As an aside, and hopefully without creating too much of a tangent, I had two separate conversations this morning after the Liturgy about Orthodox clergy who - no names, no pack drill - act like mavericks and 'do their own thing' whilst accusing Protestant 'non-conformist' groups of doing the same.
It's all part of life's rich tapestry and part of being human.
Meanwhile, yes, 'They shall all be taught by the Lord ...'
How that happens and how it varies from person to person isn't up to us to determine of course.
Do you think this is a universal? ie it applies to everyone.
I hope not. I think the idea of silence is wonderful; it’s very much part of my wife’s daily practice.
But I can’t do it, by which I mean silence is not silence for me. I’ve had tinnitus for close to 30 years. 97% of the time, my brain can tune it out and ignore it, but that becomes almost impossible in real silence. And then it’s a huge distraction.
To be honest, I don’t think any spiritual practice—unless one is going to be very general, and say something like “prayer,” without specifying any particular kind or method of prayer—is for everyone. We’re all different, and as has been mentioned, we all have different kinds of lives. Why should one size of spiritual practice fit all?
Sure, and as well as the personal and individual (and individualistic!) elements there're also communal, cultural and social elements and factors.
I well remember a very neo-Calvinist bloke getting hot under the collar at an academic/theological conference about religious 'revivals' 20-odd years ago.
He was irritated by a presentation which illustrated how a regional revival in the north-east Scotland during the 19th century differed in various respects between the fishing villages, the towns and the countryside.
He thought this diminished the 'sovereignty of God' as if the social and cultural milieux played no part in how things played out.
Whatever floats our boats or find helpful in terms of our 'spirituality' doesn't occur in a vacuum.
Do you think this is a universal? ie it applies to everyone.
I hope not. I think the idea of silence is wonderful; it’s very much part of my wife’s daily practice.
But I can’t do it, by which I mean silence is not silence for me. I’ve had tinnitus for close to 30 years. 97% of the time, my brain can tune it out and ignore it, but that becomes almost impossible in real silence. And then it’s a huge distraction.
To be honest, I don’t think any spiritual practice—unless one is going to be very general, and say something like “prayer,” without specifying any particular kind or method of prayer—is for everyone. We’re all different, and as has been mentioned, we all have different kinds of lives. Why should one size of spiritual practice fit all?
This is a really important point. One woman in a centering prayer group I belong to had to withdraw due her tinnitus. I agree that it's important to find the spiritual practices that work to build each person's inner life. So stilling one's thoughts, emotions and avoiding other distractions will inevitably look different for different people.
On the silence thing, once or twice I've experienced quite profound periods of silence in Orthodox services. But for the most part we rattle on through.
Although we are very prescriptive in our public worship that doesn't extend to how we conduct personal or private prayer. Nobody would object if you behaved like a charismatic or a Quaker in the privacy of your own home.
Sure, most people seem to stick to the set prayers from what I can gather but a delegation from the parish isn't going to beat your door down if you depart from that.
I suffer from tinnitus and I'm told that playing music quietly in the background can help, although I've not tried that as a conscious way to deal with it.
I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with substituting music or other activity for silence. The absence of noise isn't the aim but the acquisition of calmness and peace in whatever form that takes.
@quetzalcoatl - from what I can see much of the 'contemplative prayer' stuff is largely - but not exclusively - the preserve of the intellectual types.
@Lamb Chopped - and I'm childish enough to be provocative and suggest that nobody's spiritual tradition is as DIY as all that. I don't profess to know a great deal about Lutheranism but it's never struck me as offering a more direct hot-line to heaven than any of the others.
I'm not going to go all Big Church on you and say that as Christ is Head of the Church and as Holy Church is his Body then it follows that he will lead and direct us through such means and programmes as Holy Church in her great wisdom provides ...
Heh heh heh ...
But I am saying that none of us are in the business of receiving special Gnostic techniques tailored exclusively for ourselves and nobody else.
Which isn't the same as acknowledging that we are all different and that God doesn't deal with us individually as it were.
I know you're not saying, 'Stuff these programmes, I don't need none of that shit, I'm going straight to the Big Boss myself, he'll show me what to do ...'
