how to pray

I Tried Quiet Prayer Once and It Didn’t Work

Posted on October 6, 2015January 18, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

How many things in life work great the first time around?

Is there anyone who can just pick up a worthwhile discipline or skill after reading a book and trying it once?

Can you learn to paint, knit, sew, or cook with one shot?

Can you remember the first time you tried to ride a bike? I was taking spills all over the school yard for weeks until I caught on and learned how to balance myself. I eventually spent hours riding down a small hill that would have been terrifying at first.

This past summer I started running regularly. I had been somewhat active in the winter by taking the occasional long walk, but running was a different animal altogether.

I huffed and puffed, forcing my aching legs to keep going a little further before taking a walking break. My runs were something like 60% slogging along and 40% walking at first. I eventually started to run a little bit more evenly and started eliminating the walking breaks.

At a certain point around the middle of the summer, I realized that the first 25% of the run will just be miserable. I’ll start to find my stride about the mid-way point, and then the last 25% will require a bit of intention to keep my pace.

Finally, this September, I started to feel strong and confident during my runs. I didn’t even need headphones in order to play distracting music. Sure, the first bit of the run was still hard, and I had to be intentional about pushing myself to finish strong, but I finally reached a point where I felt strong and confident enough to run at a steady pace without slowing for a break.

If I had stopped running after the first day or even the first month, I would have told you that running is difficult and miserable and no one should ever try it.

If I stopped running today, I would genuinely miss it. It has proven an important way to start my day, and I have seen the benefits in my mental and physical health.

Over the past year, I’ve also taken my exploration of Christian prayer into a deeper pursuit of silence, waiting on God and letting God show up in whatever way God wants. There have been times when I’ve just watched my mind unwind with worry and rambling ideas. Other times I have experienced genuine peace and awareness of God’s love.

Then again, there are plenty of times when it has just felt like I sat by myself for 20 minutes repeating a word to myself like “beloved” or “peace.”

I have long practiced short stretches of silent prayer, say for about five minutes, at the end of my daily Examen. I’ve also meditated on scripture. This pursuit of God through silence and waiting is really, really biblical since the Psalms constantly tell us to wait on the Lord. However, I feel like I’ve been trained to demand.

I’m a recovering anxious American evangelical who loves quick fixes and spiritual growth charts.

Silent prayer feels like: I want my gold star for praying, Jesus. You’ve got 20 minutes to pay up…

This journey into silence is not easy for me. My mind is rowdy and difficult to tame.

I find myself slipping back into bad habits, comparing myself to others and wanting what God hasn’t given to me. Contentment and faith gives way to envy, greed, and discouragement as I look at all of the other people who appear to have it together.

I keep reminding myself of that runner who huffed and puffed along the bike path a few months ago who could barely string together 20 minutes of sustained running. That guy felt so weak and pathetic. He didn’t see how things could get better.

Honestly? I never saw things get better. The improvement in my running was so gradual that I couldn’t see it happen. I couldn’t control it.

My growth as a writer was like that too. Suddenly, one day I started writing markedly better manuscripts compared to the drivel I used to submit to my editor. Yes, there are always revisions, but the process is less painful.

I’ll be the first to tell you that prayer isn’t quite as difficult as it used to be. I can now sit for twenty minutes in a row with a relatively focused mind. Sometimes I sense God moving, and sometimes my mind does all of the heavy lifting.

It’s a long-term process that you can’t plug into to your life for predictable results every time. Prayer isn’t a life hack or commodity that you can install in your smart phone for an instant solution to a problem.

There’s a whole industry that promises quick, cheap, simple serenity or spiritual enlightenment. Just read the book, try something for five minutes a day for a week, or install an app in your phone, and you’ll make amazing strides in your spiritual life!!!

God’s love is a free gift that we can never earn, but each day feels like a knock down, drag out struggle to find it and experience it. My life is so full, my mind moving so fast that it’s hard to slow things down for God to settle in.

I can’t track my progress. I don’t get stickers every time something good happens while I pray.

But it sure seems like any kind of meaningful development in a lasting practice calls for this kind of dogged, determined pursuit for what matters the most.

It’s galling for the American in me to come to terms with a lifelong approach to discipleship, what Eugene Peterson called a long obedience in the same direction. Each day I’m training myself to believe that I am loved by God and that this love can gradually change me into the kind of person who is also able to extend a kind, gracious, patient love to people who would rather just grab the quick fix.

This is the first time I’ve ever practiced such intense, expectant waiting. It’s no wonder that I feel like I’m not very good at it yet.

Rohr for Writers: Your Downfall Can Lead to Resurrection

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

“If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A ‘perfect’ person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.”

Falling Upward

There’s a rule that many writers and artists follow: some of your best work will come out of your deepest pain. If I quoted every time I’ve heard that at a writing conference or read books about this, I would just have a blog post full of quotes from other people.

