Prayer

We Will Rebuild with Truth, Equality, Justice, and Love

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Ed Cyzewski

holding-hands-together

As concerned as I am about America’s next president and the many threats he may pose, here’s where I’m at today:

– We have civil rights leaders and activists among us who are experienced and able to help us stand for justice.

– We have journalists and academics who are committed to finding the truth, reporting the truth, and documenting the truth.

– We have civil servants and government workers who will resist the injustices and destructive policies of this man.

– We have a history of Christian writers opposing injustice, such as Dorothy Day (see “The Long Loneliness”) and Thomas Merton (see “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”).

– We have a majority in our opposition since the majority of voters did not choose this man.

– I believe that injustice and suffering will follow this man’s inauguration, and things could become far worse than we could imagine in the next four years, but perhaps this disastrous presidency will be the low point that the American people finally need to elect politicians who can enact the reforms we need.

– As the American people discover the depths of injustice that have been unleashed on our land, we must immediately translate our anger into action throughout state elections and Congressional elections, putting politicians (from either party) into office with the moral backbone to stand up to this man.

– This election has exposed the degree to which I have personally depended on elected officials for security in my future. That doesn’t mean I’m not terrified of this man and his hateful associates and policies, but Christians have lived and continue to live in the shadow of oppressive and corrupt regimes.

– I am more committed than ever to my creative work and the creative work of others that pulls back the blinders that political propaganda, pop culture, and entertainment throw on reality.

– I am more committed than ever to the practice of contemplation, seeking quiet moments throughout my day in order to be present for the love of God in order to ground my faith and to cultivate compassion for those deceived by this man.

– I am more committed than ever to love and truth because these are steady and strong, outlasting the temporary gains of bombast, deception, and propaganda.

The American people have resisted injustice and deceit before. With God’s help, we will do it again.

As dark as this hour seems with so much freedom and stability slipping away, let’s resolve to hold onto our family, friends, and neighbors who grasp the gravity of this moment. Let’s hold onto God’s love. Let’s move forward together, committing to pick each other up when we fall into despair. I resolve to hold onto you, to reach out for you, and to depend on you as well when I need support.

After we pass through the fire of this man’s presidency, we will need to rebuild what he has taken away from us. I hope and pray that we will use the sturdy materials of justice, equality, and truth so that no man, woman, or child will ever have to experience the depths of dread and despair that so many of us feel today.

For today, take care of yourself. Practice silence before God. Breathe deeply. Take a walk. Ask for God’s strength to carry us in the days that coming.

In God’s hope,

Ed Cyzewski

We Need Something Better Than “No”

Posted on January 9, 2017January 7, 2017 by Ed Cyzewski

hope-despair-prayer-solitude

While looking for a spirituality that is authentic and real, something that is actually a union with God and not just a formal organization around the idea of God, I have realized that far too often I have chosen the easy way out. When my conservative construction of God that rested on propositions, study, and proofs, crumbled under the weight of putting my flimsy beliefs into practice each day, I saw two ways forward.

On the one hand, I could just drop it all. It was all too fragile, controlling, and unknowingly arbitrary. Who could remain healthy within such a system without eventually seeing its fragility, acknowledging it, and then being cast away as a heretic who “lost the faith”?

The other option was a salvage mission. I could cut away the parts that were untenable and arbitrary. I could work toward a kind of center where the essentials could be preserved while letting go of the most contradictory or unlikely elements. At the end of the day, I felt like I was defining myself by what I was not. In addition, when you work at the salvage mission long enough, new groups begin to form with their own boundaries, and over time, you end up within the same kind of fragile structure that you left in the first place.

From another perspective, these were two sides of the same coin. Both the dropping and the salvaging were just ways of stripping away unhealthy elements from the Christian faith in the hope that something worthwhile will remain standing. They thrived on defining “what they are not” with few solid or constructive elements to call people toward.

From the defensive conservative, to the salvaging liberal, to the exasperated atheist/agnostic, the majority of our religious energy can be channeled in a negative direction. So much of our time can invested in defending ourselves from each other. I’ve been blogging since 2005, and for many years these fights were very important to me. Over the past five years, I’ve been asking myself where do we go now?

We don’t need new movements, new logos, new leaders, new events, and new resources. We probably won’t find the way forward from those with the most to lose from the existing order since the existing order often thrives by overlooking our most grievous sins, while turning a critical eye to an extremely limited subset of vices.

My sense for Christians who want to keep the faith today is that we have never needed the mystical tradition of the church more than ever. Only in this tradition can we hold the tensions of Christianity together and somehow arrive at something resembling the kinds of things that could resemble abundant life, renewal, and actually being born again,.

In the mystical tradition we can find a place for the conservative, the atheist, and the liberal. The orthodox essentials of the faith remain in place for mystics because they are the means by which we are united with God, but we prove them by living into their reality rather than devising scientific proofs according to the standards of our culture. We let God determine the validity of faith’s essentials.

The atheists find the emptiness, the void, and silence that they have suspected all along about God. They have their dark nights and their moments of alienation and despair. However, that empty space isn’t the last word by any means. If they hold on to the silence and darkness, waiting for what may come next, there is a deeper encounter with God awaiting them that transcends the frantic worship that often left them feeling dejected and empty.

The liberals can rest from their salvage work. There is nothing to fight against and nothing to strip away. If they can enter into the rest of contemplative prayer and let an encounter with God’s presence to transform them, they may discover renewed energy, mercy, and compassion for the work of justice that beats close to their hearts.

The Christian contemplative tradition is God’s affirming yes of love and mercy. It is union with Christ. It is the Spirit of God no longer hovering over the waters but resting in us. It is the loving voice of the Father no longer calling down from a cloud but whispering from deep in our souls. There is only a divine yes of God being truly with us, transforming our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.

In the midst of that transformation, I have found freedom to stop fighting because I have been consumed with what I am in the loving presence of God. There is so much to pursue that I have nothing left to consider leaving behind. Everything that isn’t essential melts away in the loving gaze of God.

