Centering Prayer Basics

In a prior post I spoke about the value of learning to become still before God. The simplest prayer form that I have encountered for learning to do this is an old monastic prayer form called Centering Prayer. I first encountered centering prayer as a college student on a retreat at a trappist monastery during holy week. A Trappist monk Basil Pennington was there and each day he took time to center with us and talk to us about prayer. It was a rather formative experience. In short centering pray is as follows:

1) Select a word that has significant meaning for your relationship with God. It can be a favored name or expression for God such as, Jesus, Spirit, God, Yahweh, Lord, etc. or a word that helps you think of God such as, love or peace.
2) Get physically comfortable and still in a place where you will be neither interrupted or distracted.
3) Whenever your mind begins to wander gently return your attention to God by saying your centering word in your mind. Use the word only when you need to. Do not repeat it endlessly like and eastern mantra. Let go of any thoughts or feelings that try to push into your mind and simply set quietly before God.
4) After 20 minutes or so, conclude your time of centering with a short prayer of thanks or perhaps the Lord's prayer to transition your mind back out of your prayer time.

You can anticipate several normal responses initially. Most people struggle at first with maintain physical stillness. They fidget and re-position. They are annoyingly distracted by physical sensations like their nose itching or their hair touching their ear. This is not at all unusual and the solution is the same regardless of the distraction, simply and gently return you attention to your word.

As you become more comfortable with centering prayer, you will rapidly find that the physical discomforts and distractions become less of an issue. Internal thoughts will become more the problem. Day residue thoughts such as, thinking about a conversation or unfinished task will presence themselve with annoying persistence. Ideas will begin to flow or you may find yourself working through a problem. You will very likely find yourself thinking about how much time has past or wondering if you are doing what you are suppose to be doing. Just as you dismissed physical distractions with turning your attention to your word, so too can you dismiss the internal thought patterns.

You may find emotions welling up inside you after observing a centering practice regularly. I have had an overwhelming sense of fear before and others find themselves laughing or crying. It is as if the silence unmasks deeply held feelings. The Holy Spirit begins to touch deeper and deeper aspects of who you are in the silence. Once again, turn your attention to your centering word and return to an inner silence before God.

I recommend for anyone starting out that they spend approximately 20 minutes in prayer. Definitely not less. Most people need at first a good 15 minutes just to quiet their minds. I also recommend that most people practice centering prayer at least once a day for several weeks before giving up on it as a practice. You should give it at least 30 days practice before evaluating its value. I find that most people need a week or more of practice just to relax into the practice and get over thinking about what they are doing as they are doing it. Recently, I returned to practicing 20 minutes of centering prayer as part of praying one hour a day for 40 days. I prayed for ten days before I got to a place of being able to sit for twenty minutes without consulting my watch. So, give yourself time to adjust to this practice.

I would love to hear about your experiences and your questions. Blessings to you from The Practical Disciple.

Stewardship through Saving

A friend and an earnest believer whose blog I have come to enjoy, recently posted an article "56 ways to save money." You can check out these really practical suggestions for enhancing your stewardship of God's resources at her blog www.courtney-greengirl.blogspot.com. Way to go Courtney on helping us all with some invaluable how-to help on managing our finances.

More on Fatigue

I had a "well duh!" moment the other day. This whole business of fatigue effecting people's ability to focus has brought sharply into view my lack of what I would call 'body holiness'. In short, honoring God through taking good care of the physical being he has given us. We are but stewards of even our bodies. My "well duh" moment was the realization of how much body holiness must actually matter to God. One the premiere commandments, the Sabbath, is God's way of helping us maintain a healthy rhythm of work and rest. Similarly, much of the early law was totally dietary and intended for our physical, mental, and spiritual being. If God takes time to instruct us so much around these issue, obviously they matter deeply to God. Well Duh! Blessings to you.

Focus, Fatigue and Prayer

Nearly a year ago I made my first post on this site and noted that two issues repeatedly are voiced by people regarding prayer: finding the time and being able to focus. Those two issues have been difficult hurdles for me during my Lenten journey. On those days when I have allowed the demands of life to shove my hour of prayer literally to the eleven hour, I have found myself torn between sleep and prayer. At times, I found myself nodding while speaking prayers out loud. I wonder if this is the experience the disciples had in the garden of Gethsemane moments before Jesus fateful arrest. His words to them come to me, "Couldn't you just sit with me one hour?" Apparently I can't always. I would like to say the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I think though the harsh reality is that the spirit is weak many hours earlier when what shouldn't be difficult choices are poorly made. The choice to stay up late watching some mindless movie the night before or the choice to process a few e-mails during a lunch break when I could get a short nap.

