December 26, The Second Way: Awareness

View fullsize

by F. Montino

Third in the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

There comes a point in each of our lives when we wake up, take a long look at ourselves, and wonder what's become of us.  We look around ourselves and at the person we've become and realize that the life we're living isn't the life we want for ourselves.  There are new questions that old answers can no longer satisfy.  There are tattered relationships, an insane pace.

Maybe you're medicating your pain or boredom with work or sex, or by abusing alcohol or drugs.  Life as it is isn't working for you, but you haven't a clue what to do about it.

You can avoid the crisis that stares at you from the mirror.  You can pray for a miracle.  You can keep medicating your pain, but that's like to keep you in this cul-de-sac, bored, broken, or worse, dead.  Or you can embrace your crisis as the path of God—as incongruous as that may seem.

The sacred text doesn't tell us why the Magi left the life they once knew (Matthew 2.1-12).  We only know that the light they'd glimpsed in the sky gave them such hope that they left everything behind and set out on a long, arduous, and dangerous journey, not knowing if they'd ever return or what would become of them.

Take this moment and imagine you're one of them.

You look in the mirror with new eyes—eyes filled with a new and holy light.  Like them, you begin right now to turn from what is not working—from the frustration and pain, the crushed dreams, the boredom.  You watch yourself as you set out on the path your crisis has opened up before you.  Suddenly, someone behind you is shouting.  They're hollering that you're a fool.  For an instant you believe them.  But you return to your resolve and turn your back on doubt.  Something else within your tells you this is the path of wisdom, the path leading to God.

Today, this second day of Christmas, I will grow still in prayer, taking a long look at myself—no matter how painful that look may be.  I'll look long and deep until I see two truths about myself.  One, that I'm in crisis.  And two, that taking this path may well be the smartest thing I've ever done.  Trusting that wisdom, I set out into the unknown.

December 25 The First Way: Awakening

Continued from December 24.  Second in the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

View fullsize

by Luz Adriana Villa A.

Prayer is universal.  At all times and in all places people have uttered some kind of prayer.  Every human heart years to awaken to the Light that radiates from the Center, Source, and Substance of all things.  We are restless vagabonds until we come home to this Light manifest in Jesus, who is, astonishingly Son of God---God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, Love who gives life to all.

Prayer is coming home--to God and to ourselves, to heaven and earth and all that fills them.  Prayer is waking up to Life itself.  But prayer's been so terribly reduced in our day.  For most, it's more like rubbing a Genii's lamp than an encounter with the Almighty, Who's aim is our glorious transformation.  

The recovery of prayer and the discovery of all you seek--God, Who permeates and pervades all creation--will require a journey.  This journey is not from one place to another; rather it's a pilgrimage into the deepest places within you where God dwells in fullness.  As scandalous as that sounds, it's a universal truth---all who've sought God and found what they were looking for will tell you that.  I once traveled farther than the Magi traveled in search of all this, only to find that what I was looking for was right beneath my nose---close as my next breath, near as the beating of my heart.  Such long distance trips are unnecessary and can even be distracting.    

The journey of the Magi across mountains and deserts, through rivers and valleys is an apt metaphor for your inner journey, a pilgrimage into God which will be every bit as challenging and wondrous.  One you can take without ever leaving home.  Like the journey of the Magi, yours begins with a single point of light breaking into the shadows that envelope you. 

The Magi "observed his star at its rising" (Matthew 2.2) and had only hints at what this sign in the skies meant.  They had no idea where it would take them and what it would do in and through them.  They only knew they had to follow it, come hell or high water.

So to begin this journey of prayer, you don't need to know anything more than that you've glimpsed a light that's awakened you.  The first step of prayer is for you to arouse your desire, even desperation, to move in its direction.

Prayer begins this way, with the humble awareness of your need for God.

Today, Christmas Day, all I must do it to look to the Light and awaken my desperation to follow it and my heart's desire to find it, come hell or high water.

The Journey of Prayer at Christmas: "Threshold," December 24

View fullsize

by trevorappleton

The Twelve Days of Christmas are largely forgotten today. If they are remembered, they’re remembered as a song about “Lord’s a leaping,” and “partridges in a pear tree.” The Twelve Days, December 25-January 5, are the true Christmas, the Christmas not of preparation for a single holiday, but of opening our hearts increasingly to the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Eternal Light of God---the Beloved, who gives life to all things by the fire of love.  

These Twelve Days are also an invitation to an intensified spiritual awareness. We seek to open further to the Light come into the world in Emmanuel, God-With-Us. And so, the Twelve Days are a journey into prayer, into the presence of God, into the heart of Love. It's a season set at the beginning of the year that helps deepen our experience with God in the midst of daily life, embracing the sacred, dwelling in love, in the midst of the most ordinary tasks---answering emails and grocery shopping, sitting in staff meetings and doctor's offices, washing dishes and running kids here and here.