So much of what we crave in our lives comes by first confronting our pain, failures, and struggles.

If you want intimacy with someone else, it will be forged by facing both relational and external struggles together.

If you want to excel at writing, you need to at least face your lowest points in life, your failures, your fears, and your anxieties. This is where some of your most authentic experiences can be found.

By the same token, if you want to grow in prayer, you also need to bring your sins, shame, and deficiencies to God. These are the raw materials of spirituality because they reveal all of the false commitments, false gods, and false identities that keep us from God and each other.

Our pain and failures aren’t just enshrined as a monument to our misery. They are transformed in the act of confrontation. Most importantly, we are transformed as well. In fact, if you want to reach any kind of lasting change that could make a difference in your own life or in the life of anyone else, you need to start here.

No matter what else you stick in front of failure, pain, or fear, these things will keep eating away at that false veneer.

No matter how much we force ourselves to get over it and to move on, we’ll continue limping until the source of the injury is healed.

We won’t experience relief and wholeness until our pain and struggles are transformed. You can’t find a way to go around this, you can’t make up enough rules to keep you safe, and you can’t teach yourself into becoming better or healed.

We’ll have the most to offer others, either through our prayers or our writing if we prioritize the fearless uncovering of our pain before God and on the page as we write. We don’t have to shout our imperfections in the street for all to hear or post them on our blogs for all to read—in fact, please don’t do either of those things!

This is the deeper soul work that takes place in quiet, secret places.

This is the foundation for our lives that determines the power of our art, the potency of our prayers, and sturdiness of our relationships.

Our pain and our struggles are most certainly an affliction in many ways, but that doesn’t mean we should run from them. Our greatest healing, creative work, and ministry to others will come through these very things that we had once seen as our downfall. If we bring the causes of our downfalls to God, we’ll find that they’re the very things that lead us to resurrection.

For a bit more about this topic, check out my book:

Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together

Rohr for Writers: Writers Are Driven from Within

Posted on April 6, 2015April 4, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

“The good news of incarnational religion, a Spirit-based mortality, is that you are not motivated by outside reward or punishment but actually by looking out from inside the Mystery yourself. So carrots are neither needed nor helpful. ‘It is God, who for his own loving purpose, puts both the will and the action into you’ (Philippians 2:13). It is not our rule-following behavior but our actual identity that needs to be radically changed… You do things because they are true, not because you have to or you are afraid of punishment.”
– Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond pp. 85-86

It’s common for writers to talk about “finding” something to write about or “looking” for writing topics. We get the sense at times that we are chasing ideas that are hiding somewhere, and at times we can begin to despair that we’ll ever track them down.

Just as Richard Rohr suggests that our spirituality should originate within ourselves as we rest in God’s indwelling Spirit, I believe that writing can spring up in a similar way. As we ground ourselves in the present love of Christ and tune into what he’s saying to us, we’ll find wisdom and direction for our lives and even for our writing.

This changes us from religious people who strive and think our way to God and turns us into spiritual people who rest in God and allow God to guide us. You could say we’re cutting to the chase here, and that really is the beauty of the Gospel message after all. What we strive to accomplish on our own has already been done in us. We just need to receive it and live in it.

However, if anything takes work in the spiritual life, it’s clearing out space in our schedules and in our minds for this spiritual reality to take hold. The indwelling Spirit is all over the New Testament scriptures, and yet, how often have I tried to move forward with God’s work in my own strength and wisdom?

Perhaps you’re weary, uninspired, or just plain fearful about the direction of your life or your writing work in particular.

The Good News for you is that God is already in this with you. The Spirit is present. Your work is to rest in the Spirit of God, to trust that the words of Christ are true for YOU. There aren’t any footnotes in the words of Jesus with special clauses that rule you out.

If you can find peace in the presence of the Spirit here and now, you’ll be able to write from a healthier place of security and direction. You’ll know that first and foremost, God is in and with you, and you’ll find greater creative freedom to explore the directions that God places on your heart.

Criticism won’t sting in the same way if you’re writing out of God’s leading. Approval won’t carry the same weight. Anxiety and fear will gradually lose their power.

You’ll have freedom to seek the truth, and when you find it, you’ll have the freedom and peace you need to write about it. And when you are finished writing, you will have the comfort of knowing that writing is only a small part of the awesome mystery of God dwelling among us.

Read more about prayer and writing in my book:

Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together

Guest Post for Micha Boyett: How The Examen Empowers Us to Pray and Write

Posted on March 13, 2015March 12, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

I’m guest posting at Micha Boyett’s blog this week to talk about prayer and writing, which is pretty much right in her wheelhouse. I met Micha back in 2012, and was totally blown away by the pitch for her (then) upcoming book Found (as of this moment, it’s $3 on Kindle!). If you haven’t read it yet, I think quite a few of us will really relate this book’s stories about her struggles to pray while parenting little ones. I’m honored to write at her blog about the Examen and how it has transformed both my prayer and writing:

When I try to pray, I often find that my anxious thoughts get in the way.

