meditative prayer: centering down

image courtesy of heavenawaits

A few days ago I posted several very practical ideas for improving our prayer lives.  Then I published an essay covering some of the stresses of being a missionary in small-town Tanzania.  Today I want to combine these ideas of prayer and stress by offering you a form of meditative prayer which will (likely) bless you greatly.

I can’t remember from whom I learned this practice, but he called it “centering down.”  And I was told it was a Quaker form of prayer.  I’ve done a little research since then, and it seems the idea of centering down is much bigger than this one very particular prayer practice.  Centering down (as best as I can tell) is the practice of contemplative prayer which allows one to experience God’s presence deep within himself. It seems to reach well beyond thinking about God and encourages us to be one with God and to delight in his presence.

There must exist hundreds of ways to accomplish this.  The method I’m offering today is only one of these.  I’m not suggesting you replace your regular prayer time with this practice, but I do believe it is a wonderful discipline which will bless your life.  Though I now realize “centering down” is a much broader concept, I’ll still refer to this form of meditative prayer as just that.  [I've also heard it called "re-collection prayer."]

1. Find a comfortable seat. Don’t lean forward, though neither should you slouch as if attempting to sleep.  I like to sit in a hardwood chair or even on a stool.  I’m sure many sit cross-legged on the floor; I do not know, however, if they make an “O” with their thumb and index finger.  I also don’t know if they refer to their sitting as “criss cross apple sauce.”  But I really hope they do.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Place your hands face-down on your lap. This represents letting go of all that has filled your mind.
4. In silence, give to God all your anxieties, concerns, and worries.  Surrender to him all those thoughts which occupy your mind.  I begin by thinking this phrase:  ”Lord I give to you….”
5. Now, maintaining this same posture, rotate your hands so that your palms are face-up.  This is symbolic for receiving blessings and peace from God.
6. In silence, ask God to grant you peace.  You may ask for any number of blessings (such as strength, courage, faith, patience, etc). I begin by saying:  ”Lord, please fill me with your…”
7. Sit in silence for some time, focused on God — and simply resting in his presence.*

This form of prayer has helped me immensely over the past few years.  One of the greatest benefits (for me) is that it helps me rid my mind of stray thoughts and concerns — so that I can practice being present with God.  Fully present with him.

I can imagine, too, that centering down would be of tremendous value to those who tend to be anxious or worried.

I can’t help but think of these two passages.  I’ll leave you with them:

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:6-7

“Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” — 1 Peter 5:7

 

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*If you read this post and worry that centering prayer will take you too long, you most likely are wrong.  I’ve been amazed at the impact less than five minutes of this centering down exercise can have on an entire day.

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P.S. — The irony is not lost on me that the image accompanying this post is of clenched fists during prayer — which could symbolize either 1) an unwillingness to give to God our concerns or 2) a refusal to accept from him his blessings.  But it does make me wonder why our traditional posture of prayer involves clenched (or at least folded) hands.

 

culture stress (or i don’t want to be a missionary anymore)

Lest you believe I’m some sort of missionary superhero (not that there’s really any danger of this), I’d like to share with you confess to you that I have my bad days.  Days when I don’t want to be a missionary anymore. Days when I want to fly back to the United States, enjoy air conditioning, wait at traffic lights, and eat at McDonald’s.  Days like Friday.

I was just sitting down to the computer when the electricity went out.*  I started the generator for the first time since Sunday — the most recent of its breakdowns (I’d only got it running again Thursday) — and returned to the computer.  15 minutes later the generator was wheezing and coughing.  Another couple of minutes passed, and she quit.  And she wasn’t planning to start again.

That’s when, like a no-name Chinese generator, I broke down. Not in tears, mind you.  But still, I was broken down.  Angry, frustrated, and tired — and I wanted to shut my eyes and wake up in Dothan, Alabama… at the National Peanut Festival.  [There's no place like home.  (Repeat x 3)]

Great!  Just what I needed… my generator to break.  Again.  One more thing to go on my list. [If you don't like to hear venting, complaining, and whining, you probably should skip to the bottom; I feel that I rarely complain, but today there will be whining.]

