Article from Epistle to the Presbyterians, November 2005
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A few days ago, forty-three of us gathered in the fellowship hall of the church for the first in a series of three Monday night workshops on contemplative prayer/meditation/centering prayer led by Steve Phelps, the pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Buffalo. It was everything for which I had hoped, and more. Steve, having been engaged in this practice of prayer without words for over twelve years, teaches from experience. Contemplative prayer is important, as I tried to say throughout the summer in my sermon series, because it is one of the best ways I know to touch in with the “Ground of Being,” with the God of the Universe who is common to all human beings. Contemplative prayer strips away the outer structures of religions that can, sometimes, obscure God and divide practitioners of various religions. I do not mean that we can or should do away with religion or religions for we learn and experience much in our faith communities without which we would be significantly diminished. But the practice of contemplative prayer/meditation/centering prayer is remarkably similar no matter the religious faith of the practitioner and is a reliable pathway that virtually all of the world’s religious traditions agree leads to communion with God and even, sometimes, union.
I have had a mixed history with contemplative prayer. I have engaged in meditation for periods of my life and then I have let the practice lapse. There are two things that Steve said Monday night that particularly touched me and will fortify my practice of prayer without words. But they moved me, too, because I think they are applicable to worship and thus can be of value to all of us whether we practice prayer without words or not.
Steve said that we should enter into contemplative prayer without particular expectations about what is going to happen or what we want to get out of it. For those who want to develop a practice of wordless prayer, Steve suggests contemplative prayer periods of twenty minutes each twice a day. And he told us simply to think of those times as giving up twenty minutes to God. That’s it. No other agenda. No specific expectations. Just give up twenty minutes of our day, of our life, to God. Steve said that if we expect nothing specific, then God is very free to “speak” and “act” in us.
The other thing Steve said that I found so helpful is that “the fruits of the prayer are not in the prayer.” The prize of contemplative prayer is not normally to be found right away within the twenty-minute prayer times, but in the reformations and transformations that occur in our lives, sometimes noticeably so and sometimes imperceptibly, as a result of our times of meditation in which God has free sway in us.
Here are the applications I would make to our worship: Do not come to worship with particular expectations of worship or wanting to get something out of it. Do come expectantly, knowing that worship is invaluable and irreplaceable in our lives. But do not come with pre-determined expectations or with any designs on getting something specific (like a particular feeling) out of it. Rather come with the idea that you simply are giving these sixty (or seventy!) minutes to God. Just do it, just come to worship week by week by week. No particular expectations. And making no judgments about it when you leave, for none of us knows at so early a time what from a service may take root in us that did not seem to “do anything for me” in the moment or what might evaporate almost instantaneously even though worship that day “really moved me.”
The other application is that the fruits of worship are not in the worship. The worship hour is not a thing-in-itself nor an end-in-itself. Worship is not over when you leave the sanctuary. Worship in its function is like the parables that Jesus told. They are not intended to be understood all at once. Parables continue to work their teachings and wisdom in us on many levels over an extended period of time. So, too, worship. Worship is not intended to produce an experience of God during the worship hour (though that may happen from time to time); worship opens us to God for all the moments of our lives. Worship works in us far past the worship time we spend in the sanctuary which is why, whether we know it or not, we are greatly impoverished if regular, consistent worship is not a part of our lives.
Contemplative prayer. Worship. They are not so much about producing moments with God as preparing us for a whole and mature lives in God.
© 2005 First Presbyterian Church