discipline

Willingness is a prayer in itself

Centering prayer has become an integral part of my morning routine. Thomas Keating recommends doing two, twenty minute centering prayer sessions each day, one in the morning and one in the evening, however. For whatever reason, I find it difficult to make the time for an evening session. 

One of the issues I face is that, when I try to sit down to practice centering prayer in the evening, I almost always fall asleep. This isn’t a terrible problem to have, and it most likely just means I’m tired. But after a while, it can be discouraging to have a twenty minute silent prayer session turn into a twenty minute nap. 

In addition to my falling asleep, it can just be more difficult for me to find the quiet space and time necessary to practice centering prayer in the evening than in the morning. In the morning, I wake up before my wife and daughter, which allows me to make the time I need for this practice. In the evening, on the other hand, my schedule is more complicated. My daughter is home from school, I teach jiu-jitsu in the evenings, and when my wife comes home from work, I like to spend time with her. 

None of these are deal breakers though. I know that it’s possible to fit a second centering prayer session into my day. I simply haven’t found the right space or timing for it, which is to say that I have not yet made it a priority. The important thing is that I’m willing. 

Willingness is a prayer in itself. It’s my way of telling God that, with his help, I will make it happen. He need only show me the way. As long as I remain prayerful and willing, I’m sure that he will. He has yet to let me down thus far and I don’t think he’s going to start now. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Making time to love God and my fellows

Having a disciplined prayer life is essential if we want to establish and maintain a relationship with God. Prayer is the act of momentarily forgetting the world in order to put our mind on God. It is a decision to leave everything else behind so that, even if for a moment, we may seek union with our creator, to spend time with him, and to get to know him. 

While God is constantly reaching out for us whether we know it or not, it is up to us to reach back to make the connection. We cannot manufacture grace or salvation through effort, but we can develop a relationship with the source of grace and the giver of salvation. We have to do some of the work.

By setting aside time for God, we are telling him that he is important to us, that our relationship with him matters. This will mean that other things are going to have to wait. If our relationship with God is our priority, we must act like it. 

This is not easy to do. There are an infinite number of distractions in this life vying for us to choose them over God. When the world is not trying to get our attention, our own minds come up with things to worry about, to desire, or obsess over. It is as if we are wired for an inattention on God. 

This morning in prayer, for example, my daughter, my wife, and my phone were all trying to draw me away from God. None of it was malicious, except maybe the phone. I’m becoming ever more convinced that my phone and everything it represents it a tool of the devil, but I digress. 

My daughter and my wife were not even trying to get my attention. I do my best to take care of them and, in turn, they try to respect my prayer time. It’s just that I could hear them getting ready for school and work, respectively, and my mind started to wander away from God and toward what I could do to help them or to get involved with their interactions. 

They didn’t even need my help. I had already made breakfast for my daughter and her lunch was made the night before. She was fully dressed and everything was packed for school. My wife was simply doing her own thing and getting herself ready for work. Everything was fine, but my mind insisted upon engaging with them which meant not being open to receive God’s quiet presence. 

My own brain was trying to keep me away from God and my silent prayer. It wanted to do anything but sit still in God’s presence. It told me that, by sitting quietly in prayer I was being a bad father, a negligent husband, and that I was being selfish. Again, neither my daughter nor my wife actually needed me. 

I had already done my part for my family before sitting down to pray and they were perfectly fine in that moment without me, but my mind rebelled at the silence and rejected the idea that I could simply be still for a while and allow God to be God. But this was my prayer time. That means, before I even sat down, it was decided that all I was going to do for the next hour was to pray, read, and pray some more. 

This decision, made long before I even sat down, meant that, no matter what excuses and distractions my mind wanted to come up with, this was prayer time. This was as true today as it was the day before and as it was the day before that. Also, God willing and barring any emergencies or catastrophes, it will be equally true tomorrow. 

I am not a naturally disciplined person. That is why I have to have a dedicated time for prayer. If not, I will simply never get around to it, at least not with the attention and intention it deserves. For me, my prayer time has to be pre-established so that I have no excuses. In fact, I don’t even have to think about it. 

I don’t pray when and if I feel like it, although sometimes I do that also, but because it is time to pray. Because I made the decision once, I don’t have to make it again. I pray at prayer time. By being disciplined in this way, not only is my prayer life improved, but I have also found that the world can actually get along just fine without me for a while. 

Life doesn’t stop going simply because I am praying. The world keeps spinning and the clock continues to tick. What does happen, however, by having an established, disciplined prayer schedule, is that I slow down. 

By being disciplined about my time with God, by regularly practicing stillness in his presence, I am telling him that my relationship with him is important, that even if only for this one hour every day, I am able to love God with all of my heart, soul, and mind. This, in turn, makes me more loving toward my fellows. In the end, isn’t this the most important thing any of us can do, to love God and each other? Isn’t this worth our time? 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Write anyway

Sometimes writing is a pleasant experience. Other times, it is quite painful. Tonight, for me, it is painful. 

The words are simply not coming. I’m grasping for ideas, but they continue to elude me. 

I’m clawing around in the dark for a lifeline, some relief, some inspiration, but all my desperate fingers can find are the empty corners of an empty room where ideas used to live.

And I know they are just words, but they are more than that. When they come to me, I am comforted as if by a dear friend. In their absence, however, I feel lost, frightened, and alone. 

Tonight, I feel as though I have been abandoned. I have nothing to say and no one to say it to. In this moment, this is all I have to offer, that I write anyway.