• We haven’t had water from the city since July. For a week’s worth of water, I have to borrow Carson’s truck and tank, fill the tank in town, and pump the water up to our holding tank… twice (about 4ish hours of work, depending on the line at the well and whether there’s electricity or not).  Or I can pay 20 times what we’ve got in our budget for water and have it delivered by a truck from town.
• The water we do have is frustratingly difficult to use because our taps and faucets are full of red dirt and sand and don’t allow water to pass.  Seriously, we have three sinks in our house in which we can’t wash our hands.  I can fix them, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.  There are also leaks in the pipes in two of our walls.  Concrete walls.  Behind tiles.
• Our electric oven doesn’t work. Not because it’s broken but because there’s something wrong with the wiring that causes the breaker to trip every time we turn it on.
• We’re $20,800 in debt and struggling to pay for our furlough plane tickets. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds in that $17,500  of this money came in the form of a bridge loan.  A very kind and anonymous donor loaned us the cash so we could buy a new truck.  We’re to return the money when we sell our old truck, which hasn’t happened yet and is proving somewhat difficult because of the rising dollar (or the falling shilling).  The other $3,300 is extra port fees charged us by the government of Tanzania.  If you’re thinking this means the government makes us pay for “storing” our truck in their port while we waited for them to allow us to have it, you’re right.  The slower they do their jobs, the more cash they get. We paid $3000 already, but were informed of this other $3,300 the day we picked the truck up.
• Speaking of the truck, our brand new Toyota LandCruiser doesn’t have 4WD high. This is because the 4WD toggle switch was stolen at Toyota of Tanzania before I’d ever even seen the car.  Those buttons resale at well over $100 USD, but I can’t find one anywhere — and Toyota won’t take responsibility for what one of their employees did.  When I picked the truck up from them, they told me the empty space was there for a placeholder button, and that it did nothing.  My 4WD low works fine, but it’s not suitable for getting to some of the villages we visit.  So we haven’t been to a single village since we got the new truck.
• We’ve been in Tanzania two years now — and we’re technically on-schedule.  But I can’t help but feel like we never get any work done, because we’re always fetching water, repairing plumbing, sitting in the dark, or just trying to live.  It just takes so much time to live here.
• I didn’t tell you what happened just before the electricity went out on Friday.  Christie called from outside, and I opened the backdoor to find the puppies playing tug-of-war with our bed sheets, which they’d pulled from the clothesline. Our high-thread-count, nicer-than-we-can-afford, we-received-them-as-a-wedding-gift and only-have-two-sets bed sheets.  My wife was slightly troubled.  [It didn't help that when the generator quit working an hour later, all the clothes in the washing machine were trapped inside, obviously wet.  Aah... the joys of an electric washing machine in a land of electricity rationing.]

When the generator quit — and I wanted to lie face down in the red dirt (where we’ve not yet planted grass) and beat my feet and fists in the mud while sobbing something about “my mommy”….  When the generator quit, these were all the things going through my mind.  I didn’t understand my feelings; I wasn’t sure if I was angry or sad, frustrated or afraid.

I called Carson and asked if I could charge my computer on his battery back-up system so I could do a little work.  Mostly I wanted to be able to say I accomplished at least one thing on Friday.  I packed the computer up and started walking to Carson’s house.  On the way I passed a young boy who asked if I would give him a ball.  I wanted to scream, “Does it look like I have a ball, you begging idiot?!”

Instead I told him politely that I didn’t have a ball.  He then pointed at the bottle of Coke Light in my bag and countered, “Well, then can I have a soda?  I see you have one of those.”

I told him I only had the one — and that it was for me to drink while I did some work on my computer.

As I walked away I realized it.  That I was experiencing culture stress.**  Under other circumstances I would have taken the bottle out of my bag, opened it for the boy, and given it to him.  But I was angry; the last thing I wanted was for one more person to ask me for a soccer ball or a soda, or for money or a job.  I wanted to leave Geita. Or at least lock myself in the (dark) house and refuse to answer the gate.

But I didn’t leave Geita.  And I didn’t lock myself in the house.  I went on to Carson’s house and told him I was having my first (and only, that I remember) culture stress event since moving to Tanzania.  Then I sat down at my computer (plugged in and charging) and got some work done.  I prayed while I worked, naming each and every one of these stresses and handing them over to God.***

After only a couple of hours, I felt fine.  And you’ll be happy to know I went on to accomplish as much on Friday afternoon as on any of my most productive days in Geita.

