Elijah fed by raven
The following post is the second in a series that is excerpted from my upcoming book Return to Our Senses, which will be available in mid November.
The Jesus Prayer
It was the Desert Fathers and Mothers who withdrew into the Egyptian desert about three centuries after Christ to pray and meditate on God’s word, who really developed breath prayers as a spiritual discipline. Evidently they would often sit outside their cells weaving baskets and contemplating Christ’s presence in quiet solitude meditating on short, one breath prayers. They breathed in God’s word slowly and deeply, reverently repeating the prayer over and over, letting it permeate their minds and descend into their hearts. Sometimes they would breathe their prayer before going to sleep at night, repeating it until it lodged deep in their souls. When they woke in the morning the prayer was still on their lips.
Many scholars believe that the Desert Fathers and Mothers picked up one of the most common prayers of the Psalmist: “Lord, have mercy” and developed it into a breath prayer that later became known as the Jesus Prayer. Sometimes it is expanded as “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. For more information visit Soul Shepherding
Not surprisingly, many of us continue to find breathing prayers provide wonderfully enriching ways to deepen our intimacy with God. Some breathing prayers, like the name YHWH and the Jesus prayer, are simple exercises in breathing in and out that calm our spirits and center our attention on the God who is life and love. They usually involve the use of a simple word or phrase from scripture. Here is one example of a well used breath prayer that draws from Psalm 23. Breathe in slowly and deeply as you whisper or think: “The Lord is my Shepherd…” Hold your breath and your consciousness of God’s presence… And then exhale as you whisper or think: “…I shall not want.”
Other breathing prayers are more complex. They can be used to remind us of the incredible transformation that God has initiated and will one day bring to completion in all of us. Other breathing prayers remind us of our commitment to see God’s world transformed into a place peace and abundance for all. Still other breathing prayers can draw us into that intimate place of communion with a God who loves us more deeply than we can ever imagine.
Expand Your Breathing Practices
Over the last few years I have composed a number of breathing prayers that move beyond the simple calming and centering of the Jesus prayer. Some, like this next prayer are wonderful reminders for me of the characteristics of the God’s whose breath I inhale. At the same time they encourage me, as I exhale, to expel from myself all that is not of God.
Breathing prayers are not about emptying ourselves so that we feel a void inside. They are about renewing our minds by saturating ourselves with the presence of God. I like to imagine that the outward breath creates a new space for God to fill. The inward breath draws something new of God’s character into me. As I breathe this prayer I visualize myself breathing in a little more of God and who God intends me to be and letting go of some of what is not of God.
Breathe out empty yourself: of hate, of fear, of anxiety,
Breathe in fill yourself with love, with life, with mercy.
Breathe out empty yourself of busyness, of selfishness of greed,
Breathe in fill yourself with peace, with joy, with hope.
Breathe out empty yourself of idolatry, of self worship, of false gods,
Breathe in fill yourself with God, with Christ, with the Holy Spirit.
Breathing prayers can also form an important foundation for our engagement in the pain and suffering of God’s world. I wrote the following prayer to remind myself that breath cannot be held to oneself. We must breathe it back out into the world. I am called to be both a contemplative and an activist and I as I take notice of my breathing I am reminded constantly of that.
Obviously this is a very different understanding of the outward breath than I described above. This double meaning is very much in keeping with the physical act of breathing out however. We breathe out to expel toxic substances from your body, cleansing and renewing our blood. That outgoing breath can also be a source of life to others however. Mouth to mouth resuscitation depends on this. That breath which cleanses and renews our bodies, holds something of the life giving presence of God which goes back out into the world to renew the life of others.
This post is excepted from my new book Return to Our Senses which is now available through Mustard Seed Associates at a pre-publication discounted price of $15.
Return to Our Senses – front cover
I have jut ordered the first copies of Return to Our Sensesand should have them in hand by the middle of November. So I have decided that it is time to give you all a sneak preview. In fact a lot of sneak previews. In the next couple of weeks I will post excerpts from each of the chapters to give you a sense of what the book is about.
As many of you know this book was the culmination of a journey that began several years ago when I started asking people What makes you feel close to God? Over the last few years I have asked this question of hundreds of people from diverse backgrounds and faith traditions. They tell me about playing with kids, turning the compost pile, washing the dishes and walking in the local park. Even taking a shower gets a mention.Two things have surprised me. First, people rarely mention church or Bible study. Second, most people come closest to God in tangible everyday activities yet rarely identify these as spiritual practices or forms of prayer.
