Thursday, December 22, 2011

Centered Prayer

My prayer life has taken a back burner to Christmas preparations. It comes to me in bits and spurts but it is not the supportive skeleton of my life that it should be, mostly a series of requests for family members and requests for me to choose wisely among the many things that I can do each day...still, requests. I am doing all the talking and it is always about "doing" and not about "being".

After a hiatus I again picked up Basil Pennington's "Centering Prayer" and found this beautiful prayer of the monk, Julian of Vezelay:

  • I pray that the Work of the Lord may come again today to those who are silent, and that we may hear what the Lord God says to us in our hearts. Let us silence the desires and importunings of the flesh and the vainglorious fantasies of our imaginations, so that we can freely hear what the Spirit is saying.

  • Let our ears be attuned to the voice that is heart above the vault of heaven, for the Spirit of Life is always speaking to our souls; as Scripture says, "A voice is heard above the firmament which hangs over our heads." But as long as we fix our attention on other things, we do not hear what the spirit is saying.