Those who reject the mystical tradition of the Christian faith, that predates the compilation of the New Testament canon, are often those who have not given it a chance. It’s a leap of faith into the darkness of the cloud of God’s presence. It’s terribly frightening to leave your old religious constructs behind, and this is why so many fight against the mystical tradition. The more you fear you’ll lose, the harder you’ll fight.

In our times that bear the fruit of years of paranoia, racism, xenophobia, deception, and unbridled greed, we need a grounded, time-tested way to move forward into the love and truth of God. I do not see hope in many quarters of the Christian faith, especially in America, but I do see striking clarity, hope, and even unity in the contemplative practices of the Christian mystical tradition.

Contemplation begins with our intention to pray and then proceeds as we surrender ourselves to God. It gives us the space we need to shut down our negative loops of thinking, to hear God speak, and to move forward with greater compassion toward others. It doesn’t need an enemy in order to thrive—unless the enemy is our own unrelenting wills.

I have been looking for sources of hope for this year, and I continue to return to this simple passage about what God requires of us: “Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” I suspect that many of us need God’s loving transformation in order to walk humbly first, and with that transformation in place, we’ll have the capacity to love mercy and to act justly in their turns.

There surely will be a time to shout, but before I open my mouth, I hope to spend time in silence before God. When I speak, my prayer is that I’ll have something better than “No” to share.

When Your Parent’s Simple Religious Answers Don’t Work

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

man-outside-church

I have watched time and time again how the older generation of evangelicals interacts with the youth and young adults. I have seen parents supply the answers to their children before they even knew what the children were asking. It’s like the teens and young adults with questions and, gasp, doubts are laden with theological TNT that could demolish the whole enterprise of the Gospel.

I see the appeal of the safety of evangelical Christianity for some, especially the churches and denominations that thrive within largely closed theological systems. Within the system and the community, you have the assurance of answers and practices that all work… as long as you stay within the system. Frankly, it doesn’t even matter if all of the answers are proven true because you’ve learned that they HAVE to be true. If the answers of your group don’t work, you’ve got nothing left—no community, hope for the future, and no way to explain how the world works.

Teens and young adults are often caught in the bind between the simple answers of their communities and their honest questions. And don’t think for a moment that children can’t tell when they’re safe to ask questions and when they’re not.

Having been that young teenager within the closed system of the Catholic Church, I knew exactly what was going on. When a priest met with me to “answer” my questions, I could immediately tell that he was fully confident in his ability to smash my answers into his tidy box of Catholic doctrine.

There was no mystery, no humility, and no mercy for my dissatisfaction. Either I accepted his authority and his theological system, which was all presented as reasonable and fully true, or I was just being rebellious and sinful, rejecting my God-given spiritual leaders and the truth of the Bible.

Is it any wonder that closed religious systems like conservative evangelicalism and Catholicism are both equally capable of creating mini inquisitions of their own? Their adherents learn that truly embracing what is taught and seriously practicing it will require them to at one point or another to stuff their questions and doubts down deep and to ensure that everyone else does the same. If you let someone else doubt or ask the hard questions, what will stop you from facing your own uncertainties and misgivings?

What so many young people suspect and what so many religious leaders fear is this: our beliefs, practices, and institutions are deeply flawed and in error.

Here’s what I suspect: We’re so flawed and in error that we don’t even know which parts are flawed and in error. We could spend the rest of our lives attacking the mistakes and hypocrisies of each other while defending the purities of our own traditions without realizing we’re really all in the same boat.

Yes, if you’ve ever doubted what you’ve been taught in church, you’re not rebellious. You’re just being honest. Most importantly, you could even be on the right path. Not that we want to spend the rest of our lives doubting, asking questions, and deconstructing so that we never find anything. I assure you, Jesus said that those who seek will find, but he doesn’t guarantee what we’ll find.

The problem is that those raised in closed religious systems think that these tiny little havens are the only places to find God. While God is most certainly within these systems in one way or another, there is a larger reality that is often obscured in the midst of the rule following and defenses of doctrinal territory.

There is the bedrock certainty of God’s grace and mercy that roam free regardless of our systems and boundaries, his endless oceans of love for us, and his streams of life that promise us a different kind security. I have found that I don’t need to worry about defending doctrine or truth, I need to live in it. The simple answers and the doctrines we’ve learned had their place, but as many of us suspected, these were just scratching the surface. The difference then is whether you toss all pursuit of God aside or you take the risk of seeking God’s larger reality of presence, mercy, and love—truth isn’t opposed to these, but it can stop you from pursuing them. At one point or another your religious system will fail you, even if you don’t admit that it has failed you.

I’ve been there, clinging to the fragile structure of theology, Bible study, a few seemingly spiritual experiences, and the hollow assurances of others around me. God’s love for me was strictly theoretical and largely wrapped up in the acceptance or rejection of those around me. If they could reject me because of what I said or believed, then God could do the same. If I was expendable to them, then it seemed like I was expendable to God.

I am learning to surrender to the darkness and the silence. I have done so kicking and screaming, wanting to keep shouting praise songs, hoping I could think my way out of this vast unknown land, and trying to spark a light by reciting one scripture verse after another.

Most days I feel like even less than a novice when it comes to the still small voice of God or the presence of God. For as little as I know and have experienced, it has been a true awakening to God’s mercy for me and for the religious leaders and their closed systems.

I see the well-meaning spoon feeding teens and young adults simple answers and doctrines that they can take or leave but must take if they want to be accepted and loved. I see some slump over with indifference because deep down they know that they’re wasting their time. As soon as they can make their own decisions, they’ll most likely drop away from the faith because it never was their own.

They never learned how to receive nourishment from God directly because their parents or church leaders feared that they may leave the faith if they start asking too many questions or let their doubts take root. I have seen the exact opposite among so many of my friends and colleagues. Once we stepped into the darkness and learned to make our faith our own, however imperfect it was, we found a God who is deeper and stronger than the simple answers and systems.