These observations started me on a journey to rediscover the nature and purpose of prayer. Starting with Madame Guyon’s assertion that prayer is an exercise in love, I started to discover prayer not as an activity I engage in but a relationship I enter into. My journey has opened windows into the loving nature of God far beyond my imaginings. It has exposed me to prayer traditions I never knew existed. It has encouraged me to create my own new and fresh expressions of prayer. It has invited me to reimagine the very concept of prayer. And it has also brought me together with a growing number of people who like me search for a more vital prayer life.
Return to Our Senses: Reimagining How We Pray.was written for those who hunger, like I did, for a deeper, more life encompassing relationship with God, a relationship that really does invite us to pray without ceasing. Some of the practices I share have existed for centuries and only require us to tap into the rich knowledge and practices of ancient followers of Christ to access them. Others will be newly created, springing fresh from our imaginations and creativity, specially designed for intimacy with God in our present culture.
For example, I have long been a collector of rocks. As a child I loved to gather specimens when my family went on long road treks over the summer holidays. And in Australia there are some wonderful rocks to collect – sapphire chips, small pieces of opal, agates, and even flecks of gold. But in the last few years it is not these semi precious stones that have caught my attention. Now like the Israelites of old, who often built cairns of rocks into memorials, I gather rocks that mark significant events or remind me of significant characteristics of God. I give them names as memorials to remind me of these special moments with God.
I have a beautiful green serpentine marble like rock I picked up on the island Iona off the west coast of Scotland. I found it on the beach where the Celtic saint Columba is supposed to have come ashore after being expelled from Ireland. I call it my rock of faithfulness. When I hold it in my hand I am reminded of all the faithful people, like Columba who have gone before me, embraced by God’s love, sharing the faith and building the kingdom of God.
My friend Kim uses rocks as a totally different form of spiritual practice. She calls it skipping stones into a new creation. When her husband lost his job recently, she walked down to the local beach with a handful of stones from their driveway. She tossed them into the ocean, “letting go” of the possibilities and hopes that the job had offered. As she prayerfully threw each stone, she released her sadness, disappointments and hurts reminding herself that as the stones will be polished by the movement of the waves and tides, so is her life being polished by the all encompassing love of God. As she did this she felt liberated, and walked away singing.
It is my growing conviction that it is not in church or in our “prayer closets” that most of our praying is done. Church is more a place that is meant to help us interpret and act on the presence of God in our lives and in our world. Breathing, drinking a glass of water, picking up a stone, taking a photo can all become acts of prayer, thin spaces that awaken us to the loving presence of God. Our God is a God of endless creativity and imagination, a creativity that has been passed on to all of us who are made in God’s image. This creativity is meant to be poured out in the ways we pray, worship and practice our faith. Each moment is, I believe, pregnant with new possibilities, new concrete expressions of prayer waiting to be born.
So where do you feel closest to God? What are the creative ways that God might stir your imagination through this experience of closeness, into new expressions of prayer?
Return to Our Senses is available through Mustard Seed Associates at a pre-publication discounted price of $15.
Table of Contents:
Waking Up To the Love of God – the Beginning of Prayer
Learning to Breathe
Blessing the water
Creating a Sacred Space
Practicing the Presence of Love
Contemplating Love – The Foundations of Prayer
Learning to Listen
Seeing with New Eyes
Stepping Out in Fresh Ways
Walking with Our Fingers
Facebook, Blogging and Go Anywhere Prayers
The Gathering of Memories
Love Overflowing – Prayer without Ceasing
Living into the Lord’s Prayer
Living Into the Life of Jesus
Living Into the Banquet Feast of God
Living into the New World of God
Speak to me – Bonnie Harr
The beauty of the prayers that continue to be posted on the Light for the Journey site enrich and stir my faith. I hope that they will yours as well.
Let us walk into this day,
God’s love to give us hope,
Christ’s life to give us guidance,
The Spirit’s power to transform us.
Let us walk with joy,
Let us walk with purpose,
Let us walk each step towards God’s new world.
———————————-
May we put our hope in God’s unfailing love,
And trust in God’s eternal faithfulness.
May it lead us into paths of justice,
And guide us towards God’s righteousness,
Where we give ourselves to feed the hungry,
And commit ourselves to share God’s healing.
May we always live towards God’s new reality,
A new community with wholeness, peace and abundance for all.
———————————–
Let us pray for justice faithandworship.com
God give us this day your hearts desire,
May we love as you love with justice and mercy,
May we live as Christ lived with compassion and generosity,
May we become what the spirit intends filled with peace and joy,
May we this take new steps to be transformed into the image of God.
