A New Start

It seems to me to be time to begin posting here regularly again. The blog at Silent Assemblies will continue, but I seem to be coming to the conclusion that I need a space to discuss contemplative prayer in general, and the Jesus Prayer in particular, without feeling the need to put things in a specifically Quaker context.

I sense in any case that I am being led to rediscover, to reaffirm maybe, my roots in the Church with a large 'C', and to explore what that might mean. If I have anything of value to share, it will come out what little faithfulness I can bring to that leading, and to the movement of the Spirit behind and beneath that.

The practice of contemplative prayer, especially that of the Jesus Prayer, is not so much a matter of personal choice as of leading, and, as the Pilgrim found, being faithful to that leading is not always an easy matter. It shouldn't be thought that contemplative prayer is an easy alternative to either action or to verbal prayer. Opening one's heart to God in this way opens it to God's love for our brokenness; allowing Christ to dwell in our hearts by his Spirit involves us in the love of Christ, and its consequences: as Paul once wrote: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." (Galatians 2.19b-20a)

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote: "It is not your will or desire that moves you, but something you are completely ignorant of stirring you to will and desire you know not what." It is in simply willing to follow that desire that we are led, like the Cloud author, into the way of contemplation.

For all I have said about the seriousness of the call to contemplative prayer, it really is very simple indeed. Irma Zaleski, in her classic Living the Jesus Prayer, wrote:

The Kind of awareness that the Jesus Prayer may lead us to is very simple. We do not try to imagine that Jesus is there, and even less what he looks like or what he says. We do not engage in any imaginary conversations with him. We simply try to be aware of him and attentive to him in a similar way as we are aware of the presence of someone we love in the next room, or as a mother is attentive to what her children are doing, however busy she is. We believe - we know by faith - that God in Christ is here, with us and in us. Our task is to try and remember him and be attentive to him. It is this attentiveness that is the door to our experience of the presence of God. We cannot summon this experience at will. We cannot grasp it as if it were a possession. It is, like the Prayer itself, a gift. Ours is only a discipline of faith and perseverance...