Speaking for myself, I’ve found a presence and love that I can’t explain or quantify, and it can co-exist with my imperfect theology and the theological questions that hang in the wind without resolution.

If I could say one thing to these teens and young adults who slump in the back rows of church today and hope to make their escape in the not too distant future, I would say that my faith never took root until I surrendered everything I thought I knew and learned to receive God’s mercy and love on God’s own terms.

God’s love for you and for me doesn’t change if I rebel against the answers and systems we were told to accept. Jesus has already overcome the world. He alone is worthy to unlock the deepest secrets of eternity past and the mysteries that await us. Are you tired of lugging around these questions? Are you weary of hiding your doubts? Are you thirsting for God’s presence and life instead of demands for spiritual conformity?

Jesus has a single word for you and for me: Come. There are no strings attached or limitations. Come to him with your reservations, disappointments, discouragement, and brokenness. He alone can give us rest and peace.

After spending most of my life fearing that I wasn’t good enough for God or that my doubts were too much, I found that his love for me truly overcomes every barrier I could put in the way.

Why Evangelicals Lack Compassion for Doubters and Doubters Lack Compassion for Evangelicals

Posted on October 11, 2016June 30, 2017 by Ed Cyzewski

lights

When my faith hit rock bottom at the end of seminary, I became spiritually despondent. I also became very, very angry that the religious practices and beliefs I’d been given let me down.

As I voiced my doubts and anger, I received some pretty strong pushback from evangelicals who had no tolerance for my doubts and felt personally attacked. On the other side of that time in my life, I can see with greater clarity some of the reasons why we struggled to show compassion to each other.

How Do You Grow Spiritually?

In evangelicalism, there generally isn’t very much language or conception of spiritual formation or practice. We have tended to focus on “saving” and then preserving the soul. You save your soul by making the proper profession of faith and then learning more biblical truth. You remain “in Christ” by safeguarding that truth.

If you look at the broader Christian tradition that stretches back to the early church and desert fathers, there was a greater emphasis on solitude and prayer. This tradition had been preserved by the monastic tradition, and its influence has increased and decreased over the years. As the church grew in power and influence, it’s not surprising to see those spiritual practices decrease.

As our access to monastic and desert father writings has increased, we can read that the three words that drove their spirituality were: “Flee, be silent, and pray,” as Nouwen writes in The Way of the Heart. Most importantly for our discussion about doubt and compassion, Nouwen notes that solitude (the fleeing and being silent parts) grow compassion in us as we encounter the love and mercy of God.

If we contrast the evangelical and the contemplative approaches to spirituality, we can see that one is focused on preservation while the other is focused on surrender. When I was trying to defend, preserve, or guard my spiritual life, I had little time or capacity for others unless they could help defend or teach the truth.

The surrender of solitude has forced me to face my darkest thoughts, resentments, and failures. When I resist solitude, it’s often because I’m resisting these dark sides of my life. I can only find relief and freedom by surrendering to God’s mercy, and that makes it significantly easier to show mercy to others.

Within the evangelical mindset, I learned to defend my faith from my own doubts and from those who would cast doubts on my faith. There was no room for failure. It was an all or nothing mindset. Without a more robust language of “spiritual practice” to provide an actual grounding for my faith, I had placed my confidence in study and orthodoxy. After immersing myself in study throughout my undergraduate and seminary years, while also going all in with everything the church asked of me, I saw just how fragile my faith had become, and I was angry.

I had invested years of my life into the study of scripture and defending particular viewpoints of the Bible. When those defenses fell apart and I realized that I was still just as far from God as when I started out, I had a “burn it all down” mindset toward theology and the church systems I’d given so much of myself to.

The hardest part of this is that the people in the systems of church and theology didn’t do anything malicious to me. They were just passing along the best things they could to me. We were all acting in good faith.

We all also lacked the very practices that could cultivate compassion in us. We were both trained in systems that valued conformity and checking particular boxes. As I left the conservative system, I just replaced it with a more progressive one but maintained the same mindset that lacked compassion or any kind of meaningful spiritual practice.

As I enter into completive prayer, I have to face my dark side and the only way out is to accept God’s mercy.

I am finally seeing the evangelical subculture with more compassion and grace because I can see how badly we both need the same mercy from God. I still have my insecurities. I have plenty of rage for the evangelical captivity to politics and cultural influence. But I at least can detect when I’m moving toward an unhealthy place.

When I sense myself moving toward my unhealthy stress points of anxiety and fear (hello, enneagram 9’s!), I now have spiritual practices I can turn toward with hope. Under the mercy of God, I have found the great equalizer of humanity, and that has helped me start to become kind to others, even the ones who would rather excommunicate me for my doubts.

The Lie about How to Live the Life You Love

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

contemplation-happiness-image

I’m not saying anything novel or shocking when I declare that the contemplative stream of Christianity is a completely different mindset compared to the self-help strategies of the business world and Christian self-help subculture.

I’ve read enough of both contemplation and self-help works, and in my unprofessional opinion, there is one core difference between contemplative Christianity and self-help Christian/self-help business world:

Christian contemplation differs from Christian self-help based on the promise of delivering fulfillment and happiness.

This is the difference between finding happiness, fulfillment, and meaning in what you do each day. It’s the promise that taking certain actions, following a program, or designing a particular business or spiritual program will bring you the fulfillment and joy that you want from life.

There’s a mechanism to the self-help mentality. For self-help Christianity, one must design the right mechanism with the right mix of Bible study, prayer, and service.

For self-help business, one must design the right balance of sleep, family/relationships, exercise, and work, preferably with some kind of automated function or outsourcing for the business that relies on selling high end products.

The more you see the self-help Christian world and the self-help business world in action, the more they appear to be different sides of the same coin.

