Today I want to share some further instructions on Christian Meditation. This week in my class we are practicing a very simple method that comes from Madame Guyon (1648-1717). She was quite a mystic so I don’t necessarily agree with everything she said, but these instructions are quite simple and straight forward:

1. Turn to a scripture passage that is simple and practical (e.g. Psalm 23)
2. Come to the Lord quietly and humbly
3. Read a small portion (e.g. a sentence or a few verses)
4. Do not move on until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read
5. Take the portion and turn it into a prayer
6. After you have exhausted the deeper sense and how it applies to you, record your findings in your journal

As I said, this is very simple. But it might be a good place to begin for those who desire to learn how to practice Christian meditation. The point is to reflect on a small portion of Scripture and take the time to allow the Lord to speak to you through it.

Next time I might share a few ideas from the method of Ignatius of Loyola.

For the class that I am taking right now we have a short time of silent meditation at the beginning and at the end of the day. Actually this is a topic that I have been thinking about quite a bit recently, and I have had several conversations with various people on this topic. Today I want to try to give a simple introduction to Christian meditation.

1. Christian meditation is Word centered. In this way it is very different from Buddhist and other Eastern forms of meditation that have as their goal the emptying of the mind and becoming passive. Christian meditation is an active engagement with God founded on His revelation of Himself in the Bible
2. Christian meditation is different from Bible reading or Bible study. Study is analytical while meditation is more holistic. To take a simple analogy, to analyze a flower might require you to cut it apart, study its internal structure, and understand how it works. But to meditate on a flower you would contemplate its beauty, enjoy its fragrance and reflect on its part in God’s creation.
3. Christian meditation has as its goal an encounter with God in His Word and hearing His voice speak to our lives. As we reflect on God’s truth we listen for Him to speak to us and we respond in prayer and obedience to what He has shown us.
4. In order to meditate we need to learn to listen, and to distinguish God’s voice from our own thoughts and feelings or the voices of others. This takes practice. We are much better at talking than listening, and we usually fill our lives with a great deal of “noise.” Contemplation is practically a lost art.

I will end this post here for now, but I am sure that it could be much improved on. But I wanted to put down some thoughts while I was thinking about this subject. I welcome your feedback and comments.

I am currently attending my class up in Portland, and I found a way to get internet access. So I want to share a few thoughts from today’s class.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a pastor in Germany who spoke out against Hitler and was eventually executed for his stand. For a time before his arrest he lives with his students in an alternative seminary at Finkenwalde where they began each day with 30 minutes of meditation. The following are some of his instructions about Christian meditation:

1. Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. You cannot escape from yourself. If you are not able to be alone, you will do harm to the community because you will try to get your needs met by others when God alone can meet them.
2. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.
3. The mark of solitude is silence as speech is the mark of community. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.
4. There is an indifferent, or even negative, attitude toward silence which sees in it a disparagement of God’s revelation in the Word. This is the view which misinterprets silence as a ceremonial gesture, as a mystical device to get beyond the Word. This is to miss the essential relationship of silence to the Word. Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father’s room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us. We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God. We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word and therefore, not in order to show disregard for the Word but rather to honor and receive it.

In our lives surrounded by constant “noise” I think that we need to learn about the importance of silent and solitude. Our community can only be healthy and a source of spiritual strength if it is balanced by times of solitude.

Next time I will share some practical suggestions for Christian mediations.

I have just finished reading The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (one of the books for my class). Written in the 16th century, this book is basically an instruction manual for those who are conducting spiritual retreats. There are a lot of instructions about how to do some meditation and prayer, including some things from his Roman Catholic background that we would find questionable.

I just want to share one interesting insight from the book about conscience [the comments in brackets are mine]:

The enemy considers carefully whether one has a lax or a delicate conscience. If one has a delicate conscience, the evil one seeks to make it excessively sensitive, in order to disturb and upset it more easily. Thus, if he sees that one will not consent to mortal sin [i.e. more serious sin], or venial sin [i.e. less serious sin], or even to the appearance of deliberate sin, since he cannot cause him to fall into a matter that appears sinful, he strives to make the soul judge that there is a sin, for example, in a word or passing thought where there is no sin.

If one has a lax conscience, the enemy endeavors to make it more so. Thus, if before a soul did not bother about venial sin, the enemy will contrive that it make light of mortal sin. If before it paid some heed to venial sin, his efforts will be that now it cares much less or not at all. [section 349]

I found this to be very insightful. It sounds like the thoughts of someone who has made a serious effort to resist temptation and live a holy life. In fact, it reminds me of the insights into temptation The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. The solution in either case is to be sure that our ideas of right and wrong are solidly founded on God’s revelation in Scripture.

Yes! I finally got the crossposter plugin for Wordpress to work. After a number of technical difficulties (which I won’t go into here) I have it set so that when I post something on my main blog it will be crossposted to my xanga. Automatically. Way cool. That should be a help to those of you who like to stick to xanga circles.

But you still need to come to the main site for the sidebar content such as my reading list.

I just finished reading the book TrueFaced: Trust God and Others With Who You Really Are (I know that I seem to be starting this blog with a lot of book reviews, but that is because I have to do 2000 pages of reading for the D.Min. class that I am taking later this month. Some of the books are pretty good. So I have added a new category for comments about books.)

The first part of the book talks about the masks that we all wear to try to hide who we really are, even from ourselves. It is only by experiencing God’s grace that we are able to stop pretending to be what we are not and receive the power to become the people He wants us to be.

The authors talk about the contrast between trying to live in The Room of Good Intentions and The Room of Grace. In the first room people strive very hard to please God by their efforts but are frustrated by their failures and so end up wearing masks to pretend that everything is alright even though it is not. In the second room we accept each other as sinners who are in the process of being transformed by God and we are free to be ourselves.

There is a lot more in the book… the chapter on forgiving others is worth the price of the book. If you read it don’t let the somewhat cheesy humor in the first part throw you off.. the book is definitely worth reading.

People sometimes ask me for recommendations on books to read. So I have started a reading list (look on the left, under “Pages”). There is still more that I can add, but at least this is a beginning.