Orthodoxy discussion

Beginning to Pray Managing Time

I have to admit, I'm working on reading a chapter at a time, and enjoying it greatly, but I have a hard time remembering which chapter I read at home when I get to the office and have a few minutes to comment.

So, this one, I read this morning, and I remember the chapter name! Yay!

I loved this chapter - I can't speak for everyone else, but I know that I definitely struggle with time for prayer. I loved how he clearly showed how to carve the moments out for prayer, and especially that stillness and silence are part of prayer. I've always loved the Psalm verse, "be still, and know I am God" and I think that Metropolitan Anthony was able to really draw that out in this chapter.

It makes me want to learn how to knit :)

I tried knitting, and am quite good at it, but I didn't find it a good spiritual exercise... Well, not entirely true. You learn patience - especially when knitting lace and finding you've used the wrong stitch in the wrong place ::sigh::

Hello! I'm new to this discussion group. What book are you referring to in this thread? Sounds interesting.

Beginning to Pray, by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Best book on Prayer I've ever read. When I gave it to my husband to read, I longed for it so much, that I looked all over the net for an ebook, found it on Google Play. Now I can refer to it no matter where I am.

It is a short book, only 100 pages, but so concentrated. It's simple enough for the very beginner, and 'simple' enough (if you get my drift) for the very advanced. I'll be reading it daily for the rest of my life.

Ok, I will 'share' my difficulties with this book as with Fr. Seraphim Rose.

Books about Orthodoxy are difficult to read, much much harder than books like Middlemarch, which I just finished with another group, and frankly also harder than books about academics, research, or teaching, professional books which I review or read for my job. I did not used to struggle so, I used to just plow through stuff, so it's a recent issue.

The hurdle for me in Beginning to Pray was when he talked about what God would like from us (and forgive me, it was probably a month ago that I read this). He talked about God wanting your best and not settling for less, and it just hit me totally the wrong way. 1. how does he know what God wants from us 2. how does he know whether a prayer is effective or not, based on me being unfocused, or me wanting rush through it, or whatever my state of mind happens to be at the time.

One of the things that attracted me to to Orthodoxy when I entered the Orthodox Church exactly 10 years ago on St. Nicholas' Day was a lady I met in the Church, who is now a dear friend. Our family had adopted Trisagion Prayers for our morning prayers and one of my teens at that point was balking against it a bit. He didn't see all these things Orthodox being put into our family devotionals as necessary, and he didn't really want to partake. He thought the prayers were too long and wordy. My (at that point) new friend told me to cut the prayers back, to perhaps just do one Our Father in the morning instead of an entire Trisagion, for starters. She said that God delights in our turning to him, and that he delights in what little we turn towards him because he desires to be with us for our own good.

Those words of hers came back to me when in Beginning to Pray, Fr. Anthony was criticizing our prayers and talking about the sort of prayer that God would not like or that God wanted more from us, or that it was possible to pray in a way that God would not like.

And what hit me was that it's hard to say what God likes, and in some ways preposterous to tell someone that if you pray THIS WAY God will not like it, and if you do less than this or that God will not listen.

God wants our prayers. I don't know his personal 'mood' or state of receptivity relative to my effort or sincerity or distractedness. I don't think any of us CAN know such, which is why books on prayer, Fr. Anthony's included, perhaps overstep their authorities when they assert the exact frame of mind that someone has to be in for God to hear the person's prayer, or to be receptive to responding. (God is our loving Father, and while I am not sure my friend's assertion that God delights in our turning to him can be entirely substantiated in all cases and situations, I would venture that she is closer to the mark from my global understanding of Christianity).

More globally, I am realizing that books about spirituality are difficult to read and digest precisely because the topics they engage with are intensely important and also intensely personal. As for me, I am going through a time where I, when I meet an assertion I strongly disagree with--one that seems to form a foundation for much of what is said in the book, as in the case of Fr. Seraphim Rose and also here in Beginning to Pray-- I have a difficult time continuing in the book.

Perhaps someone has a few words of wisdom of how to carry on in spite of differences. It is frightfully 'protestant' of me to split off with every book I read as soon as the words on the page don't meet with my approval.

Help! Lene

"Beginning to pray" is so concentrated, that you have to take just a little at a time. Yes God is delighted when we turn to Him, but Bloom's point is that we have to turn to Him as a Person, in a relationship, not just treat Him like a vending machine.

It's not at all about God feeling a certain way about one's prayers. It's about one's attitude towards prayer at all. Do you remember why Abel's offering to God was accepted, but Cain's was not?

Pop a few prayers in the slot like coins, get your Godly goodies, or worse, complain when you don't get what you want, as if the machine was broken. Do you expect God to like that, when you are obviously capable and willing to devote more than that to a relationship with someone else?

