I have recently been reading books about Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I have a particular interest in the contemplative tradition within Christianity and have discovered that there is a strong contemplative aspect within the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East is a compilation of presentations from a conference held shortly after 9/11 where a group of people met to discuss similarities of the religious views between the Christian East (i.e.., Eastern Orthodox) and Sufi Muslim.
I am more than half-way through this book. What emerges in this book is engaging observations about the contemplative aspects of Eastern Orthodox and Sufi Islam. For anyone interested in the contemplative aspects of Eastern Orthodox, Sufi Islam, or both….. Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East is an insightful read.
For my particular area of interest – the contemplative prayer aspect within Christianity – I am learning in this book about Hesychasm – described by Wikipedia as “a contemplative monastic tradition in the Eastern Christian traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches in which stillness (hēsychia) is sought through uninterrupted Jesus prayer. While rooted in early Christian monasticism, it took its definitive form in the 14th century at Mount Athos.”
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (it’s free – thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
In the book Reading Lolita in Tehran, author Azar Nafisi writes of learning from her introverted husband about “the many moods and nuances of silence: the angry silence and the disapproving one; the appreciative silence and the loving one.”
There are, likewise, “many moods and nuances” in the silence of personal prayer:
The awe when we encounter God’s presence
The lonely distance when we feel separated from God
Our outpouring of self – our emotions and experiences – when we offer everything within us and within our lives to God
Angst when we bring the frustrations of our human experience to God
Then, there are the “many moods and nuances” of public prayer:
The psalms we sing in church to bring to God our wide range of human experience and petitions
Intercessory prayers we “offer up” at church
The joy inherent to our “songs of praise”
Rote prayers during services – The Lord’s Prayer, etc.
Prayers offered at public events
Just as there are many variables and phases in our relationships with people, there are changing variables and phases in our relationship with God. This is a good thing.
Whatever we might expect of prayer, our prayer needs to be active, regular and ongoing, dynamic, and changing. We grow and change over time. Therefore, our relationship with God cannot be what it was when we were children. Or when we were teenagers. Or five years ago. While God is ever God’s-self, the relationship between us and God is ever adjusting to “where we are” in that relationship and – if we actively pray on an ongoing basis – adjusting as we move through our lives…………
How does one pray?
Just as we have many differing relationships with the various people in our lives – and a variety of ways that we communicate with the people in our lives – there are any number of ways of communicating with God. A prayer style that works for one person may be very different than what works for the next person. Here are several approaches to prayer:
Rote prayer (formal, memorized prayers – these are often provided to us by our houses of worship). Prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer are full of meaning and help us learn to pray. Such prayers give us ready prayer content that we can easily put to use.
Psalms. The Book of Psalms – which were meant to be sung – are summarized by Wikipedia thus: the Book of Psalms are “an anthology of Hebrew religious hymns…including hymns or songs of praise, communal and individual laments, royal psalms, imprecation, and individual thanksgivings. The book also includes psalms of communal thanksgiving, wisdom, pilgrimage, and other categories.”
“Talking to God.” Our spontaneous thoughts and words directed to God. God wants to have a relationship with us; relationships are two-way, be open to feeling God’s presence in response.
Contemplative Prayer. Resting reflectively in prayer, without a need for words or any human language. Contemplative prayer can – and for some people, does – include a sense of God’s presence in prayer. For more information about contemplative prayer, visit Contemplative Outreach.
Praying the Rosary. The rosary is a reflective way of praying a set of rote prayers with a formulaic set of Catholic prayer beads (focusing time on specified topics). Instructions for praying the rosary is available here.
Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina “describes a way of reading the Scriptures whereby we gradually let go of our own agenda and open ourselves to what God wants to say to us” (this particular description provided by the Carmelites).
Singing at church. “Those who sing pray twice” (a popular phrase in churches).
Intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer that we pray for other people. We come to God with the challenges of those who are in need of support.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (it’s free – thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
If you are among the people who pray regularly, how do you pray?
The question “how do you pray” really asks “how do you have an interactive relationship with God?” There are as many experiences of prayer as their are people.
A prayer style that works for one person may be very different than what works for the next person.
Personally, my most meaningful prayer – and preferred way to pray – is contemplative prayer. simply being in God’s presence. No language necessary. In 2016, I was gifted with an extended – and unexpected – period of contemplative prayer in which I felt God’s presence loving me (that story surround that experience is told here); the experience set me on a new footing.
