A liturgy if you will.

John Baillie (1886 - 1960)
Excerpts from A Diary of Private Prayer.

At first I was unsure what to do with this reading it is basically a recorded set of 7 prayers. They are quite stylised and each has a different focus. They are designed to be used as the first thing you do in a morning after rising. They do however have a beautiful flow of prose that lifts the spirit to focus on God.

I suspect my generation has a bit of fear in  becoming trapped in legalism and form. I know for myself that is the case. However I also understand the need for spiritual discipline to develop religious experience.

I suspect we all have developed a personal spiritual ritual that we practice in the morning and/or evening. A personal liturgy if you will.

liturgy:noun

1.    1.

a form or formulary according to which public religious worship, especially Christian worship, is conducted.

"the Church of England liturgy"

synonyms:

ritual, worship, service, ceremony, rite, observance, celebration, ordinance, office,sacrament, solemnity, ceremonial; More

I understand that liturgies are used in public formats, but I believe that we develop our  own observances that we also use on a regular basis. I know I have myself been developing this process. as I try things and modify  or drop them from my time with my Heavenly Father. I suspect that is what this journey with these weekly readings is all about. This is the way that our spiritual formation is developed. I know I have changed in the weeks I have been doing this. As I try things out, think things through, reject and adopt new practices, I change.So the conclusion for this week is that I am going to use each these 7 prayers as a daily declaration and prayer at the beginning of each day during week. I will continue this for 4 weeks and see what I think.

Here are the daily headings:

1. "My First Thought."
2. "Continued Dependence on You"
3. "Joyous and Helpful Labour"
4. "You Waiting Presence"
5. "Lord and Giver of Life"
6. "This your Greatest Gift"
7. "O Lord Maker of All Things"

Have a great week. Think about your own faith practice and experience.

Paul

Your Daddy loves you!

Frank Laubach (1884-1970)
Exerts from Letters by a Modern Mystic.

This was a series of letters which in the end I found very similar to Brother Laurence (Practicing the Presence of God) to be honest. I was thinking I am not sure where this is going to go because it feels like I have been here before.

I suppose the one point that was reaffirmed to me was I must live in the now. Living in the moment is a great way to live. It allows us to experience God where he is right now, and where I am right now. This means we are looking for his best for us in any given moment. Oswald chambers wrote about "My Utmost for his Highest" which is so true and important.

However I feel if we neglect to realise that God also has His utmost for our highest. If we miss this, we miss the Father Heart of God talked about in the Prodigal Son. The Father has his best for us!

I have a Father who loves me beyond measure. To grasp this again is freeing, because it allows me to change the filter of my thinking. It allows me to look at any given moment for my Fathers fingerprint and look for his best, even when it seems a dark place.

That is my task for the next week

Until next time!

Further Demystifying Mysticism

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941)
The Essentials of Mysticism Part 2


As I  look back on the things I have learned over the last few weeks. I am amazed at the personal insight I have gained into my prayer life. Even just looking at last week I have worked out that I can rest in spiritual music and gospel. I can write with the music but I can't pray well, I get  too easily distracted. To prepare for prayer, I prefer silence as a backdrop if possible. I do believe worship is type of prayer, but I get really involved in the music. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not useful for me to meditate. Interestingly I can worship and pray corporately.

I have learned that I really value silence and really enjoyed the resting in God with or without music.

Now for the second part of Evelyn's thoughts:

• Prayer should as rule begin with an intellectual act of deciding what I am going to do.
• Meditation is simply thinking methodically and steadily about spiritual things. I really like this description of meditation because it seems to demystify the process. She states that before we have spoken prayer, we need to meditate which I find quite interesting. It is almost like getting in the prayer zone. Also gets away from shopping list prayer.
• Prayer is not just an intellectual activity. As an old mystic said "it is by love, God may be gotten and beheld; by thought never."
• Prayer begins by thinking of God earnestly to the exclusion of other objects of thought. But where the office of thought finishes, the office of the will and feeling begins. Desire and intention are the most dynamic of our faculties.
• Now intellect and feeling are not entirely in our control. They fluctuate from hour to hour or day to day. Sometimes we are emotionally flat and/or intellectually dull, so it impossible to beat ourselves into some sort fervour.
• She stated that if we were dependent on a constant high level of feeling or understanding , we would be in a dangerous place. This is  releasing statement which means even if I don't get it all the time. Even when this my heart is cold and my wits dull it is still possible to drive toward God with our will, pressing steadily into God. This is a great perspective for me, because I am realising how understanding and emotionally driven I am in my prayer life. Now I am going to try and focus on consistently giving my will to Jesus.  As Evelyn said "Our wills are ours, to make them Thine".

So that is the plan for the week to work on the will. while incorporating the other factors I have learnt. I need to learn to sail up wind, against the wind and the waves

Beginning to unpack Mysticism

Evelyn Underhill 1875-1941

Excerpts from The Essentials of Mysticism

• Prayer: Part of our conscious life that is deliberately oriented towards , and exclusively responds to the spiritual reality, that is God. The lifting up of the desire of the heart for God, by withdrawing it from earthly thoughts.
• There are 3 capacities we have to consider: The thinking faculty, the feeling faculty and the willing or acting faculty. These pretty well cover all the ways that "self" can react to other things or "selves".
• Prayer should takes us towards the spiritual order of all the powers of our mental, emotional and volitional life.
• Prayer will include all sorts of "Spiritual work" meditation, adoration, petition, confession and contemplation. Including various shades of these activities in-between.

"As in The natural order, the living creature must feed and grow, must suffer and enjoy,  must get energy from the world and give it back again if it is to live a whole and healthy life. So too in the spiritual order. All these things - the giving and receiving, the work and the rest - should fall in the circle of prayer." 

It is here I want to press pause for this week, to dwell a while on those thoughts of work and rest. How does this fit with where we have been. The silence, the thanks giving or  the soaking in the first love of the Father. These seem to  tie up with the work of the George Buttrick earlier with the thanksgiving , confession, intercession and petition as part of the prayer/work process.

Then there comes spiritual rest. What might that look like:

• Is it found in Silence?
• Is it found in soaking in  the Fathers love through silence or listening to music or worship.
• Is it just being in God's presence in a place you love: a garden, a long and lonely beach on peaceful day or in a storm or maybe where your prayer closet is.?
• A place with a lot of people that you can just be at rest and "at one" with the Father.
• All of these things.
• Where does concept of Sabbath fit in here?

Lots of questions hopefully with some time to explore some possibilities, I know I need to look at the Sabbath a whole lot more.

We will continue with Evelyn next week as we to look at mysticism. I would be interested to see what works for you. Leave some comments on Facebook or on the Blog site.

May you enjoy spiritual rest this week.

Until next week Paul