At the beginning of the Twelve Days stands the birth of Christ—that great eruption of light into the ordinariness of human life, a slowly expanding fire kindled at the crossroads between East and West, North and South. The end of these Twelve Days hosts the celebration of Epiphany, a word that means “manifestation” in Greek. Epiphany centers on the story of the wise men, or Magi, who journeyed from the east to welcome the Christ. 

The Magi stand for those who come to the Light, those awakened by the Light—enlightened in the true sense of the word. They stand for those who return to their daily lives changed, bearers of the Light—agents of compassion, justice, and love—wherever they may be.

The posts this next Twelve Days will be a companion to whatever kind of journey you'd like to take into these twelve transformative days.  In reality, these Twelve Days are only a beginning---a taste---of the much longer, lifelong journey that's yours.  And truth is, the journey God has for you is much more than what you have planned for yourself as you start out.  

So, welcome to this journey.  And may the blessing of angels and saints--and the Magi themselves--rest upon you as you set out on this sacred path.   

An Intention:  Today, Christmas Eve, I begin my journey into prayer.  I turn from all the preparations for Christmas, and instead of closing the door on Christmas as so many will in the next two days, I open my heart to the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Eternal Light of God, the Beloved, willing to go wherever this light of love should lead me, willing to become whatever the Light would make of me.

A little book on the Jesus Prayer

"When you pray," it has been wisely said by an Orthodox writer in Finland, "you yourself must be silent. . . . You must be silent; let the prayer speak."  To achieve silence: this is of all things the hardest and the most decisive in the art of prayer.

So begins Bishop Kallistos Ware's little booklet on the Jesus Prayer.  A theologian at Oxford University, Ware insightful draws the ancient Christian practice into the modern world.  I've written often about the Jesus Prayer or Prayer of the Heart, and commend the little book to you.

Prayer: the key is to simply practice what you know

Below is an email exchange with a reader. He's given permission to post these notes. I thought it would be helpful for you to hear about another reader's journey into the prayer of the heart . . .

Dear Chris;

I write to say “thank you” for the encouragement I have received from your honest reflections in the downloadable eBook Returning to the Center. I sincerely hope that part 2 is available before too long. Is the entire book available anywhere? I have, so far, been unsuccessful in my web-searches I arrived at your website, and the above eBook, after reading comments about you and your work in Alan Roxburgh’s book Missional Map-Making and found that your writing spoke directly to the kind of journey I seem to be making at present. It is a journey into prayer of the heart – and I am experiencing all the many distractions, of which you speak.

Kind Regards

Peter

Dear Peter;

Thank you for your thoughtful note. Alas, part two is on hold for quite awhile. I'm working on another book on prayer now. Part two of my memoir requires some maturing before I can write honestly about the years since the first part ended. It'll be out someday, but not soon enough for you. My advice is to simply practice the Jesus Prayer. That sounds so terribly unhelpful, I realize. There are several books that you might find helpful. Here's a little list: Prayer in the Cave of the Heart, Cyprian Consiglio; Word Into Silence, John Main; The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel, a new translation by Carmen Aceveo Butcher (soooo excellent!); John Main: The Expanding Vision, ed. by Laurence Freeman and Stefan Reynolds, Prayer, Abhishiktananda.

The key is to simply practice what you know. Too many of us spend too much time reading and casting around for help when the help is as near as the beating of our hearts, close as our next breath. The ego doesn't want to admit that though and will keep disturbing you. Your chief work is to simply learn to step around the ego through contemplative practice. It'll learn to relax and "stand down" eventually. But it must learn, first that your serious and second, that stepping around it (the ego) isn't about its destruction, but its salvation. The recitation of the Name, along with the breath, will bath your ego in love and over the long haul it'll learn to trust that it doesn't always have to be in charge [smile].

Blessings your life and ministry, brother.

Chris

Dear Chris;

I have simply devoured your eBook. In my imagination, and feeling similarly spread rather too thinly like butter over toast (wonderful metaphor!), I accompanied you to the Wadi Natroun, to Iona, and finally Oxford; each places of great significance and interest to me. I have not yet read Merton, though I am aware of him through other writers. I am learning from your journey that the spiritual journey is a shared one, even though the physical one may never be a reality for me. You reiterated in your email that the key was realizing that the answers were as close as "the beating of our hearts, close as our next breath." And you are so right about the ego, with its clamouring voices, as one intentionally sets about cultivating contemplative practices. This is precisely my experience too.

Regards, and God bless you.

Peter