Seeds of Contemplation
Hello faithful family, friends, and followers, welcome and thank you for your interest. As we continue to enjoy the fall season we also, as I mentioned last week, had the opportunity to celebrate Joy’s mother Ruth’s 99th birthday. It was a special day that included beautiful weather and 3 of Ruth’s children with her and the other three joining by Zoom call. While I’ve been the cook in our home since the accident, Joy prepared her mother’s birthday meal from scratch which, since Ruth is on a gluten free diet, included gluten free home made chicken wild rice soup, gluten free corn bread muffins, and gluten free pumpkin pie. And she did it all without needing to ask a single question about the recipes. I am so very proud of her! From where we started after the accident, to where Joy is now, it is nothing short of amazing, and we thank you all for your faithful prayers and for God’s matchless grace and mercy shown us.
This week I came across some thoughts on prayer from Thomas Merton in his book, “New Seeds of Contemplation,” that encouraged me and also reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Brennan Manning’s, "Ragamuffin Gospel," which has been an ever helpful understanding regarding prayer for me and that I hope may be for you as well.
First to Merton who writes…
Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone…
If you have never had any distractions you don’t know how to pray. For the secret of prayer is a hunger for God and for the vision of God, a hunger that lies far deeper than the level of language or affection. And a man whose memory and imagination are persecuting him with a crowd of useless or even evil thoughts and images may sometimes be forced to pray far better, in the depths of his murdered heart, than one whose mind is swimming with clear concepts and brilliant purposes and easy acts of love…
It is the will to pray that is the essence of prayer, and the desire to find God, to see Him and to love Him is the one thing that matters. If you have desired to know Him and love Him, you have already done what was expected of you, and it is much better to desire God without being able to think clearly of Him, than to have marvelous thoughts about Him without desiring to enter into union with His will. No matter how distracted you may be, pray by peaceful, even perhaps inarticulate, efforts to center your heart upon God, Who is present to you in spite of all that may be going through your mind. His presence does not depend on your thoughts of Him. He is unfailingly there; if He were not, you could not even exist. The memory of His unfailing presence is the surest anchor for our minds and hearts in the storm of distraction and temptation by which we must be purified…
What you most need in this dark journey is an unfaltering trust in the Divine guidance, as well as the courage to risk everything for Him. In many ways the journey seems to be a foolish gamble. And you may well make many mistakes. You are thoroughly capable of deceiving yourself… But you must trust in God, who “writes straight on crooked lines” and brings great good out of evil. What matters in the contemplative life is not for you to be always infallibly right, but for you to be heroically faithful to grace and to love. If God calls you to Him, then He implicitly promises you all the graces you need to reach Him.
And then, on a somewhat lighter note, but for me, a no less profound one, here is a quote from, “Ragamuffin Gospel,” attributed to M. B. Pennington which reads…
A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds his little one close to him, he cares little whether the child is looking around, her attention flitting from one thing to another, or just settling down to sleep. Essentially the child is choosing to be with her father, confident of the love, the care, the security that is hers in those arms. Our prayer is much like that. We settle down in our Father’s arms, in his loving hands. Our mind, our thoughts, our imagination may flit about here and there; we might even fall asleep; but essentially we are choosing for this time to remain intimately with our Father, giving ourselves to him, receiving his love and care, letting him enjoy us as he will. It is very simple prayer. It is very childlike prayer. It is prayer that opens us out to all the delights of the kingdom.
My hope and prayer for anyone who has been frustrated with themselves and self-critical over their ability to concentrate or dedicate time in prayer, contemplative or not, is that the above passages can be an encouragement to just be yourself, in whatever state you are, as you bring your thoughts, needs, questions, and praises to the Father. So that whether you are in a place where, “prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone,” or you are the child in your Father’s lap, you will remember that, “If God calls you to Him, then He implicitly promises you all the graces you need to reach Him.”
