Nouwen, Merton: Meditative Prayer

Henri Nouwen, Merton: Meditative Prayer

“Many voices ask for our attention. "Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful." But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, "You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you." To hear that voice requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen. That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us "my Beloved."  Henri Nouwen, “January 13, The Still, Small Voice of Love,” Bread for the Journey. Henry Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation

I have tried to read Thomas Merton’s work in the past, but could not connect with it, so when I spied his very short treatise, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, I decided it was time to give him another try, especially when so many of the contemporary spiritual writers like Henri Nouwen keep quoting him. Merton’s book was put together in 1960 and therefore we must forgive his constant use of the masculine. He also writes to people with a Catholic religious background and Catholic clergy in particular as he addresses many issues that might be especially helpful to a young male novice.

The book, however, is filled with pearls in almost every sentence. Merton constantly reminds us that the ultimate end of meditation is communion with God directly in the present, the awakening of our inner, true self and positioning ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to respond to God’s Grace. We hope to see the mysteries of the life of Christ as a part of our own spiritual existence.

Merton outlines the simple essentials of meditative prayer:

1. We first must be sincere about praying.

 2. We are to attempt to focus on meditating.

3. We sincerely hope for a divine union with God.

 4. We then rest contently in God’s presence.

The precise way we make our meditation depends on our temperament and natural gifts. For the intellectual, the thinking person, the mind must ascend by reasoning to the threshold of intuition. All thinking processes must end in love.

Those with more feeling and intuitive minds may approach the truth almost immediately apprehending the wholeness as beauty rather than truth. Those with an intuitive temperament may more easily be able to use all their senses to place themselves into the life of Jesus and more easily connect spiritually to Christ.

Contemplative meditation, spiritual direction,  liturgical prayer, the Eucharist, all seek the same end, a deeper union with Christ.

Joanna joannseibert.com

Keating, Bourgeault: Centering Prayer

Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: Centering Prayer

“God can be held fast and loved by means of love, but by thought never.” The Cloud of Unknowing, introductory commentary and translation by Ira Progoff (New York: Delta Books, 1957), 72.

Thomas Keating

In Centering Prayer, we select a sacred word as the symbol of our willingness to surrender to the presence of God.

We sit comfortably with closed eyes in silence and then introduce the sacred word.

Whenever thoughts return, we silently speak the sacred word.

At the end of the prayer period, we remain silent with eyes closed for a few minutes.

Thomas Keating suggests practicing Centering Prayer for twenty minutes twice a day.

Is Centering Prayer a simply letting go of one thought after another? That can certainly be our subjective experience of the practice, and this is exactly the frustration we sometimes encounter during Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina.

Keating tells the story of a nun who tries out her first twenty-minute experience of Centering Prayer and then laments, “Father Thomas, I’m such a failure at this prayer. In twenty minutes, I’ve had ten thousand thoughts!”

“How lovely,” responds Keating. “Ten thousand opportunities to return to God.”

Keating emphasizes that Centering Prayer is indeed a pathway of return to God, and this may be what the writer of Cloud of the Unknowing was trying to tell us.1

We also need to remember that the benefit of Centering Prayer is usually not during the prayer time, but later in the day or week when we feel God’s presence where or when we need it or never knew it before. It is expressed best in several of the 12 step Promises, “We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.”2

1Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice (Shambhala: 2016), 14, 28-29, 120, 123. From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, February 11, 2017 with Cynthia Bourgeault as guest writer.

2Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous, pp. 83-84.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Charleston: Wisdom

Charleston: Wisdom

“I think spiritual wisdom is not the measure of how much we know, but how much we have learned. Knowledge can become static, a museum of dogmas, a warehouse of opinions. We discover wisdom over and over again when what we think we know meets what we have never encountered before.”    Steven Charleston Daily Facebook Page

There is a chasm between intellect and wisdom. My husband, Robert, a prolific reader of history, shared with me a story by the journalist, David Halberstam. Halberstam, the author of the 1972 book, The Best and the Brightest, about the origins of the Vietnam War, detailed in his book Lyndon’s Johnson first visits to JFK’s cabinet meetings with among others, the brilliant McNamara and Kennedy’s advisor, Ted Sorensen. Others assembled were also the brightest minds in the country. Johnson went back to his old friend, Sam Rayburn, the longest running Speaker of the House in our country, just overcome with a feeling of awe and perhaps inadequacy. Rayburn reminded Johnson that there is a difference between wisdom and knowledge or intellect.  Rayburn is quoted as saying, “They may be just as intelligent as you say. But I’d feel a helluva lot better if just one of them had ever run for sheriff.”

Knowledge or intellect is learning, investigating, researching, and studying facts and data. Wisdom is knowledge with experience, discerning which facts are true, how the knowledge can best be applied to your life.

Knowledge is knowing where babies come from. Wisdom is knowing how to care for them. Knowledge is doing the distance between here and New York City. Wisdom is knowing what to pack for the trip.

We belong to the information age.  There is no lack of information and data. All of us on this spiritual journey are gathering information about a multitude of spiritual tools, spiritual knowledge, to use to guide and help ourselves and others.

Wisdom will be digesting what we learn, taking it inside, and seeing what is truly the right meal for us as well as for those who come for spiritual direction at different times in our lives and theirs. A major tool in discerning wisdom is listening with the heart to the spiritual friends who visit with us and listening actively to hear how our experience and the present world and nature around us intersects with our lives and theirs.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com