When I try to write, I often find that I can’t form a single thought.

It feels like feast or famine most days.

How can I face my thoughts for prayerful contemplation without getting swept up in anxiety and worst-case scenarios?

How can I hang on to a few thoughts that are worth exploring through writing before the blank page wins?

Thankfully I’ve found that one practice can help with both problems. The Examen, developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, offers a lifeline to stressed out, over-thinkers like me, while coincidentally prompting writers to address what matters most.

Praying with the Examen

Ignatius believed the Examen was a gift given directly from God. After spending a significant time in prayer, he found that prayer could move forward best with this time of reflection and meditation.

The Examen is set apart from run of the mill self-reflection right from the start by its first step: Awareness of God’s Presence. We don’t face the most challenging parts of our lives alone. God is with us as we begin the Examen, and as we move forward into it, that awareness will only grow. In fact, the Examen encourages us to invite God into our days and our times of reflection.

The genius of the Examen is the way it stops the roller coaster of worry and distraction when I begin praying, while still offering a path forward. It provides an orderly, prayerful direction to my thoughts so that I can honestly face what I’m truly thinking without feeling restrained.

Read the Rest at Micha Boyett’s Blog.

Guest Post for Michelle DeRusha: Where Do We Start with Prayer?

Posted on March 12, 2015March 11, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

I’m guest posting this week for my friend Michelle DeRusha, the author of the fantastic books Spiritual Misfit and 50 Women Every Christian Should Know. I’m sharing a guest post based on my new book Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together. While I suggest in my book that prayer practices can help us write, we first need to sort out where we’ll begin with prayer:

One of my most intense moments in prayer started on a whim.

I sat down to pray in our living room one morning, and for some reason my mind kept venturing back to the moments of my deepest shame.

The relationships I’d messed up in college.

The many stupid things I said during our first year of marriage.

The time (times?) I placed unreasonable expectations on a good friend.

As I squirmed and fretted over my shame, I had a “revolutionary” thought: “What if I just prayed as if God knew all about this stuff already?”

We Bring Our Vulnerabilities to Prayer

I’m not breaking new ground when I say that we can’t hide anything from God or that we don’t have to be perfect in order to approach God. That’s pretty much covered from most pulpits on Sunday morning.

Actually living as if we have nothing to hide and God still loves us is quite another matter.

Read the Rest at Michelle DeRusha’s Blog.

Releasing My New Book: Growth in Prayer and Writing Starts in the Same Place

Posted on March 11, 2015March 7, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

Today I’m releasing my latest book, Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together. This book combines the questions: “How do I find more time to pray?” and “How can I improve as a writer?” What if you could grow in both prayer and writing at the same time? What if the time you invested in writing could help you pray, and the time you invested in prayer could help you write? Here is part of the opening chapter that begins to answer those questions:

Every time you bow your head in prayer, open up a blank document on your computer, or flip open a journal page to write, you’re taking a leap of faith. Writers choose to believe they can string together another series of sentences that will speak to the needs of readers somewhere. When people pray, they’re choosing to believe there’s a good, loving God reaching out to us, listening to our prayers, and meeting with us.

We have faith that the discipline of writing will pay off. If we keep working at it, keep practicing, keep asking for feedback, keep revising, and keep publishing our work wherever possible, we’ll get better, reach more readers, and take meaningful steps forward. If we face the most challenging and vulnerable parts of our lives, we have faith that we’ll find words that offer clarity and perspective. If we put our words in front of readers, we have faith that some will reply, “Yes! Me too!” If we take the time to continually examine ourselves and care for ourselves, we have faith that the words will continue to come together year in, year out, whatever life throws at us.

We have faith that the practices of silence, praying with scripture, or reciting the prayers passed on to us will bear fruit over time. If we continue to fight through our fears and anxieties in order to sit in silence, we trust that God can meet us, even if it leads to results we aren’t expecting or doesn’t even result in quantifiable progress.

If we continue to cultivate habits of stillness and quiet throughout the day, we have faith that God can meet us and will speak even at moments when we aren’t expecting to hear anything. If we continue to wait on God, we have faith that periods of silence don’t indicate God has abandoned us.

We can even have faith that growing in one practice could lead to growth in the other.

Every time I grow as a writer, my prayer time receives direction.

Every time I grow in my prayer time, my writing has increased clarity.

Writing and prayer stand well enough on their own, but many of the disciplines that help you write better will also help you pray better and vise versa. This wasn’t something I planned out. I never set out to find connections between the two. Rather, I spend significant parts of each day writing and praying, and at a certain point I started to notice how the two converged.

