Armchair Mystic gets Five Stars

Armchair Mystic: Easing into Contemplative Prayer is an amazing book. It has the potential to radically transform the way you pray and the way you think about prayer - if you want to. It was written by a Jesuit priest, Mark Thibodeaux S.J., who in his own words has been "bored with prayer". This book is extremely practical, logical, very readable and funny at times. It is complete with catchy subtitles, for instance there is a section subtitled "How do you do it?", followed by another section subtitled, "But how do you do it, Really?"

In the foreword to the book, Mark Link S.J., tells a story that is applicable to whether or not this book will be helpful to you.

There's a story about a boy who was watching a sadhu [a Hindu "good man"] praying on the bank of a river. When the holy man finished the boy walked over to the water's edge and asked, "Will you teach me to pray?" The sadhu looked into the boy's eyes for a minute. Then he took the boy's head, plunged it under water and held it there. When the boy broke free and got his breath back, he sputtered, "What did you do that for?" The sadhu said, "I just gave you your first lesson in prayer. When you want to pray as badly as you wanted to breathe when your head was under water, only then will I be able to teach you."

This book, like the above story, is not for the casual reader. It is for a reader who is ready to give more time and energy to prayer.

Thibodeaux has broken down prayer lives into four stages. #1 - Talking at God. #2 - Talking to God. #3 - Listening to God. #4 - Being with God. He spends most of his time on stage #3, as he believes people will spend most of their lifetime in this stage. He writes:

"When I get to this stage, my focus shifts from my own agenda (which I bring to God) to God's agenda (which God brings to me). It also demands a gread deal of faith because I am never going to be able to prove to any one - even to myself - that God is really communicating with me. I will not be able to record God's voice or frame one of his letters to me. I may always have that little voice in my head saying, "Psst! You're making all this up!" I am simply going to have to trust that God is present in my prayer. That is part of the surrendering that prayer demands."

He cautions that this type of prayer should always take place inside a community of believers. You should be sharing what you learn in prayer to others (Spiritual Director, friend, community of believers) so they can help you sort the "Fools gold" from the real thing, as well as find "Hidden Treasures" - things that may not be readily apparent to you.

He has a whole chapter dedicated to "Dealing with Distractions". I think anyone who has ever attempted to pray longer than three minutes can identify with this hilarious example.

"...Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...Fred has really been a great friend to me. I hope he wasn't offended when I teased him about his cooking. That was a really stupid thing to say. I can't believe I said that--Come on, Mark, Pray! Sorry, Lord. Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...Shoot! I forgot that ER is playing on TV right now! I hope somebody's taping it. Come, Lord Jesus...Or maybe it's just a rerun anyway...Come, Lord Jesus...Come, Lord Jesus...I can't believe I'm thinking about ER during prayer; what the heck is my problem here? come, Lord Jesus...I guess I'm just distracted. Come, Lord Jesus...as distracted as Mark Green was on ER last Thursday...Come, Lord Jesus...."

It also has several exercises to pray through and a really great chapter on the "desert experience."

Okay, now that you know what I liked about it...As the author is a Jesuit priest, this book is written in with Catholic tradition in mind, but he also reaches out the evangelical/Protestant crowd a couple times in the book as well. There was a section on 'mantras' that he will pray in the beginning of his prayer time to help get his mind and heart focused on God. A mantra is a phrase or a Bible verse that he will repeat over and over. Come, Lord Jesus is the mantra in the above example. I'm not sure how I feel about this exactly, but he also had a section on praying scripture in the same way, so I'm still able to achieve the same results without the mantras.

This is a fantastic book for any stage of pray-er!

Beginning Armchair Mystic

My sister began her vacation two weeks ago by unceremoniously dumping five books on my lap. They are all books dealing with contemplative prayer and modern Christian mystics. I began
Armchair Mystic: Easing into Contemplative Prayer last night. The foreword has this Thomas Merton quote:

"Prayer is an expression of who we are…. We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment."

I like the idea that we can be and indeed are completed by communication with God. I look forward to reading all five of these books and will post reviews of them all.

Marriage Schmarriage

Interesting post, this. The heart of the matter:

The answer is pretty straightforward: While our sexual ideals have remained biblical and thus rooted in marriage, our ideas about marriage have changed significantly. For all the heated talk and contested referendums about defending marriage against attempts to legally redefine it, the church has already ceded plenty of intellectual ground in its marriage-mindedness. Christian practical ethics about marriage—not the ones expounded on in books, but the ones we actually exhibit—have become a nebulous hodgepodge of pragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble anything biblical.


Unfortunately, many Christians cannot tell the difference. Much about evangelical marital ethics is at bottom therapeutic: since we are pro-family, we are sure that a happy marriage is a central source of human contentment, and that romantic love is the key gauge of its health. While our marriage covenants are strengthened by romance, the latter has no particular loyalty to the former.


Our personal feelings may lead us out of a marriage as quickly as they lead us into one. As a result, many of us think about marriage much like those outside the church—as a capstone that completes the life of the autonomous self. We claim to be better promise keepers, but our vision of what marriage means is not all that unique. When did this all change?"