Several approaches to prayer include:
Rote prayer (formal, memorized prayers – these are often provided to us by our houses of worship). Prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer are full of meaning and help us learn to pray. Such prayers give us ready prayer content that we can easily put to use.
Psalms. The Book of Psalms – which were meant to be sung – are summarized by Wikipedia thus: the Book of Psalms are “an anthology of Hebrew religious hymns…including hymns or songs of praise, communal and individual laments, royal psalms, imprecation, and individual thanksgivings. The book also includes psalms of communal thanksgiving, wisdom, pilgrimage, and other categories.”
“Talking to God.” Our spontaneous thoughts and words directed to God. God wants to have a relationship with us; relationships are two-way, be open to feeling God’s presence in response.
Contemplative Prayer. Resting reflectively in prayer, without a need for words or any human language. Contemplative prayer can – and for some people, does – include a sense of God’s presence in prayer. For more information about contemplative prayer, visit Contemplative Outreach.
Praying the Rosary. The rosary is a reflective way of praying a set of rote prayers with a formulaic set of Catholic prayer beads (focusing time on specified topics). Instructions for praying the rosary is available here.
Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina “describes a way of reading the Scriptures whereby we gradually let go of our own agenda and open ourselves to what God wants to say to us” (this particular description provided by the Carmelites).
Singing at church. “Those who sing pray twice” (a popular phrase in churches).
Intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer that we pray for other people. We come to God with the challenges of those who are in need of support.
My favorite pray-ers:
Teresa of Avila, (16th-century mystic, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite nun, reformer of the Carmelite religious order, Carmelite saint)
John of the Cross (16th-century mystic, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite monk and priest, co-reformer of the Carmelite religious order, Carmelite saint)
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (it’s free – thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
variety of prayer options available within Catholicism.
Catholic prayer is a vibrant and varied tradition, bringing to fullness a life-giving relationship between us and God. Jesus came “that we might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). “…prayer is not merely an exchange of words, but it engages the whole person in a relationship with God the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit” (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB).
How many ways are there to pray?
The essence of prayer is communication, a relationship with God, a being-with or being-in-the-presence-of. When we find a relationship with God – an interactive, two-way interaction rather than a one-way monologue (we wouldn’t relate to the people in our lives exclusively via uni-directional monologues!) – there comes a discovery that God is present with us in prayer.
A friend said to me, “prayer is a very personal communion with God that is meant to be personal, and unique to you….People are… very different in their personal experience in prayer, and that in itself is a beautiful thing.”
Just as we have many differing relationships with the various people in our lives – and a variety of ways that we communicate with the people in our lives – there are any number of ways of communicating with God. A prayer style that works for one person may be very different than what works for the next person. Here are several approaches to prayer:
Rote prayer (formal, memorized prayers – these are often provided to us by our houses of worship). Prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer are full of meaning and help us learn to pray. Such prayers give us ready prayer content that we can easily put to use.
Psalms. The Book of Psalms – which were meant to be sung – are summarized by Wikipedia thus: the Book of Psalms are “an anthology of Hebrew religious hymns…including hymns or songs of praise, communal and individual laments, royal psalms, imprecation, and individual thanksgivings. The book also includes psalms of communal thanksgiving, wisdom, pilgrimage, and other categories.”
“Talking to God.” Our spontaneous thoughts and words directed to God. God wants to have a relationship with us; relationships are two-way, be open to feeling God’s presence in response.
Contemplative Prayer. Resting reflectively in prayer, without a need for words or any human language. Contemplative prayer can – and for some people, does – include a sense of God’s presence in prayer. For more information about contemplative prayer, visit Contemplative Outreach.
Praying the Rosary. The rosary is a reflective way of praying a set of rote prayers with a formulaic set of Catholic prayer beads (focusing time on specified topics). Instructions for praying the rosary is available here.
Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina “describes a way of reading the Scriptures whereby we gradually let go of our own agenda and open ourselves to what God wants to say to us” (this particular description provided by the Carmelites).
Singing at church. “Those who sing pray twice” (a popular phrase in churches).
Intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer that we pray for other people. We come to God with the challenges of those who are in need of support.