The more I’m exposed to the Christian contemplative stream, the starker I see it in contrast to the self-help mindset.

The self-help Christian/business world tells you that you must work harder to build something so that you can find peace and fulfillment. And here is the dirtiest trick of all in the self-help world: so many of these people who promise to show you the way that they have blazed aren’t going to actually deliver. Sure, they can help us do a few things better. They aren’t completely useless. They have learned about time management or other productivity skills in some cases, and they do have wisdom to share at times. However, the whole self-help program will fail the majority of those who read the book, take the course, or join the community.

The truth is that most of these business bloggers and self-help Christians aren’t going to tell you “exactly” how they achieved their peace and status. They can’t. There are too many factors that go into success or personal fulfillment in the first place, the promises they make are too hollow, and many of these high profile experts have gotten support from each other in order to “make it.” There’s only room for so many experts at the top to realize their “dreams” or lead the “life that you love” if their financial success hinges of getting you to want they have so that you buy their books and courses.

The self-help world says that you don’t have the life that you love because you aren’t doing the right things or investing in the right systems. For a small fee, that is really a bargain compared to what the OTHER GUYS are charging, you can find the happiness and fulfillment that you deserve. Can you really put a price tag on that? All of your competitors are signing up for the course; do you really want to be left behind?

Before you start pulling out your wallet, let’s step back for a look at contemplation.

Contemplation tells you that your true self and the identity you have longed for with all of your heart already belongs to you in God. You can only find it with greater clarity and learn to live in it. You can’t build something that has already been given to you.

You can only find that you are deeply loved by God if you take time to live in your belovedness.

Of course you can make your life better with certain decisions and your work plays into that, but your happiness isn’t tied to a career or a lifestyle. That is too fragile and small-minded an approach to life.

With the Christian contemplative stream, there’s no course or program that maps a path to success, fulfillment, or the “life you want.” You can only find practices that you can literally practice daily. The results aren’t guaranteed in any way other than the promises of scripture and the examples of those who have gone before us. Somehow, this works, but if it’s going to work, it probably won’t look like what you’re expecting.

While the self-help world tells us ways to put ourselves first, Christianity says that you find life by “dying” to yourself. You can’t come up with a much stronger contrast! However, Christians who affirm “dying” to yourself can also slip into the self-help program. We can fight and scrap and plan and take courses to find the things that God has given to us already.

I spend most of my day circling back to the love of God. Yes, I have tried to focus my work on the things I’m better at doing and that I find enjoyable. Yes, I’ve limited my work hours when possible in order to prioritize time with my kids. However, at the root of my happiness, fulfillment, and personal quest for meaning, I spend most of time shoving aside the things that the self-help people tell me I need.

I feel the pull toward the quest for personal comfort, fulfillment, and success. It haunts and grabs at me every single day. And so I circle back in contemplation onto the present love and mercy of God. I circle back with the Examen to remember where God has been present and where I have gone off on my own.

I’ve found that I live the “life I love” when I live in the love of God. No membership fees are required other than a deep need for God.

Braveheart, Richard Rohr, and the Future of Evangelical Men

Posted on September 2, 2016September 2, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

father-richard-rohr-90c4be76c9b0dce8 — No blue face paint required for Richard Rohr to draw a crowd.

If you pulled me aside during my college years and asked me how the followers of a crucified religious leader ended up idolizing a military leader in Medieval Scotland as the pinnacle of manhood, character, and leadership, I probably would have thought you were just trying to start a fight. William Wallace, the Scottish military leader depicted in the film had everything a guy could want: charisma, character, convictions, and courage, just to name a few of his qualities that made him a favorite in the 1990’s evangelical male subculture.

I wasn’t necessarily immersed in the teachings of books like Wild at Heart or the more aggressive pastors who relied on military metaphors for their messages, but I had certainly spent enough time in the evangelical subculture to get the message: real men are tough fighters who fight for things.

Men fight for their marriages.

Men fight for their children.

Men fight for their communities.

Men fight for their country when necessary.

The literature surrounding evangelical men relied heavily on military or sports metaphors in order to illustrate the struggles, battles, and competitions that men face every day. Lust was every man’s battle. The spiritually equipped wore the full armor of God (which was actually all defensive in nature, but still, it had the right ring of “battle).

While evangelical men were immersed in militaristic fighting metaphors that turned Braveheart into our narrative of choice, there’s been a notable shift among evangelical men today. In an interview on the Liturgist podcast, Richard Rohr shared that one of his largest segments of readers are these evangelical young men.

Richard Rohr is about as far away from William Wallace as you can get. This peaceful, cheerfully celibate Franciscan Friar speaks about holding tensions, finding a third way, and responding to even our worst enemies with compassion and prayer. Rohr challenges us to move beyond dualistic thinking that pits the world into black and white sides or categories. If you stick with his daily newsletter long enough, you’ll start to catch on to his contemplative, peacemaking vibe.

If you’ve read Rohr’s books such as Falling Upward and Immortal Diamond, you’ll know that he associates dualistic thinking with our younger years. Youth need to think this way as they sort the world into black and white, right and wrong. However, he also challenges us to move beyond that reductive mindset as we age so that we can see the world with greater compassion and unity in light of the love and mercy of God.

If Richard Rohr ever used a military metaphor, I can only presume it would illustrate how to be a bad soldier.

While I can’t draw a straight line between the popularity of Braveheart for evangelical young men in the 1990’s and Rohr’s popularity among the same cohort roughly 20 years later, I have a theory that Rohr appeals to many evangelical men who are weary of fighting, proving themselves, and splitting a gray world into black and white sides. While, I’ve always been more disposed toward peacemaking in the first place, I’ve noticed that the tough talk for evangelical men that I uneasily accepted in the 1990’s just doesn’t work for me or for many of the men I know. We know that loving God and loving one another doesn’t require learning to fight for things, and we can actually hold ourselves back by sorting life into sides we are for or against as we strive to prove ourselves worthy with flawless character.