As I prayed, my writing started to shift and grow. Both the disciplines of prayer and the lessons I learned transferred over to my writing, and my writing furthered my personal reflection and helped foster the habits and disciplines I’d been cultivating while praying. When prayer and writing finally started working together in my life, I began to take significant steps forward in both simultaneously.

I suspect that both prayer and writing can offer a lot of benefits by themselves. I certainly don’t think you have to do them together. However, if you’re already inclined to both write and pray, you may as well figure out how they can help each other. And if you’re experienced in one, you may find opportunities for personal or spiritual growth by trying out the other. I would even go so far as saying it like this:

If you want to improve your prayer life, try writing.

If you want to improve your writing life, try praying.

The two require many of the same practices, disciplines, and virtues. Of course you should certainly only pray out of an interest to meet with God on a deeper level, just as you should only write if you have something to say or process. I’m not trying to tap into the commercial writing potential for prayer or to guilt the reluctant into writing. Rather, I want to drive home the point that prayer and writing not only happily co-exist, but also feed off of each other and can benefit each other.

Order your copy on Amazon for $1.99 until March 16.
(regular price $3.99)

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Download a Sample PDF.

Read the reviews at Goodreads.

Guest Post: Why We Avoid Self-Reflection… Even Though It’s Good for Us

Posted on March 10, 2015March 9, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

I have the honor of guest posting today for my friend Tsh Oxenreider’s blog, The Art of Simple. If you’re new to Tsh’s blog, check out her podcast and her book about trying to live simply yet intentionally: Notes from a Blue Bike. I’m offering an adapted preview from the introduction to Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together ($.99 pre-order until tomorrow!):

You don’t have to be determined to avoid self-reflection these days.

Most of us carry app-filled smart phones in our pockets to provide constant stimulation and distraction. Binge-watching shows on Netflix, social media, and even books all offer a ready escape from being alone with ourselves. Podcasts were my favorite way to avoid self-reflection until I tried going without them for a single walk.

After watching my productivity and free time slump for months thanks to the two-hour walks our son required for a morning nap (believe me, we tried everything else), I had a break-through plan. I decided to ditch my beloved podcasts and use my walks to either think of fresh writing ideas or pray.

Mind you, I love podcasts. I hardly did anything without a podcast two years ago—when all of this took place. I believed I was on the brink of a productivity explosion. I set off on my walk and promptly drove myself crazy with worry.

Read the rest at the Art of Simple!

Rohr for Writers: Stop Calling Yourself a Writer-You Are Loved

Posted on February 23, 2015February 21, 2015 by Ed Cyzewski

What is your identity? Do you call yourself a writer? I would say that you can write, but you are loved by God first.

Your identity should never hinge on something that you have to do. Your identity should rest on what you have already been given, what no one can take away, and what is perfect and irrefutably true.

Richard Rohr writes in Immortal Diamond:

“Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God . . . The great surprise and irony is that ‘you,’ or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It’s sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn’t it? All you can do is nurture it.”

Before you put your first word on the page, you have a very important question to answer: How do I determine my self worth?

In other words…

Does your identity hinge on the response of others to your writing?
Will you feel more secure about yourself if readers respond positively?
Will you consider giving up if you don’t reach a certain goal with your writing?

So many struggle with calling themselves “writers” because it’s a murky label. Do you need to write for a certain number of people in order to call yourself a writer? Do you need to attain a certain level of success before you can claim that label? Don’t ask me if I know.

Regardless of whether you think you can call yourself a writer, I wonder if Rohr can help us move beyond these labels and consider ourselves on a deeper level. What if our primary identity is linked to what God says about us? If writing is just something we do, something important that some do more professionally than others, then the words we write or the response of readers cannot change us.

Semantically, we can still refer to ourselves as writers, but it may be helpful to remember that writing is something we do. It’s just a small piece of who we are, even if we devote significant hours to it each week. Even speaking of myself, one who pays the bills through writing each day, I have found it extremely toxic to hinge my identity on my writing.

When I centered my identity around being a writer, I endured the misery of setting goals for myself, failing to meet them, and then enduring the doubts and questions that followed. If I didn’t meet my writing goals, what kind of writer could I consider myself? And if I wasn’t much of a writer, who am I after all? Could I claim any kind of identity?

Constantly maintaining my identity as a writer drained away my joy, prompted me to spend less time with my family, and created a deep aching that drummed away in my mind. My stress and anxiety sky-rocketed.

Something had to give, and Rohr’s Immortal Diamond spoke directly to the heart of my struggle with writing: my identity was based in large part on calling myself a writer.

When I finally let go of the goals I’d attached to my identity as a writer, admitted failure in a few areas, backed off on what wasn’t working, and committed myself to what seemed more sustainable, I felt like a massive burden had been removed from my shoulders.

I had more energy to devote to my family and even to myself, to say nothing of more free time.