We all get distracted in prayer, we all feel rushed and want to 'save time' sometimes. We aren't perfect, we are all beginners at this, and God still loves us. But we have to be aware, lest we end up praying as if it were a job for which we demand a paycheck. Essentially telling God, "Look, I'm just praying because it's on my checklist. Be satisfied with what I give You, because I just want to get it over and done with. Because You must understand, I care about other things more, and I don't want to be inconvenienced."

Would you go to your dear friend and say "I'm just going to say a few words AT you, while I'm thinking about someone else I'd rather be with, or something else I want to do. I'll just rush through this, because I have better things to do than be with you."

Does this help at all? I want to continue this convo, because this is a very common hurdle to overcome. It certainly was for me.

Long story short: one Our Father while you're really aware of God, is better than a whole Trisagion on your lips, while your mind and heart are absent. Being absent towards God, while still expecting Him to be present to you, (especially as He knows your heart, while a friend could be deceived) is not a way to build a life in God. That's all Bloom is really saying.

Does it help? Yes, I appreciate your comments, and I think in principle I agree, but my objection goes deeper than that. Its the ethos of the writer and his tone and his presumption to know what God will think of my or anyone else's meager prayers that bother me. Yes, ideally I should give my full attention to the prayer, ideally I should spend x amount of time, ideally I should love the Scriptures and lap up each word hungrily. But I don't always. And how that is viewed by God, I don't think anyone can really attest to. God only can see my heart and know what my focus is, what my distractions are, and how torn my being is with whatever is in my life. As such, he knows what I am capable of, or not, and whether I am giving this my best focus, or allowing myself to be straying with all sorts of other passions.

No, I wouldn't go to my dear friend and speak 'at' the person while I really want to be elsewhere. But my dear friend is there in the flesh, gave me a hug, and feels infinitely more real and tangible. (And even at that, we have all been absentminded, even when in the presence of other people we love dearly. Distractions are part of life.)

The very real question that I don't think Orthodoxy answers in one unified voice is whether it is better to go through my prayers and meditation time, however poorly and distractedly (because that is the best I can do just now), or whether it is better not to do them at all if that is all I can muster. And I profoundly disagree with Fr. Anthony there. I think it's better to stay in the habit through the
dry spots, because if we stop, we may get used to not doing it and totally abandon such practices. That is my first disagreement.

The second thing has to do with focus. Mental-spiritual focus is not something one can force. It is a discipline, and it needs to be learned, both with the body, the mind, and with the soul. I can purpose all I want... to be present and focus and be 'with' God, but because God isn't tangible in the same way my friend is, that focus that seeks his presence, that ability to be still is a discipline that I have to cultivate over time, or I will never hear his voice. I don't think that comes simply from being willing. I think that takes actual 'technique' and practice and endurance, and perhaps even distractedness that I learn the discipline of how to deal with that distractedness.

I also think, ... forgive me, I am arguing with myself, with my Orthodox experience, with the concepts... not with you ... that I love whatever little my kids have to give me. If one of them is out of touch with me, I am not angry with what little they give me and reject it (or if I do that is because i am a poo mom who is not secure enough to deal with their immaturity) I rejoice as they mature and learn to give. I don't sit in judgment of their immaturity. I understand that it takes time to learn to grow up. How much more so, God with us.

Lene

This is wonderful, that you're responding at such length. Only by going through and discussing objections can we get anywhere. I certainly do not feel 'argued at'. As long as you don't mind me listening, you can talk as long as you like.

Believe me, distraction is a huge problem for me! With God, with friends, and my family, including my kids (I have 5). One of my favorite images of prayer, is that of a toddler who picks weeds for their mom and brings them to her in grubby hands.The mom loves the weeds as much as she would a fabulous bouquet of flowers, because it was her own child wanting to give the best they could at the time. Bloom never says it's better to not pray at all in dryness, and he explicitly states to not try to fake what you don't have at the time. I don't think you are really disagreeing with him at all - could I be misunderstanding you?

I am as much a beginner at prayer and at reading Bloom as anyone, so please forgive any mistakes I might make, and please, pray for me as I will for you. As far as I can see, Bloom has nothing against weakness, nor the content nor distractedness of our prayer. What he focuses on is our deliberate attitude. We are all weak, all sinners, all beginners, all outside the kingdom; and prayer is a matter of growth; as he puts it, moving from depth to depth or from height to height.

He's not saying that you, Lene, aren't doing it right. It's more like this; the more that any of us think we're doing it right, that we've 'made it into the kingdom', the less likely that we really have. Sort of like thinking that the first waystation along the journey is the final destination. And yet, wherever we are on the journey, God desires to be present to us, and every step forward is worthwhile.