Nor am I advocating a kind of arid institutionalism.
There is, I think, a kind of creative tension between the 'contemplative' and the institutional, and the 'charismatic' and the institutional, irrespective of which Christian tradition we inhabit.
I suspect that's necessary and all part of it.
I think I may have worried you. I am sorry; I did not mean to do that.
But first, do please trust me to know my own tradition, as it were; we have in my own denomination virtually nothing of what you insist must be there, and there are good historic reasons for this (research "pietism" and "enthusiasm"). But in our haste to leave behind the excesses of these movements, we have also left even the most basic traditions of contemplation etc. I have been in this church body for nearly 50 years, and no such resources exist as you tell me must do. And this leaves me in something of a vacuum.
I think you fear that by trying to learn from Christ (via Scripture, prayer, etc.) directly, I'm going to go horribly wrong somehow and maybe start a cult, or at least some sort of unbalanced practice. Don't worry. I am in the very odd position of being a complete laywoman yet under the same oaths and discipline required of our clergy, partly as a condition of my work and partly as an accident of my mission service; and just as those things protect our clergy from going off the rails, so I can expect and hope for the same benefit. More about this via PM if you're interested.
Seriously, I don't think Christ (the Father, the Spirit, the Undivided Trinity) is/are going to lead me astray. I am such a beginner anyway that I am still learning my ABCs, and expect to be for a long, long time to come.
No, I'm not 'worried' about you lest you form some whacky cult or think that the Holy Spirit is telling you that you can jump off a tall building and fly.
Nor am I 'insisting' that everyone should adopt the kind of contemplative prayer techniques people have outlined on this thread.
Heck, it's not as if 'Centering Prayer' and the adoration of the Host through Exposition and Benediction form part of my own adopted Tradition.
That doesn't mean I'd want to proscribed them for anyone else.
No, what I am saying is that however we do these things there is a sociocultural and 'collegial' element that is mediated though whatever context we operate within.
There was an example given earlier of an evangelical who had vired elements of more Catholic contemplative practice into his own spiritual 'regime'. It didn't stop him using evangelical language and thinking in an evangelical way, but he was able to absorb these things into his own milieu.
Imagine there's an evangelical somewhere who can't get on with the 'contemplative' techniques and programmes we've been discussing - or is unaware of them. They begin to sit (or walk) meditatively listening to the worship songs and choruses they are familiar with from that tradition.
Are they being any less 'contemplative' in their own way than someone who practices 'Centering Prayer' or the Jesus Prayer or similar?
No, of course not.
But neither are they acting independently of their particular Christian tradition.
I'll concede that I am more wary these days of apparent 'direct hot-lines' to the Almighty. That's not because I see the Church Militant and Church Triumphant as some kind of corporate 'pyramid structure' with prayers passed up the line through Saintly 'middle-management' to executive directors such as the Theotokos and then onto the CEO.
Or CEOs ... 😉
At any rate, you'll know your own tradition far better than I do, of course and whilst it may not have the more 'Catholic' contemplative models we've discussed I'd be very surprised if there wasn't something there that could be used in a similar or parallel kind of way.
I'm obviously not making myself very clear on this thread.
I'm not saying that charismatics should abandon glossolalia and take up the Jesus Prayer instead.
I'm not saying that Catholics and others should abandon 'Centering Prayer' because the Orthodox don't practice it.
I'm not saying that Lutherans should look outside their own tradition necessarily - although there may well be benefits in doing so.
What I'm trying to work towards - clumsily - is where the convergences lie. @MrsBeaky identified that and articulated it better than I could.
I'm not out to determine whether 'Centering Prayer' trumps 'tongues' or whether the Jesus Prayer hits the jackpot.
My own Tradition isn't particularly 'meditative'. We simply do The Liturgy and follow the set prayers. There's enough to be going on with there.
But there are certain practices - such as the Jesus Prayer - which have, as it were, leaked out of the monasteries and 'into the world.'
Similar things have happened from within the Western monastic tradition.
There have been cross-winds and influences from Eastern religions such as Buddhism, particularly on some contemporary RC practice.
I'm neither arguing for syncretism nor exclusivity. The Orthodox Church isn't going to charge royalties every time someone prays the Jesus Prayer or puts an icon in the corner of a room.