I am realizing just how intimately my spiritual and physical lives are one in the same. Last April I spoke about how using a prayer form can help you focus and offered an A.C.T.S. prayer as one simple model. A.C.T.S. stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. It's a great prayer form that can really expand your vocabulary and it can also help you focus...But...the best tool in the world is only marginally helpful if it is wielded by a fatigued operator. During Lent for half of my prayer time I use The Book of Common Worship. It's a clean clear structure for a well rounded time of prayer. It's a great guide but when weariness frequently settled upon me because I found myself still enough in prayer for it to grab me, my attentiveness would stagger. My mind would lumber about in awkward lurches from one thought, to no thought, to prayer and then back again in moments.

I now find myself after several weeks of experiencing this far too often, saying, "God, I love you too much to give you such a compromised gift of my attention." I find my internal dialogue shifting to, "I need to get to bed earlier tonight so I can pray more clearly and enjoy my time with You rather than fight for focus." And when I fail to get to bed early, I earnestly feel that I have failed in some way.

I yearn now for Jesus to be able to raise his head up in the garden and find me fervently in prayer for him and compassionately intertwined with the agony of his spirit, not removed and dozing. I hope for him to be able to look up at me and instead of saying, "Couldn't you stay awake with me for but one hour?", he says with light in his eyes and a fatherly pride in his voice, "Thank you for walking with me in this hour. You are servant with servant's heart." That will not happen though unless I seek first His kingdom.

To be continued...... because guess what. It's about 12:30 a.m. Wouldn't it be ironic if I lost sleep and found myself dragging tomorrow because I stayed up far too late writing about the need to get rest so we can give God our best. Nitey nite and blessings from The Practical Disciple

Prayer Song-lines

I am an instructor for a non-profit school that teaches nature observation, tracking and wilderness skills. One key concern we have for people particularly new to wandering in the woods is making sure that they don't get lost. We teach several 'lost proofing' techniques. Among them is a technique in which you use a song-line to help you remember the landscape. As you walk along you identify land feature and weave a story out of those land features. For instance, you might see a very bent tree that reminds you of a little old man, and then a short distance to the east of it is a series of rocks that look like rabbits running away. So you might begin your song line, "There once was a little old man who one morning chased 5 bunnies into the sun-rise." Then you would just keep adding characters and events to the 'song'. The song becomes a map of sorts to get you back home.

A friend of mine is struggling with a form of prayer that has many pieces to it. He would like to internalize all of the parts so he doesn't need a written guide. He is going to work on creating a song line. In his imagination he will come up with a series of symbols for each of the parts of prayer and will link them together in a story line of sorts. The story line will help keep him focus ed in his prayers and allow him to wander in prayer, but not get lost in distraction. This is a great blending of some of the dynamics of vital prayer that I shared in my previous blog. Blessings to you from the Practical Disciple, John

p.s. Oh by the way. For those of you interested in the outdoors, the school I am an instructor for is The Ozark Tracker Society. You can learn more about it at www.ozarktrackers.org

12 Powerful Prayer Aids

So what makes for powerful prayer? How come we pray about somethings and God's seems overwhelming responsive and other things appear all but ignored? There are no easy answers to this, but in order to have a vibrant pray life it helps to understand factors or patterns that seem to turn up the volume on our prayers. Here are 12 dynamics of prayer that I have recognized as playing some role in the authenticity and efficacy of our prayers.

1. Visualize what you pray for using all of your senses
2. When praying for enemies pray for their health and happiness or God's best for them and pray daily for at least two weeks.
3. Be specific with God, but open to however God may answer.
4. Compound Prayer. Do so by praying directly with other people, engaging more people to pray for you about something specific, or set up a vigil of continuous prayer.
5. Learn to be silent and still. In short, lose your mind and come to your senses regularly.
6. Enact your prayer/use symbols. This involves physically rehearsing, the spiritual reality of what is occurring. For example, writing out a confession to God and burning it as a symbolic way of letting go of a sin.
7. Use Triggers. Triggers are events or objects that can serve as prompts to get you to pray. For example, carrying a cross or small object in your pocket and lifting up short prayers for someone each time you bump into it or posting a prayer or prayer list in a prominent place to nudge you to pray.
8. Always give thanks for answered prayers. Gives thanks on your own to God in prayer and give thanks public for what God has done.
9. Identify tasks that our "unconscious competence" tasks that can also be times of prayer. i.e. praying while you fold laundry, knit, do dishes, cook, play music, or do arts. Activities that are rhythmic and slightly physically engaging of body and mind are ideal.
10. Create a form that you follow for your prayer time. Sometimes our method of prayer can be a catalyst to getting us into an open place before God.
11. Have a prayer space. This may be a particular chair you settle into to spend time with God, an outdoor favorite spot or a literal closet.
12. "Pump" prayer when praying for discernment. This involves consciously choosing to cycle between "pushing" and "releasing" or asking and then taking time to listen.