My favorite Catholic pray-ers:
Teresa of Avila, (16th-century mystic, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite nun, reformer of the Carmelite religious order, Carmelite saint)
John of the Cross (16th-century mystic, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite monk and priest, co-reformer of the Carmelite religious order, Carmelite saint)
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
I grew up in pews every Sunday, four years in parochial school. I believed in God, believed in having a relationship with God, felt a deep, meaningful connection to liturgical ritual (I was the type of child who would notice how much the sanctuary candles had burned down each week and would notice when the shortened candles would be replaced with new candles)….. I later left the pews in my mid-twenties, in part because I couldn’t intellectually accept everything in the Nicene Creed (specifically, the parts that I would later call “biologically implausibilities” – a virgin birth, the ascension….).
Later, a profound reconversion brought me back to the pews (I tell that story here ). It was the type of experience that makes this explanation palpable:
“The Greek Fathers liken man’s encounter with God to the experience of someone walking over the mountains in the mist: he takes a step forward and suddenly finds that he is on the edge of a precipice, with no sold ground beneath his foot but only a bottomless abyss.” Quote: The Orthodox Way (Revised Edition, page 13), Bishop Kallistos Ware
In my reconversion experience and in the time that followed, I deeply experienced that God loves me. I found tremendous value in reading Teresa of Avila’s autobiography and the writings of John of the Cross who “schematized the steps of mystical ascent—a self-communion that in quietude leads the individual from the inharmonious distractions of the world to the sublime peace of reunion between the soul and God.”
Experiencing that God loves us is life-changing. I came to recognize that “we can’t think our way to God.”
Wondering what faith is meant to be about? Whether your faith is on track? Wondering how to engage more deeply in faith?
Love really is the measure what faith is all about.Matthew 22: 34-40: “The greatest commandments are…love the Lord your God….and….love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
Having a loving interactive prayer relationship with God is absolutely part of what makes faith meaningful. An active prayer life is what animates an active faith. “There can be no faith without prayer” and “prayer is the respiration of faith” are quotes I’ve come across that make sense.
In my experience, an interactive prayer life is what subsequently animates faith made visible via “love the Lord your God…and…love your neighbor.”
Wondering about how to have an active prayer life?
The apostles asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Most of us aren’t born knowing how to pray. Thus, the apostle’s question resulted in them being given The Lord’s Prayer.
Rather than prayer being an activity, prayer is a relationship. There’s a faith song with a line “There’s a hunger in our hearts….” Yes, we do live with a hunger. A longing for a relationship with the divine.
There’s an explanation about prayer being a relationship that may be attributed to Fr. Mike Schmidt (i.e., “Bible in a year” podcast). The explanation goes something like this: Prayer is a two-way communication, like a phone call. You wouldn’t call someone, tell them something, then hang up without giving the other person an opportunity to respond. Prayer should be the same way. When we pray, it should be a two-way communication in which we communicate to God and allow God to be tangibly present to us in response.
So, how can we pray? Really, this question asks “how can we have a relationship with God?” Ultimately, there are as many ways to pray are there are people. A few examples of approaches to prayer:
Lectio Divina: Reflectfully reading and praying upon scripture and additional faith reading.
Contemplative prayer: simply being quiet in God’s presence. For more about this style of “Be still and know that I am God” prayer, check out the Contemplative Outreach network.
Attending church. Church services are a form of communal prayer.
Rote prayers (check out examples here of the prayers recited at church).
Beyond prayer – a place where we experience loving God and being loved by God – there is then loving our neighbor. For those of us who are “saints in training” rather than “saints already,” loving our neighbor is learned rather than an auto-pilot activity.
There are endless ways to love the people in our lives. There’s a phrase that may have come from Presbyterians: “Love your neighbor means everybody.” We don’t get to pick and choose who we are to love. We are to love everybody. For many of us, that’s a tall order.