The Jesuits don't claim exclusive rights to 'lectio divina', although the full Ignatian 'package' is in their gift.
I wouldn't second guess how Christ might lead you in all of this. But I'd be surprised if he were to recommend bouncing about onna Space Hopper or hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Far be it from me to suggest what it might be but I'd be surprised if it looked that different from what is out there already within Christendom as a whole.
It may look more Picasso than Botticelli but it'll still be paint on canvas ... 😉
Imagine there's an evangelical somewhere who can't get on with the 'contemplative' techniques and programmes we've been discussing - or is unaware of them. They begin to sit (or walk) meditatively listening to the worship songs and choruses they are familiar with from that tradition.
Are they being any less 'contemplative' in their own way than someone who practices 'Centering Prayer' or the Jesus Prayer or similar?
Although I think a lot of practices can readily fit into other traditions without necessarily abandoning the guard rails you are used to.
Lectio Divina is not that alien to normal Evangelical devotional practice - aside from the occasional Marian content the pray-as-you-go podcast that the Jesuits produce is not too dissimilar to it's Evangelical equivalents.
I think it's not just to do with traditions but personality - I just don't do "contemplative" well (I'm liable to drop off to sleep), nor reflection which involves doing arty or crafty things.
Sure. Which is why, I think, that the Ignatian model is a popular 'entry-level' point for evangelicals exploring or borrowing from more 'contemplative' traditions.
I've attended an Ignatian retreat and was struck by how 'Protestant' it all felt apart from Benediction and Exposition and some Marian elements.
FWIW I don't think the Ignatian thing is 'for me' but I certainly don't regret doing it and found the week very helpful indeed, following just 3 months after my wife's death.
I was already on a trajectory towards Orthodoxy at that time and so was just 'passing through' but I found it a helpful and significant time in all manner of ways.
I think it's not just to do with traditions but personality - I just don't do "contemplative" well (I'm liable to drop off to sleep), nor reflection which involves doing arty or crafty things.
Sure, and a whole range of other factors of course, cultural, social, much else besides ...
All these things interweave but it doesn't mean, of course, that God isn't 'involved' or can't work in and through all of that. I'd argue that he is very much involved in all of that - in our personalities, traditions, circumstances ...
I was reflecting earlier on how the RC apologist Ronald Knox said that he'd never had a 'spiritual experience' in his life. Does that mean that his 'standing' before God was diminished as it were? Or that his faith wasn't genuine? I don't think so. Not that it's up to me to determine the reality or quality of anyone's faith or spirituality, of course.
In my clumsy way, I suppose what I've been trying to say in essence that there are ways of being 'contemplative' without having to follow the prescribed programmes associated with the term, and ways of being 'charismatic' without having to sign up for the 'package' or 'packages' associated with all of that.
And that in some mysterious way all these things overlap.
But, as ever, I've let myself down along the way with unhelpful comments and hyperbole.
I'd argue that in wrestling with a biblical text in sermon preparation, @Baptist Trainfan you were engaging in a form of 'contemplation.' Active contemplation.
Equally, in preparing and planning a service there'll be a 'charismatic' involvement involved in that you are prayerfully seeking to discern how best to 'tailor' it for your congregation. 'If anyone has an ear, hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches ...'
That's the sort of thing I have in mind. We may not label these things as 'contemplative' or 'charismatic' but that's actually what they are.
Might be a tangent but I've found the videos linked to here https://www.resourcingrenewal.org/charismatic-history very interesting (not that I've watched them all yet). John maidens book "age of the spirit " sounds worth a read either from a library or when it eventually comes down in price.
In a general library, though, only if they have that particular item in a library within the same local authority/administrative area.
I've borrowed items through my local library but they can't get them if the item belongs to the library service in the next borough or county. I've joined Staffordshire Libraries for instance to get hold of material not held in Cheshire.
There are specialist libraries around and also ways of taking out temporary or 'guest' membership of academic libraries.
Beware though, I signed up for some kind of online library search service based in the US in order to track down some obscure material. I paid what I thought was a one-off fee only to find they began levying a monthly subscription fee which looked to increase month by month.