Bloom doesn't really talk about what God does and doesn't like about anything. He does say that any encounter with God is a crisis point. It's a potential life changer. The trouble arises that too often we come to God in prayer not as our real selves, open to whatever He brings, but as some 'pious' self-image of ourselves that we feel we must maintain; that we too often come, not wanting God Himself, but simply wanting something FROM him.

To Bloom, prayer is a gift of self, whatever real self we have to give at that moment. And in the beginning (and we are all beginners!) "all we can offer is the longing to be made such that we can be received."

Looking forward to your next, and to anyone else who'd like to join us!

He talked about God wanting your best and not settling for less, and it just hit me totally the wrong way. 1. how does he know what God wants from us

It seems to me that the only way one could make such definitive statements is when they are absolutely sure that they are in concord with the teaching of the Church, which by extension would be in concord with Scripture. On this point, I think Met. Anthony is correct.

I remember when I first met with an Orthodox priest, he told me that my journey into Orthodoxy would be difficult, because, as he said, "God wants ALL of you." Met. Anthony makes this same point in another book he wrote called "Encounter". The Gospels are full of teachings on how we must turn from the world and give our whole selves to God and each other.

That having been said, it is certainly true that we are all imperfect. We are all weighted down by the world and cannot pray as we ought nor love God or others as we ought, but this does not mean that we should be satisfied with our state or resigned to imperfection. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," said the Lord. We continually struggle for perfection and continually ask God's mercy for not attaining it.

My thoughts on this, anyway

Greg,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Allow me to (hopefully humbly and thoughtfully) not be in complete accord with what you echoed. Or at least allow me to question the parts I cannot substantiate (at least not just now).

God wants ALL of me.

My first question is where does anyone get this from?

And if that can be answered, I suppose there is the word 'wants' and perhaps you are not using it in the sense that it strikes me.

God wants all of me, just makes me think of a toxic relationship, one where I am not a free agent who can will or not will the degree to which I want to participate. "God wants all of me" makes me want out. But perhaps it is not so coercively meant as it sounds to me.

God desires for all of us to come to salvation, yes. God so loves the world ... yes. God does not will that any should perish, yes.

But ultimately we're looking at different ends of the same equation, perhaps. I am looking at the loving father who watches from afar for the prodigal to come home, not faulting him for being late or slow, just glad that he has come. God has many great desires for us, but he does not guilt or fault or shame... that is human manipulation.

We all have a history for our religious ontology and epistemology, and I do too. I am so totally done with shaming and guilting religion full of these obligations that men moralize and push on us based on their interpretations of what precisely God will or will not accept from any of us. I do believe the church has been given a path that we do well to follow, but the thief on the cross received none of the sacraments, and nobody would say that he was not invited.

Dear Lene,

Forgive me if I do not respond to all the points you raise, but I think that God wants all of us is clear. God gave us the command through Moses to love Him with all our heart, soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5), and the Lord emphasized this commandment while He was on earth (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27). Being sinful creatures, we are always holding back a part of ourselves, but we continue to strive, asking for His help and His mercy.

Coincidentally, I just heard what I think is a very good sermon by Fr. Pat Reardon on Ancient Faith Radio, where he addresses the whole notion of "self" and self-importance in our relation with God and others (http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/...). It's not exactly on the topic of our thread, but it seemed somewhat relevant to me.

- Greg

It's OK. I will back off of this one. I am arguing choices of words and impositions and ontologies, but obviously not well enough to be understood.

Lene

This is good, Lene, thank you. You seem to be wrestling with a great deal, and it takes courage to be open like this.

It seems almost as if you are reading a different book from us, or certainly reading through a different lens, one which is important for us to understand. We all need to be understood, or what's the use of being honest? It seems vitally important to you to not be told what God wants from you. You seem to want to be able to hold part of yourself back from God, as if the only part of you that really exists is that part of you that you can hold separate.

Please don't think of God as some larger, more powerful version of someone who has hurt you. Someone you can, must, hold at arm's length, to protect yourself. You mention plowing through stuff, but not being able to just plow through this, because it's so important.

It is important, and God is scary. He does want all of you, but not in the possessive, grasping, shaming, guilting, toxic, coercive way you imagine that we or Bloom think.

God will accept whatever you can bring to Him in prayer. Bloom doesn't talk about what God likes or not likes, what He will accept or not accept. He talks about what God IS, in relation to each one of us. He is the Physician - what good is it to us if we hide our symptoms, refuse to be examined, and don't want to know or take the medicine? He is Flame, and we the imperfect lumps of coal. We are afraid to get burned, but what God intends is not to consume us, but to release the divine spark from our heavy burden of sin, so that we can become flame, too, and fly. That is the process of divinization, or theosis.

