CAVEAT LECTOR!: This is VERY long!
"To live the life of prayer means to emerge from my drowse, to awaken to the communing,
guiding, healing, clarifying, and transforming current of God's Holy Spirit in which I am immersed."
Douglas V Steere, Dimensions of Prayer.
‘If you are at your manual labor in your room and it comes time to pray, do not say: "I will use up my supply of branches or finish weaving the little basket, and then I will rise." But rise immediately and render to God the prayer that is owed. Otherwise, little by little you come to neglect your prayer and your duty habitually, and your soul will become a wasteland devoid of every spiritual and bodily work. For right at the beginning your will is apparent.’
- Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.
Breath Prayer 10/11/2007
Friends,
Last night in our class your kids and I talked about an ancient Christian practice called breath prayer. (We are in the middle of a six week experience in talking about and practicing different ways to pray right now.)
Breath prayer is a great way for all of us to practice what Paul wrote about in 1 Thess 5: “pray without ceasing”.
Here’s a brief description. Take a minute and read Mark 10:46-52. Christians have found in this passage as a model of creating short, poignant prayers that can be prayed as simply as and in sync with breathing. Did you catch the examples? (Your kids did!) The first is ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ The second is ‘My teacher,* let me see again.’
From this passage we talked about how Joel, Lexi, Kelsey, and I can create and pray our own breath prayers. Here are the three simple steps we talked about:
1. Imagine that God is asking you the very question that Jesus asks blind Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” or “What can I do for you?”
2. Think of a name for God that is especially fitting for your need or concern. (We had a list of about 30 that I wrote on the blackboard. If you want to think of a few, think of the women’s part in The Worship Song, the one that starts “You are holy, you are mighty, you are worthy, worthy of praise….”)
3. Bring the two together and write them as a short prayer.
So, in our example from Mark, Bartimaeus wanted healing, an act of mercy. Since royalty can give mercy to those who can’t care for themselves, he chose the name “Son of David.” So, his prayer was, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” Last night I was in desperate need of peace, so the breath prayer that I wrote and prayed was, “Ever-loving God, give me your peace.”
Like I said, if we remember these short and simple prayers, they can stay with us and we can pray them as easily as breathing in and out. In fact, because they are so short, you can easily pray them as you breathe in and out, saying the name for God as you breathe in and what you want God to do for you as you breathe out. It’s not only a simple way for children to pray, but a powerful way for all disciples to prayer and be open to the presence of God at all times.
I encourage you that chat some more with your kids about their breath prayers and help them create space in their lives this week for practicing this type of prayer. I’ve attached a helpful little worksheet that we used in class that you might want to use some night at dinner as a family. Each of you can write your own simple prayer and take a minute of silence to stop and pray them at the beginning or ending of dinner. It would be a great time for you to nurture your own faith and the faith of your kids.
Thanks for being great models of how to raise your kids to know and love Jesus for those of us whose kids are still infants and toddlers.
Grace and peace,
The Examined Life: Have You Had Your Regular Checkup? 10/18/2007
Friends,
Last night in our class your kids and I talked about a type of prayer called the examen. (I’ve attached a piece I wrote for the bulletin in January 2006 encouraging all of us to practice the examen.) Before talking about the examen, I want to bring you up to speed on where we are in this six week exploration of prayer and what’s to come.
Three Wednesdays ago we started to a six-week module on different types of prayer. While prayer is a part of each of our classes and a part of all of our lives, we often feel very limited in our prayer lives, experiencing prayer primarily as a time to share our laundry list of requests with God. Our goal during this prayer module is to help children experience a wider variety of forms of prayer and develop skills and tools for a life of prayer. Over the course of the module, they will experience six different types of prayer: silence and listening to God; breath prayer (very short prayers that can be repeated often, just like breathing), the examen (a way of reflecting over the day with God), intercession (prayer for others), reading the Scriptures prayerfully, and prayers of thankfulness.