Even among the men I know who hunt, lift weights, or dominate in sports, there’s a greater desire to find unity, health, and compassion in their Christian commitments. They’re interested in building rather than fighting. They want to know how Jesus can help them love others rather than preparing for the next battle against the latest enemy. The pursuit of contemplative prayer resonates with this group because this practice helps us discover that God has already accepted us and is already present. That is a far cry from proving ourselves as men, and it’s enough to make guys like me want to cry.

I recognize that these sketches aren’t true for every evangelical man I know who grew up in the 1990’s. However, I suspect there’s a sizeable number of evangelical men today who would much rather skip William Wallace hacking English soldiers to death.

It’s tempting to say that Rohr is the anti-Wallace, but then that would venture into the dualistic thinking he avoids. The truth is that deep down in our hearts, every man wants to belong and to be accepted. God’s love is more than able to meet that need. We’re all wired differently, so we may receive that message in different ways. If anything, Richard Rohr encourages us to wipe off the blue face paint, lay our weapons down, and dare to believe that God’s love is the freedom we don’t have to fight for.

Image Source

The Problem with Prayer Isn’t Convincing God to Show Up

Posted on August 3, 2016February 14, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

church-pew

“What is your greatest struggle with prayer?” That’s the question I’ve asked hundreds upon hundreds of people, and a striking majority have replied with the exact same struggle.

DISTRACTION

We all love the idea of prayer. Many of us have had positive experiences with prayer. We generally want to pray more. Once we sit down to pray, our minds spin out of control with thoughts of anything but prayer.

Our minds wander, worries assault our peace, and any hope of focus dissipates. Perhaps we turn to making requests or sharing thankfulness to God, which are good things, but any kind of peaceful contemplation, waiting on God in silence, or listening for God to speak appears to be a hopeless endeavor with so many ideas, voices, and fears screaming into our minds.

I’ve often spoke of prayer in terms of God showing up, as if I’m doing my job 100% perfect and any problems with prayer are on God’s end. In my experience, that’s a pretty fast way to turn into an atheist. If you do your part and you don’t sense God’s presence while praying, then clearly the problem is coming from God, right?

Not quite.

The Christian contemplative prayer tradition offers a corrective we need: God is always present. God loves us. The awareness and presence required is our own for prayer. Note that Jesus often speaks in the Gospels of people “coming” to him. He has issued the invitation to us. The problem isn’t on God’s end. Remember, in the Prodigal son story, the father is waiting for the son’s return and was so eager to welcome his lost son that he ran out to meet him.

God is here for us when we pray, and so we need to figure out where distractions and other obstacles in prayer come from and how we can move beyond them. How can distracted people make themselves present for a loving God?

Here are a few thoughts on moving beyond distraction in order to pray based on my experiences:

We Don’t Know We’re Distracted

Until I confronted my distractions, I didn’t know that I was distracted in the first place. Until we stop to face what’s running through our minds, the constant thinking and worrying of each day continues unchecked. Too many Christians have resisted mindfulness practices because they fear connections with eastern religions, but mindfulness practices can be traced right back to the desert fathers and mothers of the church. Even secular psychology praises the benefits of simply becoming aware of what’s on your mind and becoming present in the moment.

It’s nearly impossible to sit down to pray with any kind of focus if you haven’t first taken stock of what’s on your mind. This is why the Ignatian Examen is so incredibly helpful. We can take stock of the highs and lows of our days, confront our worries, and enter into prayer by preemptively facing the very thoughts that could distract us.

This is a process. Richard Rohr suggests that the first year of practicing contemplative prayer largely deals with the junk in our minds. We spend so much time reliving our regrets and fearing the future that we are untrained in the practice of seeking God in the present.

We Don’t Know Where to Begin with Prayer

Even if we can face our distractions and bring our troubled thoughts to God, there’s still the matter of where to begin. Should we make requests, offer thanksgiving and praise, or sit in silence? These are all practices that we can use, but for those of us struggling with anxiety about God actually showing up in prayer, the best way forward for a season may be the path of silence.

We should certainly speak our minds to God, but if we don’t have the assurance of God’s loving presence right from the start, silence may save us from trying to coerce God to show up. God is already present when we pray, but it’s so easy to start saying things that suggest otherwise.

Centering prayer teaches us to calm our anxious minds by asking the Spirit to guide us to a “prayer word” or phrase that we can use to quiet ourselves before God so that we can wait patiently on the Lord. Beginning with this simple word can help us grab onto something as a starting point so that we can return to God in silence again and again as our minds wander.

We Have Expectations

When I have spoken of God showing up, I’ve also had fairly specific expectations of feeling or knowing God in some particular way. I know that plenty of people have had experiences of God, while others with an indisputable commitment to God more or less sit in silence for most of their prayer time. Our expectations for prayer can trap us and alienate us from God.

Ironically, the contemplative writers of the church assure us that we need to set our expectations far lower for prayer. Seeking God in the first place is prayer. Sitting in silence before God is prayer. God honors even our intentions as we struggle to focus. These are the teachings of the masters of contemplative prayer. Rather than pushing us to reach some particularly high goal, they tell us that our beginning struggles are holy offerings to God, and we can trust that God will continue to guide us forward.

Most importantly, we pray in order to become present for God. We “experience” God on God’s own terms, and so any expectations for prayer can be harmful. I have longed for mystical encounters and experiences, but the contemplatives of the church remind us that this can be dangerous. Seeking an encounter with God is not the same thing as seeking God. This desire highlights my insecurity and perhaps even my pride.

We Make Comparisons

While we must learn from the guidance of spiritual directors, authors, and practitioners who have gone before us, we also have to seek God for ourselves and take what is given to us without envying the experiences of others. This has been my pitfall for years. I have looked at the ways other people experienced God and longed to imitate them.

