"The only way to get rid of misconceptions about contemplation is to experience it...For contemplation cannot be taught. It cannot even be clearly explained. It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to, symbolized. The more objectively and scientifically one tries to analyze it, the more he empties it of its real content, for this experience is beyond the reach of verbalization and of rationalization." - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Trying to explain centering prayer is very much like trying to explain contemplation. The more I try to explain it, the less effective my words become. So the only thing I can do is try to explain my own experience.
In picking up from where I left off a few blog posts ago, when I finished reading Open Mind Open Heart, I started doing Centering Prayer right away.
Every weekday I would bring my two boys to Mass with me and then to their school. Then I would return to my church (where I work as secretary) and go into the chapel and pray before the Blessed Sacrament until I had to be at work.
My centering prayer period would be about 30 minutes long (60 minutes long if the boys did not have school). Sometimes I would also pray for 20 to 30 minutes in the evening depending on our family's schedule.
The sacred word I chose was Abba. Some people say you should not choose a word that means a lot to you because you might pay too much attention to the word itself and others say the opposite. Well, I chose a word that means something.
I had just recently learned that Abba means daddy and that is what Jesus often called Our Father - daddy or papa. I was so enthralled with that. Having some "father issues," I was just beginning to realize that the Father in heaven was my daddy. My Abba.
So I would sit quietly in the chapel, often leaning against the wall, close my eyes, and rest. Thoughts would come (usually a to-do list) and I would re-introduce my sacred word, abba, until the thoughts would leave. In what seemed like seconds, the thoughts would be back. Over and over this is how it went. Then suddenly, time is up and I had to go to work.
Did I see anything, hear anything? No. Did I feel any peace? Sometimes yes, sometimes no but that doesn't mean anything anyway. The distractions drove me crazy until I read a quote from Thomas Merton: "If you do not have distractions, you do not know how to pray!"
Amen.
So how did I know I was praying?
In the early years of motherhood, I was a yeller. I did not yell every day. But I would have days when I was quite impatient and I would yell at my boys. Then I would hate myself for it. One of the things I wanted most in the world was to give my boys the childhood I did not have and yelling at them was not the way to go. But all of the desire and will power in the world did not change me.
It was about 3 months after I started CP that I suddenly noticed the change. We were on a camping vacation and, as often happens on these kinds of trips, a lot of things were going wrong. And I was as calm as could be.
When I mentioned this to my spiritual director, he opened up his bible to Galatians 5:22 and started reading the fruits of the Spirit and included in that list was patience, self-control, gentleness.
Even my children noticed the change and my youngest said one day, "You are not such a perfectionist lately, mom." I didn't even know he knew that word!!
Other changes happened along the way. My spiritual director discerned that I was being called to be a spiritual director myself and I have been one now for 13 years. (That's another story in itself!) I became charismatic (yes, there are charismatic contemplatives) and became more in love with scripture. I began to write for publication.
I began to see God everywhere in everything, in everyone, in every event, no matter how big or small. I had a more personal intimate relationship with God. I was finally traveling from the head to the heart.
And one more thing - Perseverance. I did centering prayer everyday for 11 years. Perseverance may not be listed in Galatians, although faithfulness is. But still. 11 years of centering prayer. Day after day. 11 years of letting go of distractions. Day after day. A human being does not do that on one's own.
I stopped centering a few years ago when our lives changed dramatically. My oldest got married and my other son went off to college - empty nest! We moved rather suddenly from a 3 bedroom house to a very small mobile home with no separate space for silence and prayer. Plus I wrote and published my book about surviving child sexual abuse.
I was in a topsy turvy world. I couldn't seem to settle down enough to do centering prayer. So I would grab whatever quiet time I could and just sit and look at Jesus.
One of St. John Vianney's favorite stories is about a farmer in the parish who spent all day in the Church one day instead of working in the field. When a friend asked him what he had been doing all day, he said: “I look deeply at Him, and He looks deeply at me”.
So that is how I pray. Which is fine. We need to pray in the way we are called. But lately I have been thinking... these blog posts have rekindled the desire for centering prayer. Is the Lord calling? I am not sure yet.
Merton never really talked about his own personal way of praying. Finally in a letter he wrote:
"I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centered entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and to His love. That is to say it is centered on faith by which alone we can know the presence of God...it is a matter of adoring Him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing Him as all...My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence."
I may possibly do one more post on centering prayer to speak to some of the controversies surrounding it. But perhaps I already have. Please let me know by your comments what you think.