Silence and listening to God: The inability of your kids to be comfortable in the presence of silence gives testimony to the role of noise and busyness in our lives. It was interesting to watch them squirm and giggle uncomfortably during just a minute or two of silence. In our culture we are flooded by noise. We are all so used to being distracted by the crashing wind, the powerful earthquake, and the blazing fire that we often struggle to find God in the “sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12 NRSV) or the “gentle whisper” (NIV). I encourage you to find time to help your kids experience more silence during the week.
Breath Prayer: Last week we looked at breath prayers, a simple way to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thes 5:16-18). This type of is based on the two prayers prayed by the blind man in Mark 10:46-52. Christians have found in this passage as a model of creating short, poignant prayers that can be prayed as simply as and in sync with breathing. Did you catch the examples? (Your kids did!) The first is ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ The second is ‘My teacher,* let me see again.’ Here are the three simple steps we talked about for creating your own breath prayer:
1. Imagine that God is asking you the very question that Jesus asks blind Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” or “What can I do for you?”
2. Think of a name for God that is especially fitting for your need or concern. (We had a list of about 30 that I wrote on the blackboard. If you want to think of a few, think of the women’s part in The Worship Song, the one that starts “You are holy, you are mighty, you are worthy, worthy of praise….”)
3. Bring the two together and write them as a short prayer.
The night that we discussed breath prayer, I was in desperate need of peace, so the breath prayer that I wrote and prayed was, “Ever-loving God, give me your peace.” It was a great blessing to me throughout the week, as I’ve continued to pray it throughout my days.
Last night we focused on the examen. It is a great way to practice what one New Testament scholar calls the “asceticism of attentiveness” or looking back over our days to be attentive to the ways that God might have been present and moving in both the good and the bad moments, our highs and lows, our consolations and our desolations.
The examen is very simple, something that you can practice with your kids before bedtime or experience together as a family when you sit down at the dinner table together. (I discovered last night that at least one of our families already does a version of the examen together at dinner! Kudos to you!) A very simple way for the whole family to do this is to each take a minute to look back over your day and ask yourselves these three questions:
1. What made me happy today?
2. What made me sad or mad?
3. Is there anything that I’m sorry about or that I need to ask forgiveness for?
(There are some other examples of the examen questions in the attachment that you might find helpful as you begin to practice the examen yourself.)
After answering the questions, spend some time praying together as a family about the things that you heard, thanking God for the good moments, praying about the bad, asking for forgiveness for the moments about which you are sorry.
The kids also brought home a small beaded rope that we made during our activity time last night. (It is very similar to the colored-coded beaded bracelets that kids sometimes make to remember the story of Jesus.) Each of the colored beads will remind your kids of one of the questions: Green=Glad; Blue=Sad; Red=Mad; Purple=Sorry.
I encourage you that chat some more with your kids about the examen prayer and help them create space in their lives this week for practicing the examen. Take the questions above or use some of the ones from the attached article and practice the examen together as a family. This is a great way for you as parents to hear from your kids about their days and help them process their daily experiences as a part of their journey as disciples of Jesus! (You can start by playing the “I Spy God” game that we played last night, looking over your days to see the places where you see God being present. Your kids had some amazing insight into where they saw God yesterday!) I am confident that the examen will be a great way for would be a great way for you to nurture your own faith and the faith of your kids. (If you have any other questions about the examen or ways to integrate it into your life, please feel free to ask.)
We’ve still got intercession, praying Scripture, and prayers of thanksgiving to come. I would love to see even more of your kids come to experience these types of prayer with us over the next three Wednesdays.
May God continue to be with you as you raise your kids to know God, not simply know about God.
Grace and peace,
Intercessory Prayer: 10/25/2007
“To intercede for another means that in our prayer we stand between—or next to—them and God.” – Brian C.