My identity isn’t linked to my writing—at least most days. Writing is my work, my calling, and my ministry. It’s not who I am. There are days when I still struggle to maintain those lines. When they start to blur, I can let too much rest on how others respond to my writing—even the most minuscule social media praise or criticism can swing my day one way or the other. That’s typically a sign that something is out of balance.

Rohr writes that nothing can touch you when you find your identity in God’s love. I find that both immensely appealing and extremely difficult to believe.

Nothing? Really?

While I will surely feel pain, suffering, disappointment, and regret when I rest in my identity as beloved by God, the stakes attached to my writing work are now completely different. I’m still disappointed if people don’t like my work, but it’s not the same kind of dread and devastation. I don’t feel the same need to keep fighting and struggling and working.

My drive is now completely different when I get my identity sorted out before writing. I am free to work hard and to put out my best work, but there is so much less riding on the success of my work. I’m in a much better position to accept criticism and failure. Best yet, if things don’t work out, I can just try something else.

I don’t see this identity in God as a card you receive and carry with unwavering assurance every day. It’s not like you either have it or you don’t. I see it as more of a continuum. While I experienced a freeing epiphany while reading Immortal Diamond, I don’t see myself completely in the clear at this point.

As you begin writing today, this week, next month, or next year, the first thing you need to know is that you are loved by God—period. You are loved and pursued because there aren’t any footnotes, endnotes, or “syke!” comments in John 3:16. God so loved the world, and if you’re part of the world right now, then that includes you.

Jesus spoke of himself as the vine, and we’re the branches attached to that vine. So if you want to know more about who you are as a branch, the only way to look is back to the vine itself. We can’t do anything to change the vine, and so we can rest in that security and stability.

It will be an ongoing learning process. I doubt I’ll ever be done. However, the crazy thing about finding my identity in God’s love is that I’m now free to enjoy writing for what it is. It’s like writing occupies its own cozy little corner in my life. I want to excel as a writer, but my identity isn’t wrapped up in it.

I’m learning how to be free to write because I’m learning how to receive the freedom of God’s love.

About This Series

Rohr for Writers is a new blog series at www.edcyzewski.com that is based on the ways Richard Rohr’s writing speaks to writers. We’re going to spend the first few weeks looking at key quotes from Immortal Diamond.

Learn More about Prayer and Writing

You can grow in both your prayer and writing by developing the same practices. Check out my new book Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together to learn simple practices you can incorporate into your day right now.

How to Visioneer the Most Optimized and Synergized New Year

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

In order to strategize for the penultimate visioneering plan in the new year that will optimize your influence, capitalize on your goals, and lead you to ultimate career, life, and family satisfaction, there’s nothing more important than opting to organize your priorities around a generalized but internalized missionally rooted strategic plan.

Put simply: PLAN.

Do not proclaim your strategic plan from the street corners in your fine suits.

But go into your office, close the door, open your planner or Evernote app, and then ideate in private where the great organizational strategic mastermind of the universe will see your bullet points and transform them into clear, actionable, measurable goals. (May you fulfill them with purpose, passion, and excellence. Amen.)

With a clear plan for the new year and your actionable, measurable, boast-able goals in hand, you’ll be prepared to lead a meaningful and fully synergized life. You’ll have more energy, more focus, more clarity, more insight, and more free, unsolicited advice to offer. And if you’re lucky, people will start to pay you in order to offer unsolicited advice based on the massively incredible, life-altering success, wealth, influence, and power that you have amassed because of your fully synergized plan for life that comes with executed, actionable, measurable goals.

Your life simply won’t be the same without a solid, crystal clear, ready-to-execute planned out life strategy.

Unless your planned out life IS exactly the same as any other year… THAT is where the upsell comes in to bump your self-indulgence, I mean life planning, to the next level.

Yes, you should probably see that up-sell coming.

You see, if you life plan strategy fails to synergize to its full potentiality and your best ideation can’t get you optimized or capitalized, then it’s time for a big change.

And by big change, I mean that it’s time to spend some big change on some overpriced eBooks and online courses. Don’t worry, you won’t think they’re overpriced. You’ll get all kinds of amazing website badges, new jargon to use, and exclusive video content that promises more synergizing and strategizing (which are really just upsells for more exclusive, premier, secret, members-only content, but don’t worry, YOU’LL LOVE IT). The actual “value” of these planning, visioneering, and ideation courses and eBooks are far beyond anything you can comprehend in your deficient, un-synergized, poorly strategized brain.

Believe me, if you’re frustrated and unfulfilled, the LAST thing you should do is sit alone in a quiet room and pray. Do you think the prophets in the Bible knew how to create an actionable vision statement for one’s personal goals? Did Jeremiah accomplish any “actionable,” “measurable,” and let alone “fulfilling” goals?

Jeremiah couldn’t strategize his way out of a well.