None of these things are some magical formula for successful prayers. They are just techniques that when utilized regularly can dramatically enhance our prayer life. I will begin unpacking some of these over the next few days. Blessing from the Practical Disciple, John

Build Intimacy with Adoration

Few things build intimacy in a relationship more quickly than telling someone, "I love you" and then letting them know why. This is equally true in our relationship with God. Most people have little or no problem offering thanks to God, but some seem to struggle with just adoring God for who God is. That was certainly my story until a couple of years ago. A shift for me occurred one day when I was reading Psalm 18. It offered me a pattern for adoring God. A pattern that was easy to apply.

First, David simply said to God, "I love You." Stop and think about how very simple that is, but when have you last given God a heart felt, "I love You!"

Then in the Psalm David spends a good bit of time just recognizing God for who God is. You can do this saying things like--"God you are my Rock, my Refuge, and my sure and certain hope. You are my friend, my provider, my Savior. You are everything to me. You are powerful and you are mighty. You are steadfast in your love and forgiving."

A third form of adoration you will find in Psalm 18, is simply recognizing what God has done. In your life it might look something like this--"God you have lifted me up when I was feeling hopeless. You have provided for me at every turn. Sometimes even before I realized my own need. You have given me a great family, a great job, and a wonderful church. God you have..."

It's that simple. "God I love you. You are.... and You have..."

Take some prayer time now and just adore God for who God is and what God has done in your life. Doing so brought a greater closeness and intimacy into my relationship with my Creator than I would have ever anticipated. Others who have tried this simple three-fold path of praise have reported similar results. Blessings to you.

When there are no words...

It's 12:48 a.m. as I write this. I have no words for prayer. A few hours ago I received an e-mail. A young man name Charlie died yesterday. He was 24. His mother, Peggy, is a friend of mine and a pastor. I pray for the family, but then words seems so hallow and inadequate. The loss, shock and sympathy I feel for my friend leaves me numb. I am bifurcated between pain and peace. Pain for my friend and her family. Pain for the 16 months of battling cancer. Pain for not being able to imagine losing my child. Peace because I know the family. Peace because I know they know God. Peace because Easter is coming. Peace because there is good news. Peace because in the stillness God moves. The Psalmist said, "Be still and Know that I am God." Perhaps, those words were for hours like these. When nearly 1:00 a.m. with news of loss feels like nearly eternity and where 24 years seems not nearly enough.

I light a candle and just sit in silence with God and let his peace quietly flow. 1:00 a.m. is a dark time, a quiet time, a lonely time, but the sun is coming. So I light a candle in the dark and wait in silence. Some times thats what you have to do. The darkness is at hand. The hour is lonely. Light a candle. Dawn is coming. Easter is coming. Wait with a lit candle in the darkness and know that God is God. My candle burns here for Peggy and her family. In a way, perhaps I am a candle in doing so.

In your prayers you can be a candle as well for those who are in the dark. You can be that bit of light pushing back the darkness until the dawn comes. Prayer for and with those in the dark. Light a candle. Be a candle.

Peace to you from within that deep dark that precedes the dawn,
The Practical Disciple, John

Daily Inventory Keeps You Consistent

Recently, I was reading an article on physical fitness and it mentioned that the most effective tool to enhance your performance was simply tracking your activity in a journal. This is equally true for our spiritual health. Since the beginning of the year I have been striving to be a blessing to others. Every day I journal and I try to always include a few notes of who I have been a blessing to and also the missed opportunities. This simple activity of listing keeps me ever aware. A prayer list, scripture list or list of acts of kindness can be an amazing shot in the arm for any spiritual discipline. One tip to keep in my mind when keeping a journal-- commit to never missing an entry. Even if you do nothing that day, write down you did nothing.

Growth Progression in Prayer

Today in worship I shared with members of our church the story of one young man's progression of growth in prayer. Below is a very abbreviate description of the progression he experienced.

1. Doubt---He began with doubt. Through listening to many stories on answered prayer his curiosity began to peak and he started to recognize God answering prayers.
2. Curiosity/Exploration and Work--He then looked for tools and I offered to him an A.C.T.S. prayer as one guide to expand his prayer vocabulary. A.C.T.S. stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. He started practicing the ACTS prayer.
3. Hitting Walls--As he started to grow spiritually, it created internal conflict. He experienced a painful period of questioning his faith tradition.
   
4. Service--Once he reconciled the internal conflict he was experiencing, he found himself wanting to teach others to serve and prayer with his newly integrated knowledge.
5. Leadership--Overtime he actually learned to exercise leadership in prayer.
   
6. Wisdom--Through the practice of leadership he came to possess not just a depth of knowledge in prayer but the wisdom to rightly discern the need and use of prayer.
7. Full integration--He eventually came to have a body felt sense of the spiritual. He could feel when people were praying for him. Or felt unrest when spiritually a situation was out of balance.

This progression of learning is not only a normative sequence for prayer but of essentially anything else we learn. In the days to come I will unpack these pieces more clearly.