My bank helped me stop that and told me it happens quite regularly.
Academic libraries are safer and you can get temporary authorisation to borrow stuff or download it without having to be a lecturer or professor.
In the past I’ve been able to borrow books not in our public library’s catalogue through an inter library loan. There was a charge for the service, but it wasn’t huge.
Yes, I think I was aware of inter-library loans. Not sure why I didn't mention it as I'm pretty sure I've used that before now.
@Lamb Chopped I don't know how it works in the US but public libraries here in the UK are run by local government and are increasingly reliant on volunteers due to swingeing budget cuts.
There are also academic libraries, of course and special collections.
I'm sure @Twangist could track down the title he's mentioned but it may take a while and enquiries to different sources.
Yes, I think I was aware of inter-library loans. Not sure why I didn't mention it as I'm pretty sure I've used that before now.
@Lamb Chopped I don't know how it works in the US but public libraries here in the UK are run by local government and are increasingly reliant on volunteers due to swingeing budget cuts.
There are also academic libraries, of course and special collections.
I'm sure @Twangist could track down the title he's mentioned but it may take a while and enquiries to different sources.
Not all UK libraries are run by local government. I work for Suffolk Libraries; we've been an independent charity for over a decade. We do still get a large part of our funding from the local council though, but also raise revenue ourselves.
As for getting books that the local library doesn't stock, yes there are arrangements with adjoining counties, and InterLibrary loans, but neither of these are free (and Inter Library loans from the British library are often more expensive than purchasing a second hand copy on Amazon if its available there) BUT it does no harm to ask the library to consider purchasing a copy. Quite often if a customer requests a particular book, our Stock Team will buy a copy, as long as the potential number of people who might be interested in the book is sufficient to justify the cost (in other words expensive specialised text books less likely to be bought than obscure novels) ... but as I say, it does no harm to ask, either in a branch, ot on your library service website, where they may have a place for stock suggestions.
Our libraries are now run on behalf of the council by a charity.
I shall do some asking when I get the chance and see what happens. A more contemplative approach than a full on name it and claim it one I guess, to reference the OP to some degree!!
Comments
It's all part of life's rich tapestry and part of being human.
Meanwhile, yes, 'They shall all be taught by the Lord ...'
How that happens and how it varies from person to person isn't up to us to determine of course.
'The wind blows where it listeth ...'
But weather charts have value.
But I can’t do it, by which I mean silence is not silence for me. I’ve had tinnitus for close to 30 years. 97% of the time, my brain can tune it out and ignore it, but that becomes almost impossible in real silence. And then it’s a huge distraction.
To be honest, I don’t think any spiritual practice—unless one is going to be very general, and say something like “prayer,” without specifying any particular kind or method of prayer—is for everyone. We’re all different, and as has been mentioned, we all have different kinds of lives. Why should one size of spiritual practice fit all?
I well remember a very neo-Calvinist bloke getting hot under the collar at an academic/theological conference about religious 'revivals' 20-odd years ago.
He was irritated by a presentation which illustrated how a regional revival in the north-east Scotland during the 19th century differed in various respects between the fishing villages, the towns and the countryside.
He thought this diminished the 'sovereignty of God' as if the social and cultural milieux played no part in how things played out.
Whatever floats our boats or find helpful in terms of our 'spirituality' doesn't occur in a vacuum.
But you know that already ...
This is a really important point. One woman in a centering prayer group I belong to had to withdraw due her tinnitus. I agree that it's important to find the spiritual practices that work to build each person's inner life. So stilling one's thoughts, emotions and avoiding other distractions will inevitably look different for different people.
On the silence thing, once or twice I've experienced quite profound periods of silence in Orthodox services. But for the most part we rattle on through.
Although we are very prescriptive in our public worship that doesn't extend to how we conduct personal or private prayer. Nobody would object if you behaved like a charismatic or a Quaker in the privacy of your own home.
Sure, most people seem to stick to the set prayers from what I can gather but a delegation from the parish isn't going to beat your door down if you depart from that.
I suffer from tinnitus and I'm told that playing music quietly in the background can help, although I've not tried that as a conscious way to deal with it.