We are always looking for ways to validate ourselves, and while prayer can become the answer to that search, we dare not misuse it. Prayer helps us see how deeply God loves and accepts us, but we can only receive that gift in the timing and manner that God chooses. I have seen over and over again that God chooses different timing and a different manner for each person, even if there are some general trends and patterns that can be observed.

We Don’t Know What Prayer Should Look Like

Here is the good news that you need to know about prayer: Struggling with distraction during prayer is 100% normal, and there is hope. The contemplative prayer tradition dates back to the earliest days of the church, even pre-dating the canon of scripture, and it has been preserved throughout the centuries as one way to move beyond distraction and to become present for God.

The bad news is that overcoming distraction will take quite a bit of work. We even have to face the worries and fears that come up as we attempt prayer.

The author of the Cloud of Unknowing passed along this ancient Christian prayer tradition in his simple manual for novice monks, and he spends a significant amount of time addressing the ways that our thoughts invade our prayer much like visitors who barge into our homes repeatedly. By reciting a prayer word, phrase (such as a scripture verse) or returning to an intention for your prayer time, you can gently move these distractions out of your mind over and over and over again.

For about the first six months of really exploring silence and contemplation, my mind was a complete mess. My thoughts flew all over the place. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I had to take my son for a walk every day in order for him to nap, and I suspected that my busy mind was extremely unhealthy. Over time, I experienced greater peace and freedom, recognizing uneasiness and distractions for what they were and gradually building a capacity to be still before God.

I like to say that I “practice” contemplative prayer because I still feel very much like a beginner and I don’t expect to get it perfect—not that getting it “perfect” should ever be the goal! We enter into contemplative prayer as equals who are all equally loved by God and who all commit to practice.

So we pray, we struggle, and we continue to practice.

My Most Difficult Shift Toward Healthy Religion

Posted on June 21, 2016October 29, 2018 by Ed Cyzewski

2015-04-Life-of-Pix-free-stock-photos-wall-walking-man-industrial-leeroy.jpg

When I finally understood the impact of unhealthy religious beliefs and practices in my life, I don’t think I can quite put into words the joy and freedom that I experienced. It was one epiphany after another where God wasn’t as evil and monstrous as I’d been lead to believe. My beliefs weren’t as fragile as I’d been taught.

Rather than watering down the truth or picking and choosing my truth arbitrarily, I learned to begin taking in the full, mysterious witness of the Christian faith where God is just and holy, but God is also merciful, loving, and compassionate.

If only I’d expended the same effort to experience the love of God as I’d invested in fearing his judgment and holiness.

It’s as if a whole segment of Christianity has become so fearful of God’s judgment that we’ve become fixated on it. We dare not spend too much time talking about God’s love, mercy, or compassion, even if the Psalms, prophets, and writings of the apostles all but hit us over the head with these themes about God’s love and patience.

If we start to think God is soft or easy on us, we could start sinning, and then who knows what would happen next.

Actually, we’ve been told what to expect next: judgment.

Is it any wonder that people who spend so much time beholding and fearing the judgment of God feel an irresistible pull toward judgment of others as well? We become what we worship, that’s what the Psalms and prophets tell us in particular, and if we fail to see how God’s love coexists with his holiness and justice, then we end up with a God of judgment and we can’t help but follow that lead.

Seeking the full witness of scripture about the love, mercy, and compassion of God for us has completely changed how I pray and practice holiness. Rather than acting out of a fear of judgment, I’m working on accepting the loving embrace of God for prodigals who cross the line and stuffy judgmental sons who walk the line. The contemplative prayer tradition of the church tells us over and over again that it’s the present love of God that transforms us, not a constant fear of his judgment.

As much as I have enjoyed this shift toward “healthy religion,” as Richard Rohr would call it (rather than creating a false dichotomy between Jesus and religion), the most difficult step for me has been to respond with mercy, love, and compassion toward those who are still under the sway of an angry, judgmental God who demands holiness. As I step toward mystery and contemplation, I struggle to respond with grace and compassion toward those who are still citing chapter and verse with angry zeal, defending boundaries, and attempting to define who is in and who is out.

I’m grateful in part for this struggle. I need these reminders of how far I need to go. You’d think that I should know by now that having the right information about the love of God isn’t the same thing as living in that love daily and being transformed by it.

When someone takes a swing at my beliefs or practices, I still feel the urge to judge, excommunicate, or strike back. I still want to repay snark with snark, sarcasm with better sarcasm. And it’s killing me sometimes because I love sarcasm so much.

Most days I can only know on an intellectual level that the people who embody the judgment, boundary-defending side of Christianity are in bondage to a flawed perception of God. And the more that I want to respond in kind, the more I’m in bondage to that flawed perception as well. At the very least, if I struggle to respond with compassion and mercy, then I’m not doing a good job of experiencing God’s mercy and compassion for myself.

It’s hard to learn to shut up and to take a shot on the chin. I’ve invested so much time (and money!) in studying theology. It’s ironic that I want to put my hard-earned training into use to strike back at someone, but the truth is that I need nothing more than to shut up and return to the present love of God.

It shouldn’t be this hard to rest in the present love of God. The more I struggle with this, the more I have to question what I want out of life. Do I want to be justified? Do I want people to respect me? Do I want people to think I’m clever?

It sure doesn’t sound all that clever or unique to say that I am loved and you are loved deeply, perfectly, and constantly. That’s what Christians have been saying for centuries. It’s not flashy, snarky, or catchy for a blog headline. It won’t win a theology debate. It will actually look like a surrender.

Surrender. That’s the word that I’m learning to accept. If I am going to surrender to the love of God, it also means surrendering in every other competition, debate, and desire. I can’t win. I can’t reach what I think I want.

Jesus taught us what it means to surrender and to “win” by “losing.” He modeled this kind of surrender in the most extreme of circumstances, entrusting himself to the love of God even to the point of trusting in resurrection.