* Common occurrence as of late.  Electricity is being rationed.  For a couple of months it was as bad as 72 hours of electricity a week.  But lately it’s been much better — we’ve probably had closer to 100 hours per week, maybe more.  [To keep you from having to do the math yourself, there are 168 hours in a week.]

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** Lots of people and books speak of culture shock — with no mention of culture stress.  I’m firmly in the camp, though, that we ought to see the pressures of living in another culture (and the effects of those pressures), as being on a continuum.  And so, we all experience culture stress.  But we reserve the term ‘culture shock’ for more extreme cases, and not these singular and shorter-term bouts with second cultures.

I suppose I am blessed to not have too many of these culture stress days.  In fact I don’t remember feeling quite like this any other time in my life except the one day in China when I punched a bus that had brushed my shoulder in an attempt to convince me to cross the street faster.  The echo of my fist against the hollow metal of the bus was deafening.  And it caused a horrible scene, as the bus driver stopped in the middle of a very busy road and got off the bus in order to yell at me for hitting his bus with my hand.  I was the only white person around, two heads taller than anyone else.  And they were all staring at me.  I swore I’d never act out in anger at a cultural situation again.

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*** In light of recent discussions on prayer, I’ll be posting a very useful and practical prayer exercise a little later in the week.  For those of you who carry a great deal of stress with you, I think it will prove very helpful.

3 principles for training our minds

What you think about is important.

Lately I’ve been reading from Paul’s letters.  And I can’t get over how much significance he gives to our thoughts and our minds.  What we think about, and the way in which we consider it, greatly affects our lives — especially those of us who aspire to be like Christ. Here are three principles I’ve taken from Philippians 4:4-9 and Colossians 3:1-11.  The passages themselves are well worth a read.  But today I’ll leave you with only the principles.

Preface: The way I understand (and experience) it, there are three things on which I can meditate:  evil, the anxieties and concerns associated with the future, or that which is good. And Paul addresses how we should deal with our thoughts in each of these situations.

I Will Control My Thoughts

1. I will put to death all evil thoughts. Any temptation will be immediately dismissed from my mind.  When a bad attitude comes to my attention, I will deal with it both severely and with immediacy.  Sin will not be further entertained or regarded as having any value.
2. I will turn my anxieties into prayer requests. I will not meditate on my worries or concerns, but instead will offer them to God.  He is both able and willing to give me peace.
3. I will think on what is good and right and pure and lovely. I am to direct my mind and my heart to dwell on the things of God.

What’s On My Mind

• We (or I at least) have a tendency to believe we are not sinning unless we perform evil acts.  Whether it be lust, rage, greed, or some other sin, we convince ourselves it’s okay to think about it (consider it, even) — provided we don’t act on our thoughts.  [This despite Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount.]  I’m convinced Christians entertain far too many* sexual thoughts about women (or romantic ones about men) to whom they’re not married.  We hold anger tightly in our hearts as if it were meant to be there.  We spend much of our free time meditating on what we could do if only we had a little more cash.  We’ve become accomplished at keeping our hands clean — while our minds remain filthy.
• Some of us may have a tendency to tell others they shouldn’t worry.  I am sometimes extremely guilty of this.  I read Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 and don’t understand why some people worry so much.  ”Just don’t do it,” I think.  But that’s not Paul’s solution to ridding our lives of anxiety.  He doesn’t say to put these worrisome thoughts to death (as he says of sinful thoughts); instead he suggests we turn them into prayers to God.  We give our anxieties to God, and he exchanges them for peace.
• We think of “meditation” as a good thing (I think) — but it can only be as good as those subjects on which we meditate. Meditation on evil is sin.  Meditation on tomorrow is worry.  Meditation on that which is of God, though, is both healthy and beneficial.
• Thinking on those things which are good does not limit our thoughts to scripture, cuddly angels, and service to old people.  I’d argue it has more to do with recognizing God at work in the world, and doing away with this false dichotomy of spiritual versus physical.  God is present in all, and when we meditate on what is good and true, we see our relationships and daily activities in the light of a God-filled existence. That is good — seeing kingdom principles at work in the “mundane.”