It’s one of the most stunning and brilliant scenes in the gospels: a teacher, both inspiring and confounding crowds; a house, crowded like the stands at a British football match; a quadriplegic, unable to walk to the house, unable to stand with the crowd, unable to find his way into the presence of this teacher; four friends, determined, undeterred, undaunted, driven, daring, shameless… full of faith. While this could seem like any other healing story in the gospels, there is a profound thought hidden within the lines of this narrative. Go back and reread Mark 2. Did you catch it? I love this line… “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” When Jesus saw their faith, their willingness to take risks, to break with convention and daringly bring their friend before this Teacher, to stand between their friend and God and offer him up, hoping against hope that he could be healed.
Of course, the friends say nothing. They don’t give Jesus a list of the ways they would like him to heal or their expert opinion on what the friend needs. They simply bring him into the presence of Jesus (albeit by tearing through a roof!).
Last night in our class, we discussed intercessory prayer, the fourth of the six types of prayer we will be exploring in this six week module. Intercession is a way that we can boldly do what the four friends in Mark 2 did, bring our cares and concerns for others to the mind and attention of God. We talked about the ways that we can pray for others. Intercession is a simple but powerful way for us to respond and live into God’s care and concern for us, our families and friends, our enemies, and the entire world. But, intercession is not a way for us to manipulate heaven. It is important for us to realize that we don’t always know what we truly need, much less what others need.
Much the opposite, for us intercession is a way that we relinquish or give up our need to control our own destiny and the situations of others around us, to admit that God’s perspective on life and the world is clearer than our own. Intercession is a chance for us to exchange that need to control with a prayerful trust in the God who hears and answers our prayer. In this way, our vision can be changed. Over time we can see the world more clearly through God’s eyes. As we walk stand between God and others through intercessory prayer, we begin to see the world and the people in it more like Jesus saw people and our prayer becomes his prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”
One of the transformative results of intercessory prayer is that we will become changed people. As we pray we discover that God is calling us to discern what God is doing in the world and perhaps become a living answer to our prayer, the hands and the feet of Jesus in the situation. Our prayers for others do not relieve us of action, but rather call us to step into the fray, into the gap, into the messiness of these people’s lives with and for God.
In her book, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform Us, Adele Calhoun asks several probing reflection questions that I think would be valuable for us to consider these two as we try to continue to teach our children the way of intercessory prayer:
4. What do your requests to God reveal about your priorities, goals, desires and heart? Talk to God about this.
5. If God asked you to pray for something, what do you think he would ask you to pray for?
As we closed our time together last night, each of your kids selected two cards. One had the name of another child who was in class with us last night, the other a child or two who were not able to be with us. I asked the class to tape the names to a mirror that they use frequently, so that they will see it and be reminded to say a very short, intercessory prayer for the kids on their cards, something as simple as, “God, please be with Ben, Joel, and
As you continue to go through the week, try to think more about intercession, both as a part of your life and your kids’ lives. Calhoun offers some wonderful spiritual exercises on intercession. Here are a few that I invite you to use or to modify for yourself and your family (#s 2 & 3 would be great to do at breakfast or dinner as a family!):
1. Pay attention to the moments when people come to mind. Sometimes they come to you out of the blue. As a person comes to mind, offer him or her up to the Lord. If you have the leisure, turn to God and ask him, “What is your prayer for this person?” Listen and pray.
2. Intercede with a newspaper in hand. As you read, what do you feel called to pray about? Gently bring the fears and concern of the world’s news to the Lord. (Especially highlight places where other children are suffering or in need, whether local situations in Pontiac or Detroit or global situations, like the Invisible Children in Uganda, the starving children in Zimbabwe, or the kids suffering the other areas of war and strife.)
3. Create an intercession journal with pictures of people, places, and concerns for which you wish to pray. Record answers to prayer beside the photos in your journal.
