What is Contemplative Prayer and Why is it so Needed? with Fr. Richard Rohr

you know let me back this up with a little bit of history I don't want to bore you with history but I know for most people the very word contemplation they say where did that come from what happened is that our word prayer that Jesus uses a lot the Bible uses a lot had already been cheap and trivialized two centuries into Christianity and it became a functional problem solving practical thing to pray meant to make announcements to God and tell god what you needed it was a transactional thing all right so after 313 when we become the established religion of the Roman Empire you've probably heard how these very sincere seekers went off to the deserts of Egypt Palestine Syria Cappadocia which is eastern Turkey and that became the birth of what we now call monasticism the reason it happened was because the mainline of Christianity had become so it become fast food religion right everybody was just Catholic because the whole kingdom was now Catholic and you were Catholic because you were Italian not because you met Jesus yeah and you Protestants discovered that about us thank you very much because you're right but nevertheless there was always a strain that wanted to go deeper and say what's Jesus really talking about so they started using another word for prayer and that word is contemplation it's lasted down to our time so in the Catholic Church we have contemplative monks who make that their whole life contemplative orders it's really a different form of consciousness it's not saying prayers it's living in constant unitive union with God and everything around you so whatever you do is a prayer that's why Paul can twice say in his letters pray always he can't mean walking around saying the our Father all day and the very fact in Luke's they have to ask him teach us a prayer like the disciples of John the Baptist have we can assume he hadn't taught him a verbal prayer his form of Prayer when he goes off to the desert is what we would call contemplative prayer where you rewire this mind so that everything you do is connected in loving union with the moment with whatever's right in front of you that's contemplation now it takes practice I'm not there yet I've been practicing all my life on my better days I touch upon it I can enjoy it for moments but it's hard to maintain a contemplative mind 24 hours a day because you keep getting pulled into argument emotion feelings hurts agendas all the rest so you have to practice rewiring this the normal way you and I are wired is dualistic ly all right where you're presented with good or bad gay or straight black or white good or false or true and male or female and then you're supposed to choose one of those that's that's why America is so angry today really I'm not exaggerating that when that's the only mind you have and you have to make a false choice and make men better than women are women better than men you know you're never happy because it isn't true it's never true it's just it's a false truth and then you ensconced yourself in it and have to defend it and have to defeat the other side and show why they're terrible that's the non contemplative mind now it's really only been the last 50 years it was Thomas Merton the monk in Kentucky not far from you guys who uh pulled back the veil and said Christianity doesn't teach contemplation anymore after the Reformation and we started fighting one another and then the various Protestant denominations started fighting one another you can't be contemplative anymore that was the death the death of contemplation because that's the triumph of dualistic thinking once you're fighting your dualistic trust me on that all right you've got to choose sides you've got to prove your opinion every debate Society can't see seek high truth it settles for a low-level truth between these two debaters and that's all we have left so if we don't rediscover the mystical contemplative non dual mind and I use those three words interchangeably they have the same thing I don't see how we are any alternative to Western civilization I'm gonna make that blandness or that big-ass statement I don't know if it's bland or big but I just see Christians largely having the same prejudices that everybody else does that people look much more like their state then you know then then Jesus and that that's pretty evident right now in this country that we reflect what part of the United States were from much more than having read the scriptures now I've got a book coming out in a few weeks that's going to be called just this just this and it's just about 50 little exercises to help you to be present to just this that little leaf there sitting on the grass and honor God in that and be content with that and delight in that that's contemplation the best simple definition I can give you of contemplation is a long loving look at the reel reel with a big R when you look at something long enough that you can love it and let it be reality for you you're at the first door of contemplation I don't have to judge it up or down I don't have to analyze it in or out I don't have to say will that make me money it's just a leaf and God created that leaf for some unbelievable reason I don't know why and I'm the first eye that's ever able to delight in it that's contemplation 101 and it sounds so simple in fact it is so simple that it's hard to teach it's really hard to teach then once you have that mind then you'll know how to pray and prayer of adoration and thanksgiving and joy will come before just asking for things not that there's anything wrong with asking for things but when prayer becomes simply talking God into things and asking God for things you know what stays center stage the ego it's all about what I want what I need now God is my personal servant that I can get to stop the hurricane in Texas you know that doesn't create highly enlightened or loving people so that's why we teach here the contemplative mind and then we send people back hopefully as much more effective change agents and they're going to be much longer lasting because now I don't need to win I don't need to have people agree with me my truth is held within me and I offered if people want it but if they don't that's I know it's their loss it's not mine it's not mine I can still enjoy it because again it's the indwelling Spirit we as Paul says in Romans 8 we do not know how to pray we don't the spirit prays in us through groans unutterable through feelings that we didn't even know we had and thoughts I mean my best sermons I preached just when I give them I didn't think about about it you understand they come just there when if and when I can remain in the flow but the secret is always to stay in the flow and then your gift comes naturally you

Channel: Reunion

Views: 171,565

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Keywords: united pursuit, living room worship, meditation, inner life, christian mystics

Id: b0o5J0-8OA0

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2018