How do we “love everybody?” If you’re like me, you’re not there yet. For starters, loving everybody means we can’t hate anybody. We need to become ever conscious of “how am I going to treat everyone I encounter with love and dignity?” How we achieve that varies depending on the context. “Whatsoever you do for the least of my fellows” – we take care of people who need our assistance. We treat everyone with dignity. We stand tall in being good to the people in our daily lives. There are endless ways to be good to everybody we encounter. For most of us, there are plenty of ways to continually improve at this – a good way to focus on growing in faithfulness.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
I recently stumbled upon this book, Preaching the Just Word by Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. (i.e., a Jesuit). I took an immediate interest in the book because of the author’s name. My last name is Burkhardt. I found out a couple years ago that my paternal grandfather was actually born Burghardt, he started spelling his name with a K instead of G in high school or in his early 20’s – possibly to differentiate himself from his father and/or siblings because there had been multiple levels of “falling out” within the family…. So when I found this book and learned that there had been a prominent theologian named Burghardt (not a common name!), I hoped that I might be distantly related to the author! As it turns out, Walter Burghardt’s parents came to the New York area directly from Poland or Austria in the early 1900’s, whereas my Burghardt relatives moved from Germany to a German enclave in Russia’s Volga River region in the late 1700’s before migrating to the U.S.’s midwest farming region…. So, any unlikely biological connection between me and this book’s author would be very remote. Yet, I decided to read this book.
I am finding this book to be a worthwhile read already, just a few pages in. I’ve always been attracted to the inner mystical aspects of faith (my story is told here). In recent years, I’ve pondered how to attract people to exploring the inner aspects of faith (such as contemplative prayer) in an era that encourages people to live a frenetically outer life and ignore or avoid inward reflection (i.e., “who wants to go inward when this ultimately requires us work through the inner emotional challenges that are an inherent to being human?”). An inner, prayerful relationship with God is necessary to fully and vibrantly being a person of faith – and joyous (“a peace that passeth all understanding!”). Yet, Walter J. Burghardt rightly points out at the beginning of this book that a solely inward faith is wrongly individualistic (a modern-day form of selfishness). A “faith” that is solely focused on a personal relationship with God isn’t fully faith – this would merely be naval-gazing.
Burghardt explains that the ultimate point of the Christian life on earth is to love one another as we love ourselves. We are called to take care of one another in a radically self-sacrificing manner. We are called to live as part of an interwoven web of caring, socially connected to one another.
There’s a balance for each of us to be a person of faith: a joy-filled inner prayer life in which God nurtures a personal relationship with us combined with the necessary and just manifestations of this inward prayerful relationship: we become the people God intends us to be and we radically love and serve the people around us.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
Last year, I composed a poetic pondering about our human experience of faith. That blog post as well received, so I’m trying another poetic pondering with a look toward our personal faith engagement. (Note: I took the photo above at the centuries-old Clonmacnoise monastic ruins in Western Ireland.)
Monasteries of the Spirit
Monasteries of the Spirit are:
Grace-filled spaces, a place of rest and nourishment
Environments where we can encounter God’s love
Monasteries of the Spirit are also a space of last year’s poetic ponderings:
We move – seemingly unaware of the mechanics our own locomotion – through journeys of the soul prompted by the Holy Spirit
We sing with joy and weightlessness toward the upper mountain heights of God’s love
We wonder when happening upon liminal places
How do we be seek out Monasteries of the Spirit? Through an engaged faith journey:
Regular engaged participation in one’s faith tradition.
An active prayer life with attentiveness to – and surrender to – promptings of the Holy Spirit. These promptings nudge us toward an inner relationship with God through prayer.
May your faith journey be wonder-filled.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
I was in high school when I was first introduced to surrendering to allowing God to change us. At the time, I was challenged by a particular type of life difficulty. I surrendered that difficulty to God and asked for assistance in having my life change. How I was living in the world did improve. I also developed the rudiments of an expanded prayer life. I still tell the story about my prayer life expanding at that time – I, as an adolescent, grew beyond the basics of childhood prayer (“Now I lay me down to sleep” and literal conceptions of Jesus sitting on a physical throne in the clouds) and saw my prayer life expand incrementally toward more of an interactional relationship with God.
In recent years, I surrendered again to allowing God be present in my life. This time, the surrender was broader. “God change me in whatever ways you want me to be different.” Again, my life is changing. I am experiencing emotional reorganizations that I couldn’t have anticipated – transformations beyond what I would have brought about on my own. More freedom, increased life functionality, some measure of more contentment. Growing commitment to being useful to other people. This came about from a prompting of the Holy Spirit – a moment at a church service in October, 2016 when I felt – and responded to – an invitation to allow God to be more fully present in my life (that story is told here).