4. Use the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern for intercession:
a. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name.” Spend sometime thanking God for his fatherly love and attention. Ponder who he is and adore his majesty, holiness, sovereignty, goodness and beauty.
b. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Turn your intercession to God’s purposes in the world. Where are you trying to bring in your kingdom rather than putting your efforts toward God’s kingdom agenda? Confess where God’s priorities have been replaced with your own. Consider what God’s kingdom agenda might be in your relationships in the world. Pray for these things. What might partnering with God around his will look like?
c. “Give us this day our daily bread.” Pray for your needs and those whose lives are closely linked with your own. Pray for those who are in danger, suffering and in places of decision making or costly love.
d. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Confess your grudges, bitterness and oversensitivity; dwell at the foot of the cross. Thank God for what it is like to be forgiven.
e. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” As you look ahead into your day, notice the tasks and transactions ahead of you. Where might you get off track? Become aware of the ways you may be tempted to spin the truth, manage your image, live out of your false self, lose your patience, or envy another. Pray for the Spirit to work in you to change you. Ask for protection and courage for the day.
f. “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” End your time of intercession with prayers of trust in God’s goodness and his redemptive plan.
Finally, please continue to encourage your kids to practice the other types of prayer we’ve experienced (silence and listening to God, breath prayer, and the examen) and empower them by helping carve out time and space for them to pray.
God bless us all as we seek to turn every moment into an opportunity to pray.
Grace and peace,
Minister of Congregational
Lectio Divina: When Reading Scripture Becomes Prayer 11/8/2007
“Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long.”
– Psalm 119:97
“You can’t hear God speak to someone else; you can hear him only if you are being addressed.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
“There are many kinds of Christian meditation, but above all it is listening to God through the scriptures, ruminating on the Word, a deep conversation of hearing and responding. In meditation we read not just for information; we probe, ponder, and explore so that the words of scripture become for us the Word of God in our lives.”
– E. Glenn Hinson
“So, lectio divina. A way of reading that guards against depersonalizing the text into an affair of questions and answers, definitions and dogmas. A way of reading that prevents us from turning Scripture on its had and using it to justify ourselves like that pathetic religion scholar was trying to do with Jesus (Matt 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-31). A way of reading that abandons the attempt to take control of the text as if it were helpless without our help…. A way of reading that intends the fusion of the entire biblical story and my story. A way of reading that refuses to be reduced to just reading but intends the living of the text, listening and responding to the voices of that ‘so great cloud of witnesses’ telling their stories, singing their songs preaching their sermons, praying their prayers, asking their questions, having their children, burying their dead, following Jesus.”
– Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, 90.
It is a blessing and a curse of our heritage. The Churches of Christ have always claimed to be a people of the book, people who want to know Scripture. What a great blessing, having my faith nurtured by people who want me to know Scripture. The flip side of this, the curse, is that Scripture is often taught in our tradition as a textbook to be learned. I was taught to read the Bible for information. When you read for information you read as quickly as possible to still catch and corral the salient and pertinent facts and nuggets of insight in the text. (This is how our children are taught to read at school to pass the MEAP.) When you do this, the Scripture is in danger of being depersonalized, turned into a specimen to be analyzed, or, as I heard it put recently, something we learn about.
While this is one valid way to think about Scripture, there is another. The other is to read it as the Word of God for us, a living Word. This is a way of attending to Scripture as listeners, longing to hear God speaking into our lives, reading slowly and meditatively for transformation. (Attached you will find a great little piece by someone describing their own journey from reading the text for information to hearing God speak to him through the Scripture.)
Wednesday night in our class we discussed lectio divina (LEX-ee-oh dih-VEE-nah), the fifth of the six types of prayer we will be exploring in this six week module. Lectio divina is a way to read Scripture as prayer, literally as “divine or sacred reading.” It is a way to slowly contemplate shorter sections of Scripture to hear God’s word for you and to respond to that word. Lectio divina is comprised of four basic elements: lectio (slowly reading the text), meditatio (ruminating or meditating on the text), oratio (responding to God’s Word for us), and contempatio (living the Word we hear and receiving rest from God).
Ed Hinson describes the four steps in this way:
- Lectio – Slowly read a brief passage of scripture. Read it as though you are hearing it read to you. Read it silently and aloud. Experiment by reading it with different emphases and inflections.
