, it's a fine introduction to Vigils, that pre-dawn time when some Christians climb out bed to remind themselves that even in the darkest of darks, God is with them.

As Ford begins this chapter, he describes what it's like to sing the Psalms at 3:20 a.m. with monks at Mepkin Abbey "by the Cooper River in South Carolina" (50). I've never been to Mepkin Abbey, but I've known about the place for some time.

The pre-dawn prayer-time, called Vigils, reminds us that we all live in "benighted world" (51); that is, all of us live in some kind of darkness, and Vigils gives us an opportunity "to connect with that dark but grace-filled mystery in which we are immerses" (qtd. Steindel-Rast, 51). In short,

Upon making that observation, Ford proceeds to tells us about his experience walking a labyrinth, a centuries-old guide to meditation walking, notably famous "in the floor of [the] ancient cathedral in Chartres, France" (51). As a physical/spiritual experience, walking "labyrinthingly" requires that we ask our bodies to join us in prayer, and when encouraged to enter the labyrinth, Ford found himself meditating on his "pre-birth time." Here Ford's story becomes exceptionally personal as he re-imagines what it must of been like for his unmarried mother to live through that dark time in her life when she was sent away pregnant to give birth to her (can we say it? bastard was the word they used back then) son. In Vigils and when walking the labyrinth, Ford recalls the "the darkness of the womb," beautifully described in Psalm 139. In his pre-dawn time and prayers, Ford realizes, as the Psalm tells him, that "God was contemplating us before we were born" (53).

Ford has found that his pre-dawn prayers, when he makes his "own Vigils time and remember[s] God's presence," are important in his life. Vigils, however he observes the prayer-hour, reminds him "to pay attention to the God who is at work in our lives even before we were born" (54).

More about Chapter 2 tomorrow. But, for now, perhaps you'd like to comment on Ford's thoughts and story--and yours.

Chapter 1: Paying Attention / The Hours of Our Lives

Chapter 1 is thirty pages long (19-49), and Ford has divided it up into the following sixteen short sections, each about two pages:

• An introduction (19-20)
• The Benedictine Hours (20-22)
• An Invitation to Practice the Hours (22-23)
• Pay Attention (23-25)
• Paying Attention to the Other (25-26)
• The God Who Pays Attention (26-28)
• The God Who Attends to Us (28-29)
• The Mindfulness of God (29-32)
• What Would It Be Like If God Did Not Pay Attention? (32-35)
• Welcoming God's Attention--Or Not (35-37)
• The Qualities of Attention (37-40)
• Can We Learn to Be Attentive (40-42)
• Stepping into Attentiveness (42-44)
• Attentiveness and Advent: Landmarks and Skylights (44-46)
• Practicing Attentiveness: What Have Been the Stars in Your Journey (47)
• One Who Paid Attention: Simone Weil on a Postage Stamp (48-49)

As I looked over the chapter and started to read, I found that my own attention was drawn into some sections more than others; and I suspect those of you who are reading The Attentive Life may share something of the same experience. So to start our conversation, perhaps we can be satisfied simply to tell one another which section or sections got our attention. And why.

I'll start off by saying that I found "The God Who Pays Attention" provocative because I was unacquainted with "The Powers of Ten," that series of images which Ford and granddaughter found awesome. And while awesome, I found the incredible scale of things intellectually and psychologically daunting; to know that in both directions from where I see my fingers typing, there is an infinity of worlds, both up and down, out and in, left and right, so re-orients my sense of the universe that at the moment I don't know where to begin being attentive. There's so much to attend to! Too much! How can I begin to have an attentive life when I'm in the middle of infinities? To what or whom am I attentive? That's a question I find myself asking tonight.