From "Common Prayer - A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals", this wisdom about contemplative prayer:
"Over and over Scripture invites us to abide in God. To rest in God. To dwell in God. More than fifty times, Paul repeats the phrase "in Christ". Contemplative prayer is not just about activity and speaking, but also about listening and resting in God. Many of us have grown up thinking of prayer as a checklist of requests to God, like giving a grocery list to someone headed to the supermarket. As one kid said, "I'm off to pray - does anyone need anything?" Prayer is certainly about sharing our concerns and frustrations with God. God is personal enough to come down and wrestle in the dirt with Jacob or answer Abraham's pleading on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah. Still, contemplative prayer goes deeper .... Prayer is less about trying to get God to do something we want God to do and more about getting ourselves to do what God wants us to do and to become who God wants us to become. There are times when we speak, weep, groan and shout at God. But there are also times when we simply sit in silence and are held by our Beloved .... The monks have been known to say, "If your speaking doesn't add something beautiful to the silence, don't speak." For many of us in the high-paced, cluttered world of materialism and noise, silence is a way we can free up the space to listen to God."
Silence. Doesn't happen often. And when it does, I think "what do I do now?" Or I let my mind wander. And even when it's "devotion" time for me, there's so often still noise in my head - things I need to do afterwards, things I want to request from God, things I'm struggling with. But I do know that the times I have actually really felt a true sense of devotion were the times that I sat quietly, and one by one pushed each thought away, just like apparently Teresa of Avila did when she prayed, not fighting the thoughts, but letting them recede like waves. Here comes another thought - don't dwell on it, but gently move it to the side - "not now". A gentle, but persistent meditative action, focusing on nothing, not because in the nothing I will find myself, but because in the nothing I will find my God.
Meditation. Many Christians are frightened of that word. But I really think that when we give in to being frightened of meditation, Satan laughs and chalks another one up to himself. It's like we've given meditation over to him. Which is just what he wants. If we don't dare to slow ourselves down in meditation, we are less likely to find that place where we are able to rest in God. Meditation doesn't belong to New Age, or to Buddha, or whatever! It belongs to the beginning of time, and the creator of all. When I take time to quiet myself, to meditate, I am humbling myself and bring glory to God. I am gently pushing aside all those things that that I think are so important, and letting God be first, just for a few moments. And maybe then the practice will train me to put him first for all my moments ....
Psalm 131: "My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Alice, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore."