Can I let God’s love so transform me that I can even show his love, mercy, and compassion to those who have none for me?

Can I surrender to the point that I’ll let my aspirations for my reputation perish? Perhaps one day I’ll trust God to raise up my true self from the ashes, refined and secure in his love that conquers all.

Creating a Contemplative-Friendly Smartphone to Find Time to Pray

Posted on June 13, 2016November 26, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

iphone-for-prayer

The best step I have ever taken for my spiritual health, personal sanity, and relationships has been removing Facebook from my iPhone. The second best step has been imagining ways I can turn my phone into a prompt for prayer.

I think we all know what happens when we’re carrying a phone around. I keep checking and checking and checking it. Every time there’s a free moment, the phone comes out and I scroll through whatever app I can find. It’s an impulse or habit for many of us by now. When I had email and three or four social media accounts to flip through, I could waste a ton of time on my phone.

Our attachment to our phones is becoming legendary. People experience anxiety apart from their phones to the point that those trying to break their attachment can buy fake phones that are sized and weighted like real ones. We have anxiety complexes over dead batteries. We check our phones the first thing in the morning and right before going to bed.

Although I am far from the most virtuous or disciplined person with my phone, I decided to try using my phone as a prompt to pray and to even lead me toward contemplative prayer. I’ve written about this in my newsletter, but now that I’ve given it a shot for a longer stretch of time, I finally feel able to publicly offer a few thoughts on what has worked.

What I Don’t Use

I tried using podcast prayer apps, but I don’t really have the time to dive into podcasts all that often, and lately I prize silence more than anything else. If I have a quiet moment, I’m not going to put something on!

Having said that, I did use Pray as You Go for a season and really benefited from it. It’s especialy ideal for commuters. Others have strongly recommended the Abide app. If contemplative prayer is new or intimidating to you, a podcast like Pray as You Go may help you take steps toward reflecting on scripture and making time to be still.

I have also used the Jesuits app on and off again. It offers some simple Examen questions, a scripture reading, and a brief reflection. It’s also on both Android and Apple.

My Essential Smartphone Contemplation Plan

Most importantly, I wanted for my iPhone set up to make prayer or reading deeper articles easier and more or less automatic. My home screen includes the apps for the Examine, Pocket, the Clock, and Safari (the Mac internet browser), which are my main sources of smartphone-based contemplation.

Safari always has the page for the Divine Hours at Vineyard Ann Arbor loaded. I often access the Divine Hours in the morning at the very least or during a break at work when I take a little stretch break when I remember to set my Pomodoro timer. The Divine Hours offer small and large passages of scripture and prayers that you can read, meditate on, or recite throughout the day.

The Examine app remains one of my most valued apps. By offering a series of prompts about what’s encouraging or discouraging from my day, I can practice the Ignatian Examen once or twice a day in order to take stock of my soul and to better direct my prayers. Most importantly, the Examen helps me to become aware of when I need to remain silent and become more present for God’s love.

While the Clock is a standard, ho hum app that I suppose most people may not even consider using, I use the timer all of the time for centering prayer. I mean, who can judge when 20 minutes have passed? I just set the timer and leave it alone while I sit and either focus on breathing quietly, praying the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner), or centering on a “sacred word.”

As for reading contemplative materials, I keep my Pocket app on my home screen in order to read articles that I’ve saved throughout the day. Pocket has a really clean interface that makes it easy to read without distraction. I save articles all day, so it’s ideal to have a place where I can access them when I have a moment. I also subscribe to the daily email from Richard Rohr, which has been a real lifeline some days.

In fact, I have relied so deeply on Rohr’s emails that I set up my own Contemplative Writer website that offers daily or weekly subscription options that send contemplative scripture and articles to subscribers. There’s the daily option to sign up to receive new posts in your inbox or you can sign up for the weekly contemplative prayer email.

What I Hide or Don’t Have on My Phone

As I mentioned already, I don’t have Facebook on my iPhone. I don’t have Messenger, Twitter, or Hootsuite either. I manage all of that on my computer for the most part.

I do use Instagram on my phone, but I do my best to hide that way in the back and mostly manage it through the Later app, which has been a true lifesaver when combined with Canva.

My data plan with Consumer Cellular is fairly limited, and I have data turned off for almost everything except for email, maps, and Safari, primarily so I can access Rohr’s emails and the Divine Hours on the go. Everything else, including Instagram and the NHL app, have data turned off.

Most importantly, my goal all along has been to train myself to pray before I do anything else. That’s a challenge most days when work time is limited, and it’s especially hard as our family transitions to a new town. However, there’s no denying that I immediately feel a bit of guilt if I start answering emails before reading the Morning Office or reading Rohr’s email.

I’m sure this little contemplative smartphone plan will evolve in the years to come, but for now, I’m at least a little more likely to pray and a lot less likely to turn to my phone for idle distraction when I have a few free minutes. In fact, I’ve often pulled my phone out, realized I don’t expect any urgent emails or need to open any apps, and just put it away. I’m far more aware of the ways that my smartphone becomes a distraction and barrier, even if I know there is always a lot of room for growth.

Who knows, maybe a year from now I’ll just trash all of these ideas, delete my social media accounts, and buy a flip phone.

Reconnect with Soul Care

I’ll be sharing more about these ideas in my newsletter and in my upcoming book, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction (releasing June 2, 2020).

Sign up here

Pre-Order Reconnect Today

Evangelicals Need to Sit in a Room and Say Nothing for a Long Time

Posted on June 7, 2016February 11, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

chair-prayer

I solve most of the world’s problems right before I go to bed. It’s true. Ask my wife. I have so many amazing ideas, and she gets to hear all of them right before she falls asleep.

I recently solved the central problem with my evangelical tribe.

You know us, we’re the people who claim to have the “good news” and then we basically spend a lot of time worrying about being damned to hell, praying enough, proving ourselves worthy of God, proving we hold “sound” doctrines, defending those sound doctrines from atheists and “liberals,” fearing the fiery destruction of the world, and jumping into the political fray as if the death of America is the same thing as the death of God.

