Five Basic Movements to Silence & Solitude

let me sketch out five basic movements to silence and solitude no disclaimer here they are not linear i will make them sound linear they are not five steps they are more like five aspects of life in the quiet nor is this a technique to control your prayer life it's more like five ways to let go of control they are relax detach look listen and love short word on each one relax ronald rollheiser defined prayer as relaxing into god's goodness is that how you think about prayer is that how you think about your mourning what are you doing i'm just relaxing into god's goodness we live so much of our days from our bodies kind of flight or fight reflex running from thing to thing on a hype of adrenaline and caffeine until we collapse and our system goes down and we just watch netflix with the bleary eye into the night the first task of prayer is just to calm down and to let your mind and your body settle into god's presence to let your nervous system draw on the spirit's peace there's no right way to do this most of us start by reading scripture slowly and in a prayerful spirit most of the time a psalm or selection from the gospels then a lot of us will just attend to our breath just kind of slow our breathing down and kind of just let our attention come to rest on each breath in and each breath out then we attend to the moment and just attempt to be here not now not in the past not in the future but here because god is always only here and then finally we attend kind of through scripture through our body through our breathing through the moment we come to attend to god we realize the truth of the psalmist words i am always with you and of jesus last words i will be with you always even to the end of the age and we just be with god the most common way to do this in the contemplative tradition like the most basic form of contemplative prayer is just the prayer word united to the breath meaning you just pick a word there's no right word there's no magic word it's not an incantation it can be jesus or father or peace the most famous one is called the jesus prayer it's lord jesus christ have mercy on me mine i use one a line right now from colossians let the peace of christ rule in your hearts and you just begin to breathe any of you familiar with mindfulness it's kind of like that but relational the goal is not to clear your mind the goal is to commune with god and so you just begin to kind of repeat that prayer word and unite it to your breath and the thought there is there's nothing magical about that it's that god is not a thought or even a feeling or an image that we are to grasp god is god and so at some point we have to move beyond praying with thoughts and feelings and even with words to commune with god but the problem is you have a mind you have this prefrontal cortex and it's a great gift from god it's really good at writing emails or scheduling what to do next thursday afternoon or booking an airbnb for vacation and faith that we will have one this summer it's really bad at deep communion with god it tends in that space just to get in the way and so what the contemplatives have said for almost 2 000 years as well if your mind's a problem just give it something to do let it just focus on a prayer word and focus on your breath so that a deeper part of you the part of you that sees your thoughts and your feelings coming in and out of your field of vision that deeper part of you that we can't even name very well that part of you can commune with god movement two is to detach detachment in the way of jesus is very different from detachment in the buddhist tradition or eastern religions where the goal is to detach from all desire for us as followers of jesus it's a way to detach from our surface level desires in order to attach to our deepest desire that of union with god again robert mulholland the favorite of mine defines detachment as a deep inner posture of joyful release of our life and our being to god an absolute trust without demands without conditions without reservations it is neither a passive resignation nor a fatalistic acquiescence to whatever comes it is rather a consistent posture of actively turning our whole being to god so that god's presence purpose and power can be released through our lives into all situations so much of our prayer life is about coming to that place of inner freedom through the release of self-will i would go so far as to say in your morning quiet time of prayer don't get up off of your couch don't go about your day don't pick up your phone until you have come to this place of inner release of self-will opening to the circumstances of our lives be they good or bad wanted or unwanted just whatever they happen to be letting go of our futile grasping for control which is the root of our trouble pete's gazero said it this way recently our core spiritual problem is self-will and he said we all want a spiritual life but we prefer to be in charge of it and have it unfold according to our schedule and in our way gosh that's a little too close to home pete in prayer we release all of that over to god whether you call this detachment others call it yielding say ignatius called it indifference the church tradition that i came up in called it surrender or death to self or the crucified life different words same idea it's jesus not my will but yours be done we detach then we look this is the heart of prayer and again i'm all for asking god for things but but this is the heart of prayer looking at god looking at you in love the ancients called this beholding and becoming they said spiritual formation at its most basic is you behold god and as a result you become like god they would read corinthians chapter 3 verse 18 we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the lord's glory this is where the language of contemplative prayer comes from in scripture are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory which comes from the lord who is the spirit as swiftan from hong kong put it you become like what you contemplate whether you contemplate jesus or the op-ed page of the new york times or fox news or netflix or pornography or your stock market stats for the day you fill in the blank what you give your mind over to your attention to what you let fill literally your nervous system at a neurobiological level will determine and shape and forge who you do or do not become as we contemplate christ as we spend just large portions of our life looking at jesus looking at us in love we are transformed little by little there's no magic bullets not like you do it for three days and by thursday you're like a saint you know over years over decades of prayer we are transformed into people of love then number four we listen it's been said that the primary posture of a disciple of jesus is sitting at his feet and listening this is samuel's famous speak lord for your servant is listening that is the heart we're after but samuel is a prophet you may think yes but under the new covenant paid for by jesus own blood on the cross we now have direct access to the father through jesus and by the spirit we have the same access to god's voice that samuel had and that jesus himself had jesus who said i am in the father and the father is in me and i am in you figure that one out and god also has direct access to our deepest self he can implant words scriptures truths images feelings and desires into our mind into our imagination into our body itself because it's his temple it's the locust point it's his home he's there this is why most of us don't hear the audible voice of god i do but only every third day or so um that's why most that's i'm kidding come on i wish because honestly there is no need what is speech this is going to sound a little orwellian but speech is an ability to guide or you could even argue control another person's thought life right now i am controlling what you are thinking about what you are thinking about is the word what you are thinking about all right i'm speaking and your mind is following the grooves laid down by the words coming out of my mouth the spirit of god does not need to give us an audible voice because he can speak right into our mind he can guide our mind into his truth jesus said this the holy spirit will guide you into truth now our thoughts are a mixed bag of god and us and what we read in the news that morning and our grandma and a thousand other things hence the practice of discernment much could be said about that all i'm saying is god has direct access to your mind and while i have a very high view of scripture as special and unique and i we have to interpret prayer of course in a different way i very much believe the same spirit is still alive and at work in me that god is still speaking in all of us in the deep core of our being and our job is just to wait on him in his presence in a posture of listening finally we love the essence and the end goal of the entire spiritual journey is love it's been said by a number of thinkers i love that you can summarize the entire spiritual journey as the journey from fear to love that's what it's always about letting go of our attachments that are the root of our fear and as a result the root of our anger and our sin and our cruelty in the world and as a result becoming free and becoming people of love and we follow jesus as our guide on that journey and quiet prayer or silence and solitude or the uramos or whatever you want to call it that is the path by which we walk as saint john of the cross put it our greatest need is to be silent before this great god for the only language he hears is the silent language of love this is the deepest form of prayer i love reading liturgical prayers and i love reading spiritual reading i love praying to god with my mind i love listening to prayer and waiting on god for words and images and scriptures to come to mind but the deepest form of prayer it goes beyond thoughts beyond words beyond images because god is none of those things he transcends them and it's just letting god love you and loving god in return relax detach look listen love you

Channel: Bridgetown Church

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Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021