- Meditatio – Mull over the text; internalize the words. Listen for the phrases that stand out for you as you read the passage. Turn them over in your mind. Reflect on why these words catch you attention, what they bring to mind, and what they mean for you today. Jot down in a journal the meaningful words, noting associations, reactions, feelings, or challenges.
- Oratio – Turn your meditation from dialogue with yourself to dialogue with God, which is prayer. Share with God in all honesty your reflections, questions, or feelings. Offer your thanksgiving, confession, petitions, or intercessions [and, I would add, frustrations or struggles] as they arise within during your dialogue with God. Listen for God’s response and inner nudging.
- Contemplatio – Rest your mental activity and trust yourself completely to God’s love and care. Relax in God’s presence. Pick a phrase from the text to which you can return again and again as you keep your attention on God. Allow this prayer-phrase to sustain your presence to God throughout the day. After a few minutes of “practicing the presence of God” in this way, you might close with the Lord’s Prayer, a song, or a final moment of grateful silence.
The way we practiced this on Wednesday was as follows. We started by saying a short, simple prayer together to open our hearts and minds to receive God’s Word: “Loving God, help me hear your word for me. Amen.” Next, we read the passage out loud twice: the first time to get familiar with the text, to hear and get the feeling and movement of the passage; the second, to see what captures our imagination or jumps out to our minds. Third, we all wrote down one word or phrase that caught our attention or that was important for us. Next, we spent time reflecting on that word or phrase, writing down all of the things that came to our mind when we thought of that word or phrase. We then sat in silence, reading over our list, meditating on it, and praying over it. Finally, we took all took a deep breath and rested in God for a few minutes.
Now, how can you practice lectio divina with your kids? This type of praying and meditating on Scripture has traditionally been practiced alone in the quiet, which is the primarily method we experienced in class yesterday. Like the other types of prayer that we’ve studied, the biggest thing is to help them create time and space in their hectic daily schedules for prayer. This type of prayer is important, because it is one of the ways that we try to hear from God, rather than simply praying to God. Find time to sit down with your kids and give them a short section of Scripture to read. Start by spending a minute relaxing and praying the prayer: “Loving God, help me hear your word for me. Amen.” (We used Colossians 3:12-14 in class, so feel free to start there.) Have them slowly read the passage a few times or read the passage to them. Then ask them to go through the next three steps: 1) write the word or phrase that catches your attention or is important to you; 2) spent time reflecting on that word or phrase; 3) silently meditate over the list and pray to God about anything that comes to your mind.
In recent years, there has been a move to recapture lectio divina as a method of group prayer, so as to hear the word of God speaking to different people in a group. This is a great way for us to hear from God not only through our reading of the Scripture, but through other people as the Spirit of God continues to lead them to new insights as well. This would be a great way for a family to practice this type of prayer together. As you sit down to begin eating dinner together or during some family time in the evening, take turns reading a short passage aloud. After it’s been read several times, ask for every person to tell what caught their attention and why. Spend some time talking about the things you’ve heard and how God might speaking to each of you as individuals and as a family through the Word of God that you’ve heard and experienced together. (Attached you will find an approach to group lectio divina that I sometimes use to help people hear God’s Word and discern how God might be shaping our missional imaginations. It might be useful, with slight modifications, for your family time too.)
Finally, please continue to encourage your kids to keep practicing the other types of prayer we’ve experienced (silence and listening to God, breath prayer, the examen, and intercession) and empower them by helping carve out time and space for them to pray. At this point, we’ve explored five different types of prayer. As a family, you might consider setting aside some time each night to practice a different type of prayer, whether at dinner, during family time, or just before bed.
God bless us all as we seek to turn every moment into an opportunity to pray.
Grace and peace,
1 comment:
Great stuff presented with usable examples and tools.
Good work.
WOW, you don't present something in Blogville for a month and then you gush forth with a how to book. :o)
This is a great thing to be presenting to that age group to equip them for a lifetime of usable communication techniques for conversing with God.
I am very curious how they are receiving and incorporating it.
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