And sure you could pray about big life decisions and even ask God to bless your plans, but we all know that it’s action and synergizing that gets things done. Just look at the most successful business leaders and stop there. God and family are important, but when it comes to systematically prioritizing your life for maximum fulfillment, accomplishment, and self-actualization, you need to focus on visioneering a strategic plan.

If you talk to someone about your goals and strategic plans, look for people who are successful, powerful, influential, and barely have a moment to spare for you. In fact, don’t talk to them. Just tweet your questions at them. Wait for their replies, which are rarely longer than five words. Then thank them profusely for being kind, authentic, and “personable” despite being media titans who could destroy you on Twitter if they deemed you a nuisance—which you most likely are by the way.

Don’t seek out people who lead quiet, prayerful, un-synergized lives that have fallen together because of divine happenstance rather than human-directed strategic plans. These people who wander at the seeming leadership of the wind speak of an unquantifiable, unmeasurable influence from the Holy Spirit who would most assuredly never provide enough measurable goals for even a child’s 5-year strategic plan (You are helping your children set and meet goals by the way? No? Stay tuned for the “Visioneering for Toddlerhood and Beyond” eCourse that I’ll be offering at an EXCLUSIVE discount just for YOU).

As a final exhortation for your strategization, let me ask you two simple, provocative questions that will no doubt spark your ideating immediately:

Question 1

Are you happy with your life today precisely as it is? (If you answered “Yes,” then take some more time to imagine the best possible future imaginable. There must be something else you want.)

Question 2

If you aren’t happy with your life as it is, and of course you aren’t, then have you ever tried strategically visioneering a fully ideated life plan to chart your future with clear actionable goals? (Don’t bother asking if you’ve ever tried praying, fasting, practicing the Examen, receiving spiritual direction, centering prayer, or having someone lay hands on you. Everything about the Holy Spirit and prayer in the book of Acts was just a lucky break).

I hope that’s super duper crystal clear for you. Your only hope of having a meaningful, fulfilling, happy, and completely capitalized new year is to do the hard work of strategic planning for your day-to-day life.

Stop delaying your potential synergizing and ideate the ultimate vision and plan for your life TODAY. Get down on your knees, open your smart phone or iPad, and start planning.

Recovering Evangelicals Need Less Roaring and More Rohring

Posted on December 8, 2014January 18, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

Richard Rohr is a Catholic, Universalist mystic, and he writes the kinds of books recovering evangelicals need to read. Whether or not you agree with me, just reading this post won’t nullify your salvation, so hear me out.

If you need a few minutes to memorize a few extra verses from Romans or if you want to hyperventilate in front of a picture of Billy Graham, have at it. I’ll wait.

Mind you, I’m not writing this for evangelicals in “the establishment” or who would rather do yoga (the Eastern religion also known as “stretching”) than listen to a Catholic, Universalist mystic.

I’m writing this for you evangelicals who have either had it with the whole evangelical thing, are inching their way out of Christianity altogether, or feel like the evangelical subculture is just a bit much right now. Perhaps some things aren’t quite clicking. Perhaps you’re secretly struggling with doubts. Maybe you’re just burned out and feel a bit hopeless. You’re also most likely “roaring” against the inconsistencies, false promises, or doubts you didn’t see coming.

And if you feel like you’re burning out, bowing out, or the whole thing is just a giant bait and switch offering anxiety and infighting instead of peace and joy, there could be worse things than listening to a Catholic, Universalist mystic.

I know there are a lot of you who are either on your way out or deeply disappointed with evangelicalism. Every time I talk to someone in their 20’s or 30’s, it seems like I hear yet another story of someone who signed on to follow Jesus with high hopes of salvation, meaning, and life-change. The truth of the Bible was exhilarating, going to church was relevant, and you simply couldn’t do enough for Jesus.

At a certain point, things start to unravel a bit. It’s often gradual, but it may be accelerated by a tragedy or difficult situation. There’s almost a script we all followed over the years. We all fell off the same cliff of high hopes.

In my own case, I was drowning in theology, Bible study, and churchiness while in seminary. It was as if one day I woke up and reading the Bible more, getting more truth, or attending more church didn’t cut it when it came to connecting with God. In fact, all of my solutions became my problems since the thought of them failing meant my faith would fail. When you’ve been given the best, purest, most orthodox doctrines and you still come up empty, distant from God, and even more distant from your neighbors, maybe the next step shouldn’t be doubling down on more of the same. Maybe you need a bit of a shift without necessarily throwing everything out.

I know that some people will accuse you of throwing everything out by merely listening to a Catholic, Universalist mystic without the intention of hammering him with a book by John MacArthur. Nevertheless, these accusers forget that smart people can interact with ideas and spiritual practices from someone in a different theological camp without adopting that person’s theology and practices in whole. We can learn something from a Catholic, Universalist mystic without abandoning the core evangelical commitments to studying scripture, personal piety, saving faith through the death and resurrection of Christ, and proclaiming that Jesus is King.