Evangelicals are anxious. We are anxious people who need to sit in a room and say nothing for a long time.

We fill concert venues with blaring worship music and shout, “Come Lord, Come! Come! COME!!!!”

We study, study, study the Bible.

We serve and minister and volunteer.

And then? The crash. So many of us crash and burn with our anxious, hard-working faith. I gave myself to all of this. I’m an evangelical who studied, served, worked, and defended, and all I got was a lousy crisis of faith. Almost every evangelical I know has had a crisis of faith in their 20’s or 30’s. Those who haven’t had a crisis of faith yet are the ones who could really use it the most.

Sure, we trust that Jesus has saved us by faith and grace, not by our own merits. But then we expend SO MUCH energy working and worrying in order to prove that profession is true. We struggle with holy living. We wonder if the defenses for the Bible will be enough to shore up faltering faith. And most importantly, we lose our ever-loving minds because God feels so distant and silent.

So we study harder, we worship with even more passion than the trademarked PASSION events, and we plead and beg with God: “Please show up. Please tell me that you’re real. Please tell me that the years of guilt, shame, repression, and fear were worth something.” Something has to give.

Some snap out of that phase, and realize that the game is over. God isn’t real. How could he be? What God would want people to live with such fear, misery, and uncertainty?

Others harbor those doubts, fears, and illusions, but they stick with the practice of their religion. Jesus matters so much to them. They want the story to be true. They want to believe that God is somehow involved in the world, but they simply can’t figure out how to find that God. They settle for mystery, but end up living without any search for or experience of God.

There’s another option that takes the beliefs and, don’t miss this word, practices of historic Christianity seriously. In fact, the problem that plagues evangelicals today may best be described as a selective amnesia. We have fought tooth and nail to uphold the scriptures and doctrines that the early church passed on to us, but we couldn’t give a flying fig (that’s an evangelical swear word) about the practices of the early church.

There is a stream of Christianity that takes the foundational teachings of our faith seriously—so seriously that they are viewed as givens—without devoting our entire lives to defending them from skeptics. This is the contemplative stream that pre-dates the canon of scripture. This stream has been practiced in quiet and solitude, as well as in cities and small towns. It has driven some to serve actively and it has driven others deeper into the desert. Ironically, those who traveled the furthest into the desert were eagerly sought out by many from the cities. These desert contemplatives exercised tremendous influence and their words remain powerful, relevant, and formative until this day.

The contemplative stream of Christianity tells us to sit in a room by ourselves and to be quiet for a long time. It challenges evangelicals to consider how much we’ve become like the ecstatic prophets of Baal who shout and dance and make a tremendous scene before an unseen god while Elijah watches with quiet confidence.

Evangelicals, we have a lot of good things going for us, but underneath all of our media empires that promise to defend us from the big bad world, our universities that continue edging toward sheltered fundamentalism, our large churches packed with programs and offices (not with prayer chapels), and our deeply flawed hero-worship and business-influenced leadership culture, there is a deep need for the loving search for God. By and large, we are not known as people who love.

I know that “love” is my deepest struggle. How do we generate love for God? How do we love people?

If Jesus’ two most important commands are to love God and to love my neighbors, if Paul said everything he does is “shit” (that’s only a translation of a Greek swear word, so we’re cool) without love, and if the apostle John used love as the only measure that matters, then our disconnect from love has to be addressed.

So far as I can tell, I have found love so difficult because I have been cut off from the source of love. This brings us back to our quiet room where evangelicals need to sit and say nothing for a long time.

The contemplative stream echoes the Psalms that tell us to wait on the Lord, to wait in silence.

For being people who love the Bible, cherish the Bible, defend the Bible, and who attack people who don’t love, cherish, or defend the Bible as much as us, evangelicals do a pretty terrible job of actually believing what the Bible says about God’s love.

I know this first hand because the foundational teachings of contemplative prayer are two things that are both very true in the Bible and very hard for evangelicals to believe:

God is here.
God loves you.

Evangelicals could spend years digging up scripture verses to disprove the very two things that we have longed to know all of our lives. This is why we need to sit in a room all by ourselves and say nothing for a long time.

We need to make a space to become aware of God and of God’s love. This isn’t necessarily a space for epiphanies or visions or amazing spiritual encounters. In fact, the contemplatives warn us that desiring spiritual encounters or amazing visions could become quite dangerous, as they can be self-serving and manipulative toward God. We begin to crave validation and experience over choosing to rest in the truths that God is here and God loves us.

This is a far cry from the anxious, hard-working evangelical subculture. Evangelicals don’t have language for a dark night of the soul. We can only think of ways to shine “light” into a dark night of the soul. When we are given the option of silence before God, we are quick to quote scripture and to begin another freestyle, “Lord we just…” prayer.

We desperately need silence. We need to learn what it means to abide. We need to learn what it feels like to finally be still before God for a long time.

This is the path we walk by faith. This will take all of the faith that we can muster.

I have taken a long, winding path into contemplative practices. They were the only things I could hold onto when my evangelical faith crashed and burned. I spent years worrying that they didn’t work, that God wasn’t real, or that I had somehow alienated myself from God. I freaked out because nothing was happening. I have since learned that this is by and large the point.

People who abide and live by faith don’t need God to constantly poke them in order to prove that he’s real. It took years of learning to search for God before realizing that I’d already been found. I couldn’t make God any more present. I couldn’t plead with God to be with me more than he already is. I couldn’t say anything to make God love me more. I couldn’t add any spiritual practices that would change the way God loves me.

I am loved and you are loved right now. This is the deep, abiding mystery of our faith. This is a truth that can revolutionize our lives.

This love of God is so deep and unfathomably wonderful that the only appropriate response is to sit in a room and say nothing for a long, long time until we accept that God is here and God loves us.