————————————
Pray for justice – Christine Sine
Lord, we bring to you those ‘almost’ moments.
When the opportunity arose to bring your name
into a conversation and we almost did.
When we were challenged to give to those
who are in need, and we almost did.
When we heard of an injustice and, tempted
to reach for our pen, we almost did.
When challenged by the whisper of your voice
to go where you would send, we almost did.
Forgive our timidity, our reluctance
to live the life that we proclaim.
Fill us with your Spirit of love and power
that by our words and actions
your name might be glorified,
and our ‘almost’ become ‘always’!
—————————
May our ears be attuned – faithandworship.com
In you, O Lord, do we trust,
in your love we delight,
for there is no other
to whom we can turn
who knows our needs
before we ask,
reads our hearts
and answers our requests.
In you, O Lord, do we trust,
in your peace we depend,
for there is no other
to whom we can turn
who calms our souls,
brings release,
and in whose
arms we would rest.
————————–
God let us not hold onto what we should release,
Let us not embrace what does not satisfy,
Let us not commit to what is not your will.
May we give up all to follow,
Twighlight burning – Bonnie Harr
Death is good – leaves must die
I am sitting in my office looking out at a slowly dying world. The maple leaves whose bright red colour I have been admiring for the last week are now buffeted by the winds and falling to the ground. The squash plants are dead, the tomatoes are dying and everything is getting ready for winter. Last year I wrote this reflection on Weathering the Winter Storms. It is as necessary to be ready for the death of winter as it is for the new life of spring.
Death is a necessary part of life and that is not only in the garden. Yesterday I chatted to MSA team member Cindy Todd about the transitions we are going through and the things that have had to die in order for us to re-emerge with a newness that comes from God. “Death is good” she commented, reflecting on the fact that her business Snohomish Soap Company would never have been birthed if she and her husband had not lost jobs in Florida and decided to move to Seattle. Watching Cindy give birth, grow and bear fruit out of the seeds that were planted through the death of her old life has been inspiring. I love this video that she put together for her recent involvement in Fast Pitch.
So often death in the form of a lost job or failed expectations is necessary for God’s newness to emerge. Sometimes when we look back we are aware that God has been prompting us in new directions for a while but the security and comfort of the old holds us bound. God in love and compassion forces us to die and let go.
Jesus says: If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. (Matt 10:39) The journey of faith is a cycle of birth, growth, fruit and death. And in the place of death we often find the seeds of new life – the longings and desires of our hearts that we have suppressed because change and radical newness threaten our comfortable status quo.
Two questions emerge for me from this reflection. First: What does God want to put to death in your life that you are still clinging onto?
For those who feel they are in a season of death: What are the seeds of newness God is planting within you during this season? What are your dreams and hopes from the past that might be birthed into something totally new at this time?
Let us gather at the table together
This is the third post in my series this week on transitioning MSA and the process I am engaged in personally as a part of that. It is very much a thinking out loud process for me, but one which I realize requires me to listen to many voices and to discern together with others what God is saying. You can check out the other posts here:
Going Through Transition – Help from Walter Brueggemann
Planning For Transition – Wisdom from the Desert Fathers and Mothers
The first posts came out of the retreat time Tom and I had at the end of last week. Since then we have participated in meetings with others who are key to this process – the MSA team and several consultants who are helping us on the way. I am excited about what is emerging – not new ministries or even a new focus but rather a new process that ignites participants with images of hope for the inbreaking of God’s kingdom and invites them into a community where together we provide tools to journey along the path towards God’s kingdom.
In the first post on Monday I wrote – The prophet offers symbols of hope for a new future. As I have wrestled with who we are currently and who we are sensing God wants us to become, this I realize is central. Interestingly the third book that I read during my retreat time was Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s The Awakening of Hope. What I loved about this book is its practicality – not just giving theological precepts that should shape our practice but sharing beautiful stories of how our Christian beliefs are lived out in practice. As Jonathan says we need to build community amongst believers by nurturing faith that leads to action.
Building community and nurturing faith that leads to action that too is central to who we are and what we hope to become. At this point we have identified three aspects of MSA that we believe are important elements of the process we are developing. Part of what excites me is that none of these elements require experts to speak at su, they require a recognition that all in the body of Christ have valuable gifts to bring to the table:
- Encouraging each other with images of God’s hope for the future – I think that one of our strengths in the past has been the sharing of mustard seed stories that inspire others with the the thought “I could do that”.