I’m also not here to rip apart anyone’s life choices here. If you get a lot of life from reading theology and Bible study in the evangelical fold, that’s awesome. I have no idea why some people struggle where others prosper, but I never want to make the mistake of criticizing someone for not finding life or hope where I have discovered it in abundance.

In the midst of this mire of despair and uncertainty, I suggest we stop roaring at each other about our theology or whatever and talk a little bit about Richard Rohr.

Rohr is no evangelical. Like I said, he’s a Catholic universalist. You don’t need to buy into everything he writes about. Heck, I’ve skipped some sections in his books when he gets lost in his own spiritual formation jargon or harps a little too long on a pet peeve. However, Rohr offers three really important challenges to issues that often bog down evangelicals. If you’ve been struggling within the evangelical fold, Rohr directly addresses topics that I have found personally frustrating and difficult. Here’s a little overview of how Rohr could help evangelicals:

Stop Fighting Tribal Wars

As a former evangelical culture warrior who than dabbled with some of the emerging church stuff, I’m tired of fighting. First I was fighting the world. Then I was fighting the mainstream evangelical subculture. Then I was fighting some of the progressives who I thought had gone too far or thought they could do a better job than the Holy Spirit at bossing people around. In a sense I’ve been the same exact person who was combative, tribal, and absolutist. I just switched my theology and proof texts. I was just as uncaring and judgmental no matter what I believed. I hadn’t actually changed the way I interacted with God and with other people.

If Protestants are anything, we’re tribal. It’s what I love the most and hate the most about us. We always reserve the right to break away. That can be awesome if the global leader of your church commands armies and functions like a one-world government (There are reasons why the first Protestants called the Pope the Anti-Christ!). But what started as a reaction to the corruption of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages soon turned into tribal in-fighting as we fractured endlessly with each other over theology.

I still care about theology a great deal. However, I’m tired of fighting over my turf. I’m tired of trying to classify people as sinners or saints, safe or sinister. Our mission to reach those outside the evangelical fold may have resulted in an unintended obsession over who’s in and who’s out. Is there a better way to spend my time than attacking an opponent or defending someone in my tribe?

While Rohr is motivated in part by a universalist theology in his call for Christians to lay down their arms in their fights with each other and those of other faiths, he still makes a compelling case to stop fighting our little turf wars and to turn toward Christ. His critique is a call is to something bigger rather than a kick out the door for those who misbehave.

Rohr is onto something. Evangelicals have obsessed over preserving pure doctrine and maintaining clear “insider/outsider” categories. Every divisive issue with evangelicals is rooted in this desire to know who’s a sinner and who’s a saint. Some have called this “bounded set” thinking. We have passwords (so to speak) and codes of conduct, and they determine who’s in and who gets invited to a concert with a surprise evangelism message.

Rohr is firmly in the “centered set” mindset. He calls us toward Christ at the center, and he encourages us to define ourselves according to God’s love for us rather than which boundaries our denominations or churches set. Rohr would probably call his approach more of an “open set” mindset, where we create room and stillness for God to meet with us. God is already present with us, so we aren’t necessarily even moving toward God. God has already moved toward us, and he encourages us to open ourselves to this possibility so that God can redefine us around his love.

I don’t follow Rohr’s more Universalist teachings, but evangelicals could really benefit from his focus on becoming renewed and transformed “in” Christ rather than fighting to preserve our doctrines “about” Christ.

Evangelicals could also use a less antagonistic approach to other religions. At the very least we should recognize some common practices and goals with other faiths, even if we can’t swap Jesus with the Buddha. I’m sure that Rohr would be happy if a few more evangelicals wanted to give yoga a shot, but that never comes up directly in his books.

Whether or not we unfurl our secret yoga mats, Rohr also has something to offer those of us who feel like Bible study just isn’t cutting it.

Practicing the Presence of God

Evangelicals have a strong tradition of Bible study and spiritual disciplines. We have historically been really good at self-denial and writing commentaries, the latter surely aiding the former by taking away from time that could otherwise have been spent smoking, drinking, and dancing.

As I hinted earlier, I had grown weary of adding one more thing to my spiritual life. I’ve always felt like I needed to add more prayers, more disciplines, and more study. Every time I tried to add something else, it either failed to produce the desired result or I couldn’t keep up with it. As it turned out, I didn’t need to spend more time on spiritual practices. I needed to change how I spent my time.

If you’re worn out and weary from always adding one more thing to your spiritual life, Rohr will drive home a major reality check. Rohr suggests that we often fill our lives up with some many “things we have to do” in order to hide from our true selves: our identity in Christ. So while we can use Bible study, prayer, or spiritual practices to help us discover that identity, the act of doing these things can divert us from the deeper work of silence before God. We can resort to ticking off boxes, whether that’s boxes for doctrine or practices, as the true measure of our faith.