God wants to be present in our lives. God wants us to be the people we are meant to be, to be fully alive. In the words of Timothy Radcliffe, “We are all radically incomplete. And, we need each other.” We, with our human limitations, need God’s movement in our lives to become the people who we are meant to be. We move toward being complete when we allow God to be the center of our lives and to act in changing us. Acts 17:28: For in God we live and move and have our being.
Allowing God to become the center of our lives, we cease to be the center of our lives. Ceasing to be the center of our live can feel threatening (“But what about me? I’m all I’ve got?”). It turns out that when we step out of the way, God brings freedom into our lives – we become the people we are meant to be and we become more useful in the world. God loves us!
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).
A pastor told me a few months ago that humanity’s effort to describe God can be compared to God as being like a circle with our limited human efforts to describe God merely approaching various touching points of the circle; often, he said, without our descriptions actually touching the circle – let alone ever grasping the entire circle. We shouldn’t fret about the imperfections of our descriptions. Rather, he indicated, we should continue with our efforts as best we can.
I thought of that description when I took the photo (above) – an orange sunset shining through window shades onto my living room wall. Left to ourselves, we live in some measure of darkness (Fr. Timothy Radcliffe: “We are all radically incomplete”). At the same time, God loves us. To the degree that we allow God into our lives, we experience some of the light of God’s love for us (due to our finite capacity, we probably only sense some of that love, as if filtered sunlight making its’ way through the shades)!
Prayer, of course, is a significant aspect of how we allow God into our lives – how we experience a relationship with our God who loves us. Prayer is not meant to be a uni-directional monologue of us sending our thoughts, feelings, requests, or rote prayers to a Santa-God. The fullness of prayer is one in which we engage in a two-way, in-person relationship with our parent-God who wants to have a loving, engaging relationship with us and who wants to help us become the people we are meant to be.
In addition to God loving us, it is our job to love one another and to do what we can to shed light into the lives of our fellow humans (see the passage below from Matthew 22:34-40). Martin Luther King said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question: What are you doing for others?” Loving other people and taking care of God’s children is what we are here to do.
The “60/40” plan prescribed for marriages is a principle that all of us can actually apply in our relationships with everyone so as to be the loving people we are meant to be. If each of us spends 60% of our time focusing on what we can do to be of service to the people around us and only 40% (or less!!!) of our time thinking about our needs, then everyone wins!
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).Also, your support ($$) to help sustain this blog is welcome.
I am drawn to this phrase as this is one of the forms of prayer I have found meaningful. How about you?
,,,,,It’s been said, “There can be no faith life without prayer.” It’s also said that we cannot pray and continue sinning; when we really engage in prayer, we find that we have to allow God to change us for the better. Personally, I experience in prayer that God loves us!
True prayer goes beyond mere statements or superficial monologues directed in God’s direction. True prayer is dialogue, meaningful communication, presence. A “wordless sigh of the heart,” for example, is us opening ourselves bare before God.
How often does human prayer involve allowing our innermost selves to be fully transparent before God? Such vulnerability is a real interaction. While God certainly knows our hearts – God made us and knows us – it’s also true that we have free will. God doesn’t force us to into relationship; it’s up to us whether we are willing to be fully present before God.
When we aren’t in active relationship with God, the Holy Spirit occasionally knocks on our heart’s door; it’s up to us whether we respond to such promptings. We can also open our heart’s door to God by taking the initiative ourselves to communicate – God will show up when invited in. Sometimes, we feel God’s presence in prayer (I have!); other times, God may work “under the surface” in ways that we don’t observe; God working to change us “under our radar” is what John of the Cross wrote about in his book Dark Night of the Soul (“Dark Night” being a period of inner transition that isn’t fully transparent to us, rather than necessarily being a depressive period!).
There are many forms of prayer in which we have an active relationship with God. Contemplative prayer (for example, visit the network of Contemplative Outreach) is one way, being engaged while at church is another way – as aremeditative prayers such as praying the rosary, talking to God, heartfelt intercessions, prayers of praise (including music)……… What makes prayer meaningful is that we pray in a way that makes it relational. There are as many ways to pray as there are people!
Interested in learning more about prayer? Check out A Parish Catechist’s previous blog post, “How to Pray.” Also, find info here about A Parish Catechist’s Saturday morning Zoom calls about prayer.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).Also, your support ($$) to help sustain this blog is welcome.