A Few Practical Ideas

• Becoming a Christian isn’t a magical charm by which our thoughts are transformed overnight, or Paul wouldn’t have had to write these things. If we’re not actively working to train ourselves to think better, we won’t. We need a plan of action.  You need to develop one.
• When evil enters my mind, I say aloud, “Get away from me, satan.  I’m a child of God, and you have no power over me.” Or something like that at least.  And then I pray that God will help me to cast these sinful thoughts out of my mind.  [Many of us are open to the prayer part, but shy away from the speaking aloud bit. But I know for me...]  Opposing the devil out loud with words seems to be more helpful than prayer alone.  I believe there is much power in our words. [And it doesn't hurt that we're calling something sin out loud, and will therefore hear it called that as well.]
• I don’t worry a great deal.  Very rarely, actually.  I suppose it is a gift that God has given me; and I’m thankful for it.  But my best practical advice in this area, then, is not for those of us who worry, but for those of us who don’t.  We should have patience with those who do struggle with anxiety and worry.  Encourage them to hand every worry over to God.  Help them to turn those anxieties into prayers.  Don’t oversimplify it and discount their feelings by saying, “Just don’t worry.  It’s a sin.”
• I’m currently trying to think of ways to train myself to meditate on that which is good.  My best idea so far is to wear a bracelet (I don’t normally wear a watch or anything on my wrist).  For at least a time, then, I’ll not be able to forget I have something on my wrist.  And every time I notice it there, I will take a moment to think on God’s goodness in my life and to say a short prayer of thanksgiving.

Do you guys have some other thoughts on the subject — or better yet practical ideas for training our minds?

* Not that even one is appropriate.

don’t worry. share.

“This is why I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”

How many sermons have been preached from this text which offered as its primary meaning that we shouldn’t worry — and then went on to list all the situations in which we, middle-class America, tend to worry?  I honestly don’t know what “we” worry about, but I bet at least half the list can be summed up like this:

• Money to pay off our many debts, most of which came from making ourselves comfortable and ensuring we wear clothes, drive cars, and sleep in houses that are at the same level as those around us.
• If not money to pay off debts, we worry about money to set aside for our futures, to guarantee we can always live at [at least] the same level we currently enjoy.

I’m sure there are some deeper matters with which we’re concerned, but it seems money usually both tops the list and contributes to much of what is on the list.

But I think we’ve misunderstood this passage… on several levels:

The “do not worry” text immediately follows Jesus’ words not to store up treasures on earth, but rather in heaven.  He’s just explained the impossible nature of serving two masters — God and money.  Only after this teaching does he offer these words:  ”THIS is why I tell you, do not worry….”  Our passage about not worrying can only be properly understood in light of the passage about not storing up wealth and serving money as god. But we seem intent on using Jesus’ words “do not worry” to excuse our storing up of wealth — saying we simply shouldn’t be anxious about it, because God is going to take care of those things.  But Jesus isn’t promising in this text to send our kids to college, and he’s for sure not promising to help us pay off our expensive wardrobes and addictions to Starbucks.

Jesus is speaking here to the necessities of life:  whether or not we’ll have food to eat, water to drink, and clothes to wear.  First, I think he’s promising God will take care of the Christian’s most basic needs (and that God knows these needs better than we do).  And secondly, he’s saying it’s not our responsibility to store away in barns for our futures.  The point of the text is that we shouldn’t bank away wealth for our futures or be anxious about our fundamental needs.

When’s the last time your anxieties were about whether or not you’d starve?  What about whether or not you’d have to go naked?  We’re not talking about if you’d have the cash to eat at your favorite restaurant (mine… Conestoga in Dothan, AL) or whether your favorite jeans (mine… used Levi’s from the clothing market in Geita) would be clean in time to wear them to church on Wednesday night.

Here’s what I know for sure from this text:

I’m not supposed to store up wealth for my future.  And I’m not supposed to worry about my basic needs, because God will take care of them.

And this is what I’m not positive about, but am leaning towards:

Should those of us who are never hungry or thirsty be reading this text differently? As a part of the body of Christ who doesn’t worry about basic needs, should I be reading this text as someone called to meet these needs for others?  Instead of trying to understand this text as a call not to worry about my own life, should I be understanding it as an opportunity to allow God to keep his promises to others through me? Should I, as a member of God’s family, be making sure those who are seeking his kingdom and righteousness don’t have to be concerned about food and clothing?  Rather than stashing my money away in a bank or a barn, should I be using it to feed the hungry and clothe the naked?

I think that’s how middle-class America is supposed to read this text.