Thomas Merton and Contemplative Prayer

This past week, I have been reading an excerpt from Thomas Merton's "Contemplative Prayer." For those who have never read or heard of Thomas Merton, I strongly recommend his autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain." The book recounts Merton's journey from atheism to faith to life as a Trappist monk. While my own Christian walk has been in the Protestant tradition, I have found that some of the finest works of Christian literature come from the Roman Catholic tradition.

In "Contemplative Prayer", Merton warns against relying on "systems" or "methods" in meditation and urges us to cultivate appropriate attitudes instead. This is wise counsel. Christian contemplative prayer is vastly different from Transcendental Meditation or secular meditation where the goal is to focus on a meaningless sound or our breathing or something else that is fairly mechanical. While those forms of meditation may have beneficial health effects, Christian meditation or contemplative prayer has God as the focus. Our goal should be to grow ever closer to our heavenly Father and to conform our lives to His will. We need to approach God humbly, with

"faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy. All these finally permeate our being with love in so far as our living faith tells us we are in the presence of God, that we live in Christ, that in the Spirit of God we "see" God our Father without "seeing." We know him in "unknowing." Faith is the bond that unites us to him in the Spirit who gives us light and love."

One lesson I have taken from Merton is that we should expect to find hardship in prayer from time to time. Merton warns,

Meditation is sometimes quite difficult. If we bear with hardship in prayer and wait patiently for the time of grace, we may well discover that meditation and prayer are very joyful experiences. We should not, however, judge the value of our meditation by "how we feel." A hard and apparently fruitless meditation may in fact be much more valuable than one that is easy, happy, enlightened, and apparently a big success.

Merton also tells us that there are no shortcuts in the spirtual life. An entire lifetime may be barely sufficient for us to discover all of the problems in our character that present obstacles in our prayer life. The Christian walk is both uncomplicated and difficult. A child can understand who Jesus is and why God sent Him. On the other hand, to walk the "narrow path" is very difficult. We always need to remain perfectly content to view ourselves as beginners and to humbly and sincerely believe that we know very little. This attitude leaves us open to the teaching and guidance of our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Reading Merton and thinking about the ideas described above, it is clear to me that I have a long way to go and need to not only understand this, but to live it. How fortunate we are to have a loving and forgiving God!

Listening and Responding

I expect that in the next life, I will learn that my prayer life could have been infinitely richer if I had only listened better. To truly converse with God, we must listen for His voice, not just ask for His help. As important as it is to bring my needs to God, to praise Him, to worship Him, and to talk with Him, it is only a one way street unless I listen. Imagine how our friends and family and others would react if we hit them with a non-stop blizzard of words and never stopped long enough to hear what they have to say. Or imagine how they would react if we talked until we were done and then we stopped talking and walked away. That is how we frequently treat God.

Today, I learned a beautiful example of why we need to listen from my nearly 12 year-old daughter. She and my wife were returning from an out of town trip during the late evening yesterday. As they hurtled down the highway at 75 miles per hour with another car next to them and a semi on their tail, they crested a hill and saw a deer standing in the middle of their lane. My wife swerved only slightly because she had a car next to her. She couldn't slam on her brakes because of the semi close behind. They missed the deer, although they say they don't know how it was possible.

Now for the remarkable part - my daughter told my wife that before they almost hit the deer, she had an overwhelming sense that she needed to pray for their safety. As they crested the hill, not knowing what was ahead of them, my daughter was praying for their safety. My wife and daughter still don't know how it was physically possible to miss the deer. What is so amazing though, is that my young daughter heard God's voice, she listened to it and she responded with prayer. How often are we so busy talking, thinking or obsessing that we don't hear that still, quiet voice of our Lord? How much do we miss because we simply do not listen? My daughter says she knows God was with them last night.

Can you remain in God's presence with a busy mind?

One of the challenges of practicing God's presence is to remain focused on Him when your mind is busy. I recently returned from a business trip where I had to do a lot of networking, socializing, politiking, or whatever you want to call it. I found it extremely difficult to remain focused on the Lord in that setting. I believe it is possible to remain in God's presence in any situation, but I sure had a tough time of it.

Has anyone else had any success in similar settings? I suspect part of the problem is that in this type of business setting, I am too focused on my business interests and needs rather than remaining focused purely on God's will. I need to experiment with letting the Lord guide all of my conversations in this setting.