I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with substituting music or other activity for silence. The absence of noise isn't the aim but the acquisition of calmness and peace in whatever form that takes.
I think I may have worried you. I am sorry; I did not mean to do that.
But first, do please trust me to know my own tradition, as it were; we have in my own denomination virtually nothing of what you insist must be there, and there are good historic reasons for this (research "pietism" and "enthusiasm"). But in our haste to leave behind the excesses of these movements, we have also left even the most basic traditions of contemplation etc. I have been in this church body for nearly 50 years, and no such resources exist as you tell me must do. And this leaves me in something of a vacuum.
I think you fear that by trying to learn from Christ (via Scripture, prayer, etc.) directly, I'm going to go horribly wrong somehow and maybe start a cult, or at least some sort of unbalanced practice. Don't worry. I am in the very odd position of being a complete laywoman yet under the same oaths and discipline required of our clergy, partly as a condition of my work and partly as an accident of my mission service; and just as those things protect our clergy from going off the rails, so I can expect and hope for the same benefit. More about this via PM if you're interested.
Seriously, I don't think Christ (the Father, the Spirit, the Undivided Trinity) is/are going to lead me astray. I am such a beginner anyway that I am still learning my ABCs, and expect to be for a long, long time to come.
Nor am I 'insisting' that everyone should adopt the kind of contemplative prayer techniques people have outlined on this thread.
Heck, it's not as if 'Centering Prayer' and the adoration of the Host through Exposition and Benediction form part of my own adopted Tradition.
That doesn't mean I'd want to proscribed them for anyone else.
No, what I am saying is that however we do these things there is a sociocultural and 'collegial' element that is mediated though whatever context we operate within.
There was an example given earlier of an evangelical who had vired elements of more Catholic contemplative practice into his own spiritual 'regime'. It didn't stop him using evangelical language and thinking in an evangelical way, but he was able to absorb these things into his own milieu.
Imagine there's an evangelical somewhere who can't get on with the 'contemplative' techniques and programmes we've been discussing - or is unaware of them. They begin to sit (or walk) meditatively listening to the worship songs and choruses they are familiar with from that tradition.
Are they being any less 'contemplative' in their own way than someone who practices 'Centering Prayer' or the Jesus Prayer or similar?
No, of course not.
But neither are they acting independently of their particular Christian tradition.
I'll concede that I am more wary these days of apparent 'direct hot-lines' to the Almighty. That's not because I see the Church Militant and Church Triumphant as some kind of corporate 'pyramid structure' with prayers passed up the line through Saintly 'middle-management' to executive directors such as the Theotokos and then onto the CEO.
Or CEOs ... 😉
At any rate, you'll know your own tradition far better than I do, of course and whilst it may not have the more 'Catholic' contemplative models we've discussed I'd be very surprised if there wasn't something there that could be used in a similar or parallel kind of way.
I'm obviously not making myself very clear on this thread.
I'm not saying that charismatics should abandon glossolalia and take up the Jesus Prayer instead.
I'm not saying that Catholics and others should abandon 'Centering Prayer' because the Orthodox don't practice it.
I'm not saying that Lutherans should look outside their own tradition necessarily - although there may well be benefits in doing so.
What I'm trying to work towards - clumsily - is where the convergences lie. @MrsBeaky identified that and articulated it better than I could.
I'm not out to determine whether 'Centering Prayer' trumps 'tongues' or whether the Jesus Prayer hits the jackpot.
My own Tradition isn't particularly 'meditative'. We simply do The Liturgy and follow the set prayers. There's enough to be going on with there.
But there are certain practices - such as the Jesus Prayer - which have, as it were, leaked out of the monasteries and 'into the world.'
Similar things have happened from within the Western monastic tradition.
There have been cross-winds and influences from Eastern religions such as Buddhism, particularly on some contemporary RC practice.
I'm neither arguing for syncretism nor exclusivity. The Orthodox Church isn't going to charge royalties every time someone prays the Jesus Prayer or puts an icon in the corner of a room.
The Jesuits don't claim exclusive rights to 'lectio divina', although the full Ignatian 'package' is in their gift.