- Discerning together as a spiritual community – As many of you know we begin all of our meetings with a check in time – looking back and looking forward and then discussing where we sense God is moving in our midst. It is a powerful and energizing process that not only draws us closer to each other but also closer to God. This element of who we are can be adapted to any situation. It draws us into the hope of God’s kingdom and it ignites creativity within all of us.
- Fellowship and hospitality – Tom often tells people that he would rather cook for them than stand in front of them to speak. We have tended to treat it as a joke, but as we talk around the table I am beginning to realize that this too is a central part of who we are. In The Awakening of Hope, Jonathan quotes Norman Wirzba: To be reconciled to one another is to be able to gather around a table with each other without shame, celebrating the gifts to each other that we are. Table fellowship builds community, connects us to each other and to the body of Christ around the world. I am not sure at this point how this translates into all the situations we are involved in – for example how do we practice table fellowship with those who read our books and blogs but are separated by many miles?
There is much still for us to grapple with and I would very much like to engage others in this conversation. What do you think MSA should become? What has inspired or connected you to this ministry and why do you remain connected?
Some of you may have noticed that this weekly post of Facebook prayers is a little late, going on retreat will do that and so I offer no apologies. I have already posted these morning and evening prayers. Here are the remainder for last week. The richness of the prayers continues to grow and I hope that they are both stirring your imagination and enriching your prayer life.
In the fading of the sun – faithandworship.com
Let our hope be centred,
In a God who calls for justice,
And a Christ who longs for peace.
Let our faith be centred,
In a God who seeks for freedom,
And a Christ who promises release.
——————-
Lord Jesus Christ you are my heart’s true home
The beginning and the end of my journey.
You are the one from whom all light comes,
The one in whom all will find rest.
Let me trust in you and never be afraid.
——————–
Lord Jesus Christ
Let your peace settle in our hearts,
Let your love bind us together,
Let your compassion flow from our hearts,
So that all that we are and all that we do,
Becomes an act of worship toward you.
———————-
O Lord,
Into the night of stars I go…
Walking the path of silence, to sleep and perchance, to dream.
Be with me on the moonlit way, as always You are.
Be with all others under this same moon or the sun in his orbit,
as always You are.
(B.Harr, 2012 ~ www.facebook.com/HisFootsteps)
———————
Like clay in the hand of a potter,
so we are to you, O Lord!
You take the imperfect
and make from it something new,
mold us into the image
of the people you would have us be.
In your hands we are restored,
perfected Lord, by you.
In your hands we are given new life,
made useful Lord, for you
—————————-
Lord Jesus Christ your load is easy, your burden is light,
Create in us a new rhythm of life,
One that sustains and does not stress,
One that builds and does not destroy,
One that brings peace and not conflict,
Show us your path to eternal life.
———————
Seeing with new eyes
Yesterday I posted this post, about the fact that Mustard Seed Associates is in a time of transition and talked about the impact that Walter Brueggemann has had on my theology and my thinking. There are others that have helped to shape my thinking in this transition time too that I wanted to mention.
The second book I took with me was Christine Valter Paintner’s book Desert Fathers and Mothers Early Christian Wisdom Sayings. What particularly struck me is where she comments:
We often bring unconscious expectations to life. We feel disappointed when things don’t turn out as we had hoped, even when we aren’t aware we had a desire for a particular outcome. Often we are poor judges of what should happen in our lives. We bring a whole set of ego-centered habits and patterns, and we dream from the person we have been , rather than the person we are being transformed into. Our transformed self is always far beyond our own striving.
When we realize we have limited vision and that our planning minds will only take us so far, then we can begin to gently release the pressure we put on ourselves to have things turn out in a certain way. We may begin to approach life in a more open-hearted way, receiving its gifts rather than grumbling about what we would rather have had happen. (60).
When we seek to bring about change that is not a tweaking of what has existed in the past but rather something entirely new, our own planning and limited vision often does get in the way. Letting go does not begin in the planning room, it begins in the place where we seek to listen to God. I am more convinced than ever that unless we can unleash our creativity and imaginations in the realm of prayer and worship, we will never see real change that leads us into the new reality of God’s kingdom, occur. God’s new reality does not emerge fully grown, but as a baby that needs to be nurtured and fed.
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a small amount for purchases made through appropriate links.
Thank you for supporting Godspace in this way.
When referencing or quoting Godspace Light, please be sure to include the Author (Christine Sine unless otherwise noted), the Title of the article or resource, the Source link where appropriate, and ©Godspacelight.com. Thank you!