When prayer is not tidy, prayer is difficult.
When prayer is tidy, prayer is simple.
What more do you need to know about prayer?
Unfortunately, a lot. That’s why my next book uses the time-honored Christian tradition of ripping off a popular book concept and sprinkling a bit of faith into it:
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up Contemplation
There can be no better use of a cleaning method than applying it to prayer. Prayer should spark joy and bring order to chaos, not leaving your mind cluttered and confused, as if your soul is in some kind of “dark night.”
Christians today don’t need to clutter their minds by reciting more prayers, to pray with more emotion (the handkerchiefs and tissues with all of that crying!), or to burn messy incense and candles.
Christians need only tidy up their prayers with silence and a commitment to solving their problems by purchasing something trendy.
We need tidy spirituality.
I call my tidy spiritual approach the PRAY-ED method. It’s quite simple, yet so complex that you’ll need to buy my book, watch my upcoming television show, and hire me as a consultant to personally simplify your prayer life.
Here are the basic steps of the PRAY-ED method for truly tidy, biblical prayer:
- See the clutter of your prayer life.
Clutter could be what you do, say, or own. It could be in your head or in your home. Clutter is everywhere, even in prayer.
- Decide what stays, and what goes.
Do you really need to say the Our Father every day? Aren’t those candles burning a bit unevenly? I bet that icon on your wall is crooked. Does anyone need a Bible quite that large? I have bad news about your shelf of prayer books and Bible translations.
- Purge everything except for silence.
Celebrate the role of prayer clutter in your journey and then ship it all off to the next church rummage sale.
- Stay silent.
Silence is the only tidy, uncluttered prayer you will ever need. (And besides, a lot of Christians voted for Trump. They need some space to think that one over.)
It’s as simple, yet COMPLEX, as See, Decide, Purge, Silence.
What’s next after your perfectly restorative, heavily hyped preparation for silent prayer?
Besides hiring me to be your personal PRAY-ED consultant, post about it on social media, of course!
- Take a selfie in a perfect prayer pose!
- Set up shots of your uncluttered prayer space.
- Tell all of your friends about the PRAY-ED method for prayer.
Most importantly, click the link below to learn more about all of the special goodies I’m going to include with this book if you order it right now. These aren’t physical goodies. They’re digital goodies, which means they’re technically not “goodies,” but I assure you that they are at least good.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
Can you help me promote it?
[Wait, was this an April Fool’s Day joke?]
Yes. It’s a prank. I do write books about contemplative prayer, and in fact, it’s no joke that the revised and expanded edition of Flee, Be Silent, Pray is on sale for $1.99!
Author Sarah Bessey commented about it in her newsletter: “5 stars. Ed is such a great writer and this book is a gift at this moment in time.”
Each year I try to write some kind of parody of myself and the Christian subculture for April Fools Day. I aim to be as over the top as possible. As our family slowly tries to tidy ourselves after the birth of our daughter last May, I couldn’t help noticing how tidying is the trend of the moment for many.
Since it’s inevitable that someone in the Christian subculture seems to come up with a Christian version or response of every popular trend in pop-culture, tidying up contemplation, a minimalist prayer practice you could say, was too good to resist.
See my full list of April Fools day prank book releases here.
Ed Cyzewski: Author // Contemplative 