Rohr has helped me see that measuring, adding, and learning are all poor substitutes for abiding. It all sounds a lot like a branch abiding in a vine, and the most life-giving (and “safe”) evangelicals have been the ones who focus on abiding rather than behaving since those who abide will figure out the behaving. There is nothing we can do to change the immediacy of God among us, and with the Holy Spirit among us, we don’t have to “work” to invite God to be in us. We aren’t chasing after a God who is always one step or several steps ahead of us. We have to work to see that God is already in us, and I hope you can see how much hope and joy we can find in that approach to things.

Evangelicals have a tendency to keep working harder and harder and harder to get closer to God, to learn more, and to be more obedient. Rohr reminds us of the good news in the Gospels: seek and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened.

The disconnect comes when we don’t know how to seek or where to knock. Instead of telling us to do more in order to find God, Rohr suggests that we actually do less. As little as possible in fact—as “waiting” on the Lord sets the bar pretty low for us.

The Point of It All

At the end of the day, evangelicals are left asking, “What’s the point of it all?” Why do we go to church, read the Bible, pray, attend small group, and read books by Christian authors (like me!) who wave around MDiv’s and drop in self-deprecating jabs at the evangelical subculture? Why bother?

Perhaps the thought of avoiding hell was enough to get you in the door, but fear is a lousy motivator for the long term. It’s awesome for short-term survival. As in, seeing a shark fin in the water will strike enough fear in you that you’ll swim really fast for the shore. However, you can only swim so fast for so long. In fact, for many of us, I would guess that some evangelical teachings on salvation feel like we’ll either reach the safety of the shoreline or a lifeguard will save us, but he’s really unhappy about it because we’re such wretched people.

Evangelicals can be a bit frantic and uptight sometimes. We’re the ones who went forward for multiple altar calls and multiple baptisms throughout our childhood and teens just to be sure we got that prayer right. We’ve had sleepless nights because of end times predictions. We’ve tried to be holier, tried to win God more glory, and fretted over the many times we’ve failed at both.

So what gives? Why is all of this such a struggle? And why bother? Is this really all about avoiding hell?

You may have guessed from the above sections that Rohr has something to say about all of this. Just as we are called to open ourselves to God and to abide in Christ, we practice disciplines such as silence or lectio divina or centering prayer in order to be transformed by a union with God. It’s not just learning about God or obedience, Rohr suggests it’s an actual mystical interaction that we’re after. This is where life change and direction comes from.

We may not even know what exactly has changed. We may not be able to put it into words. It’s not really something that we do. Rohr would say that it’s something that “is” in the present moment. We have been present with God and God has been present with us, even if that presence sometimes feels like silence. In fact, our expectations for God or spiritual experiences can hold us back from receiving God’s presence since we’re too busy looking for something else.

That will sound a bit vague if you’re new to Rohr’s teachings, but I think he hits at one of the greatest struggles that so many evangelicals face is the fear of God’s absence. We fear silence and being quiet before God because we’re afraid that God won’t show up. We focus on the outcome and experience.

Rohr chops away all of that anxiety and calls us to be still. We can be present before God and wait. Over time, God will unite with us and shape us. It’s not a three step or twelve step process. It won’t feel easy or natural for us, and perhaps those reasons alone are the most compelling reasons for struggling evangelicals to give Rohr’s teachings a try.

My Challenge for Struggling Evangelicals:

If you’re worn out or struggling with evangelicalism, I have a suggestion for you: “Roaring” against the failures of particular leaders, theologies, or traditions won’t help you take a step forward or heal the wrongs of the past. We need a shift in perspective and perhaps in our direction. We could do a lot worse than taking a few pointers from a Catholic Universalist mystic, so here’s my challenge:

Read and blog/journal about one book by Richard Rohr in the new year.

You can ask for the book as a Christmas gift. You can buy it in secret and cover it in brown paper so your friends don’t know what you’re up to. You could even have the book shipped to the home of a trusted, non-judgmental atheist friend. Whatever works.

Here’s a list of some books to consider:

Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

Immortal Diamond: The Search for the True Self

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Yes And

The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See

Not sure you want to go that far? You can sign up for Richard Rohr’s email list and get daily readings from his books and talks. They’re short and to the point. Some may prove more relevant than others, so stick with it for a month before ditching it.

If all of that still sounds like a bridge too far, there are lots of other books you can read to help you break out of a post-evangelical malaise. Vineyard pastor Ken Wilson wrote an introduction to contemplative prayer called Mystically Wired. I also wrote a book called A Christian Survival Guide that provides some really simple steps you can take toward praying with scripture and cultivating contemplative prayer, as well as help with other hot topics that give evangelicals fits.

Of course if none of this appeals to you, that’s fine. Catholic Universalist mystics aren’t for everyone. However, if you ever reach a point where you feel like your faith is faltering or you can’t figure out how to encounter Christ in your day-to-day life, I know a guy who can help.