I wouldn't second guess how Christ might lead you in all of this. But I'd be surprised if he were to recommend bouncing about onna Space Hopper or hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Far be it from me to suggest what it might be but I'd be surprised if it looked that different from what is out there already within Christendom as a whole.
It may look more Picasso than Botticelli but it'll still be paint on canvas ... 😉
Although I think a lot of practices can readily fit into other traditions without necessarily abandoning the guard rails you are used to.
Lectio Divina is not that alien to normal Evangelical devotional practice - aside from the occasional Marian content the pray-as-you-go podcast that the Jesuits produce is not too dissimilar to it's Evangelical equivalents.
I've attended an Ignatian retreat and was struck by how 'Protestant' it all felt apart from Benediction and Exposition and some Marian elements.
FWIW I don't think the Ignatian thing is 'for me' but I certainly don't regret doing it and found the week very helpful indeed, following just 3 months after my wife's death.
I was already on a trajectory towards Orthodoxy at that time and so was just 'passing through' but I found it a helpful and significant time in all manner of ways.
Sure, and a whole range of other factors of course, cultural, social, much else besides ...
All these things interweave but it doesn't mean, of course, that God isn't 'involved' or can't work in and through all of that. I'd argue that he is very much involved in all of that - in our personalities, traditions, circumstances ...
I was reflecting earlier on how the RC apologist Ronald Knox said that he'd never had a 'spiritual experience' in his life. Does that mean that his 'standing' before God was diminished as it were? Or that his faith wasn't genuine? I don't think so. Not that it's up to me to determine the reality or quality of anyone's faith or spirituality, of course.
In my clumsy way, I suppose what I've been trying to say in essence that there are ways of being 'contemplative' without having to follow the prescribed programmes associated with the term, and ways of being 'charismatic' without having to sign up for the 'package' or 'packages' associated with all of that.
And that in some mysterious way all these things overlap.
But, as ever, I've let myself down along the way with unhelpful comments and hyperbole.
I'd argue that in wrestling with a biblical text in sermon preparation, @Baptist Trainfan you were engaging in a form of 'contemplation.' Active contemplation.
Equally, in preparing and planning a service there'll be a 'charismatic' involvement involved in that you are prayerfully seeking to discern how best to 'tailor' it for your congregation. 'If anyone has an ear, hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches ...'
That's the sort of thing I have in mind. We may not label these things as 'contemplative' or 'charismatic' but that's actually what they are.
I've borrowed items through my local library but they can't get them if the item belongs to the library service in the next borough or county. I've joined Staffordshire Libraries for instance to get hold of material not held in Cheshire.
There are specialist libraries around and also ways of taking out temporary or 'guest' membership of academic libraries.
Beware though, I signed up for some kind of online library search service based in the US in order to track down some obscure material. I paid what I thought was a one-off fee only to find they began levying a monthly subscription fee which looked to increase month by month.
My bank helped me stop that and told me it happens quite regularly.
Academic libraries are safer and you can get temporary authorisation to borrow stuff or download it without having to be a lecturer or professor.
@Lamb Chopped I don't know how it works in the US but public libraries here in the UK are run by local government and are increasingly reliant on volunteers due to swingeing budget cuts.
There are also academic libraries, of course and special collections.
I'm sure @Twangist could track down the title he's mentioned but it may take a while and enquiries to different sources.
Not all UK libraries are run by local government. I work for Suffolk Libraries; we've been an independent charity for over a decade. We do still get a large part of our funding from the local council though, but also raise revenue ourselves.
As for getting books that the local library doesn't stock, yes there are arrangements with adjoining counties, and InterLibrary loans, but neither of these are free (and Inter Library loans from the British library are often more expensive than purchasing a second hand copy on Amazon if its available there) BUT it does no harm to ask the library to consider purchasing a copy. Quite often if a customer requests a particular book, our Stock Team will buy a copy, as long as the potential number of people who might be interested in the book is sufficient to justify the cost (in other words expensive specialised text books less likely to be bought than obscure novels) ... but as I say, it does no harm to ask, either in a branch, ot on your library service website, where they may have a place for stock suggestions.
I shall do some asking when I get the chance and see what happens. A more contemplative approach than a full on name it and claim it one I guess, to reference the OP to some degree!!