If one accepts the premise that the church has a marital problem and the premarital sex problem is simply a side effect/symptom, then the obvious question is what can the church do to recapture (or capture?) the biblical view of marriage?

The first problem with this question is what exactly is a biblical view of marriage? We have some diverse models from the OT (Abraham and Sarah, Samson and Delilah) and scant instruction from the NT (love your wife and respect your husband, and the concept of submission). Even our Christian marriage books seem to be largely in agreement with our secular marriage books. Question: "What is the most essential thing to maintain a good marriage?" Answer: (all together now) "GOOD COMMUNICATION".


Secondly, one can hardly doubt that marriage is held as the model for much of the American churches. The church today is built around marriage and families. As Mark Regnerus cites in the article most American do want to get married and I would add that probably 100% of those singles sitting in the church pews each Sunday want to get married. So given the facts that most people want to get married and churches strongly encourage people to get married, why are people remaining single for longer?


Talk to almost any Christian girl and you will begin to hear a common refrain "Most guys are just so immature". I don't often get the chance to talk to Christian young men about why they're not married - so I called one up and asked the question. The answer I got was surprisingly similar to the answer that girls give, the prevalence of emotional and intellectual immaturity and insecurity issues among the Christian young women of his acquaintance.


It seems to me the church has a huge marital problem and the pink elephant in the room is divorce. By failing to take on the problem of divorce, in any meaningful way, the church has ceded its credibility on the whole topic of marriage in many (young) peoples eyes. If the church was to begin to work on divorce by 1) Not marrying anyone who has been divorced for non-scriptural reasons (real adultery) and 2)revoking membership for any non-scriptural divorce, it might regain some of its integrity in the whole gay marriage debate and encouragement of young people to get married.


What seems bizarre to me is that in the comments section of the article there are actually parents saying they would rather have their children have pre-marital sex than get married early (to a "wrong" person I presume). While I am sympathetic to this view, if this isn't a perfect example of how far we've strayed from the biblical view of marriage and sex I don't know what is.


What can the church do to encourage a biblical view of marriage among the young men and women of Gen Y and beyond?

Last Words worth saying

"I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile"

--Pope Gregory VII

Happy Anniversary

Simeon and I celebrate 9 years today! As an anniversary present, he arranged to have 1A - 1E fail resoundingly and 1F sail through with flying colors. I could not have given myself a better gift.

What will your story be?

"Like it or not, we are heirs of this host of diverse and contradictory witnesses. Some of their actions we may find revolting, and others inspiring. ... Without understanding that past, we are unable to understand ourselves, for in a sense the past still lives in us and influences who we are and how we understand the Christian message. When we read, for instance, that “the just shall live by faith,” Martin Luther is whispering at our ear how we are to interpret those words—and this is true even for those of us who have never even heard of Martin Luther. When we hear that “Christ died for our sins,” Anselm of Canterbury sits in the pew with us, even though we may not have the slightest idea who Anselm was. When we stand, sit, or kneel in church, when we sing a hymn, recite a creed, or refuse to recite one, when we build a church or preach a sermon, as past of which we may not be aware is one of the factors involved in our actions. The notion that we read the New Testament exactly as the early Christians did, without any weight of tradition coloring our interpretation, is an illusion. It is also a dangerous illusion, for it tends to absolutize our interpretation, confusing it with the Word of God."

The previous paragraph is found in the introduction to The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez. I love this paragraph not only because it expresses my thoughts, but it does so beautifully. This book is a very straightforward overview of Christianity from the time of Christ to modern day (1970s or so). It discusses the major figures in Christian history, traces the development of the church and rarely speculates (a very nice feature) it just gives the information available. I just finished reading about John of Constantinople or John Chrysostom -- if you don't know who he is you should definitely read this book.


On my wish list: that the Protestant/Evangelical/Pentacostal churches would start the catechism-like classes in the year prior to baptism - just as the early church did and the Catholic church still does. Off the top of my head here's my list of positive's and negative's to this idea.

Positive side:

it would give everyone the opportunity for a baseline of knowledge, a basic christianity if you will.

They would not come out with just basic doctrinal knowledge, but also a sketch of their history as well.

Postive/Negative:

It would raise the bar to become a christian (I'm sure some would see this as a negative, others a positive)

Negative:

It would delay baptism up to a year - the classes wouldn't really need to be a year, but neither would I like to see them be 6 week classes either.

It goes against the spontaneous feel of baptism, indeed most of our christian life today is seen as authentic if it is spontaneous (although I doubt people want their ministers to stop studying before a sermon).

Lines God wishes He could use

Setting: Final Judgment - not to pick on Carrie Prejean or anything, she has many fine qualities


God: What made you think it was a good idea to pose topless?

CP: It didn't seem like a big deal and you have to do it to get ahead in the business and everyone else was doing it too.

God: Well, everyone else is going to Hell....