And that's hard. It can't be anything else but hard. And as soon as it starts to feel easy, God will take away the training wheels, (and there are lots of sets of training wheels that come off one after the other) and we'll know if we have our balance. Scary. Like Bloom's dying friend, who finally could no longer move 'Godward', but had to wait patiently for God to step down to her.

Yes the good thief on the cross was not just invited, but told "Today you shall be with me in Paradise". But nothing is said about what kind of purification he went through on the way. That's because it's going to be different for all of us.

It's interesting, the Prodigal Son reference. The son did not feel the Father's love until he got home. He surrendered himself to servanthood, with no expectation that he would be elevated to his proper place. I wonder how many more of us than you and I have a certain expectation regarding the Father's love. Doesn't it feel natural and safe to feel this way about it; that we would like the Father to continue loving from a distance, and slaughter the fatted calf for us and send it to where we are, so that we don't have to come all the way home to get it?

Dear Lene,

Also, forgive me, but I did not mean to be dismissive, but I thought I should stop on your first point (i.e. God wants all of us?)

I saw your comments in your earlier posts about Orthodox books being difficult to read and I think I can agree with this in a sense. One essential part of the Orthodox life is finding a spiritual guide – usually a priest – who knows us well and can recommend things appropriate for our particular state and situation. For example, many people (I included!) coming to the Church become enthralled with the Philokalia and go off to read about hesychia and inner stillness, when perhaps that might not be the best place for them to begin, or perhaps not the best place to go without a guide. Despite all the canons and rubrics, there is a profound sensitivity to individuality and individual needs in the Orthodox Church that I don’t think is found elsewhere in Christianity. Usually when I set off to read something, I ask my priest for a blessing – not because it is required, but rather because (1) he might have a suggestion for something that is better for me and (2) because it is a form of obedience to the Church and, as one nun told me, the Devil hates when we obey the Church.

I am not trying to give any advice here (God knows I am not any kind of guide!) – just sharing how I deal with the difficulties that you raised.

I would like to recommend to everyone on the thread a 3-part podcast by Father Thomas Hopko entitled, “Teaching Doctrine in the World We Live In Today” (http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/...). I find myself listening to it again and again. Father Tom touches on some very key themes in our discussion, I think, including the pursuit of truth and of knowledge of God how He really is.

We are self-directed here and perhaps in a little bit of peril, but there are certainly less useful things we could be doing on the internet ☺.

- Gregory

Kimberly, Don't read too much depth of analysis into what I say. Correction, not afraid of God, or God's imposition at all. Afraid of being led astray by some man who thinks he knows exactly what God wants for everyone else, who gathers a large group of people under him and they follow his version of God. Which, is what Greg mentioned in his post above, the idea of the 'guru' (starets) who becomes a strong guide in our spiritual lives. That aspect of Orthodoxy is according to Dostoyevsky recently revived in the 1800s. I find it deeply troubling and dangerous. In discussing this with a theologian from St. Vlads, the person seemed to indicate that such obedience is only sworn by monastics, and is not something which should be engaged in (at least not to the point of swearing obedience) by lay people. This very issue was one that f.ex. Dostoyevsky criticized with in Brothers Karamazov as problematic. --- At any rate, Kimberly, I want to emphasize that it is not God I take issue with, but people's interpretation of my behalf of what my life with God ought to look like. Greg said it well above when he said that Orthodoxy is refreshingly able to look at the individual and his needs rather than shoehorn us all into the same box, and I say AMEN to that. Some of us wouldn't fit, otherwise.

Greg, Nothing to forgive. I was at work and penned a quick note. It was not a note of disappointment or boo hoo nobody understands me. It was more like, this isn't going anywhere, let me not bore you all if I don't make it clear or interesting enough to pursue.... and then my job interrupted and I hit send.

BTW - I agree with the notion of a spiritual father, but even there one must be careful in choosing. Man--even in the form of an ordained Orthodox priest in good standing--is sinful and weak and limited in his understanding and judgment (and perhaps this is my entire issue in a nut shell. I have a hard time reading all these contemporary Orthodox books because they remind me of Evangelical self-help, or 3 steps to spiritual success, or 4 ways to raise your kids, or 18 ways to have your prayers heard.... formulae--- and if you follow them, VOILA!! Here is success.

But I may well be too unconventional for this particular forum and the flavors that people are sampling and trying to discuss here. Certainly I don't want the conversation dominated by my somewhat marginal view of the spiritual life in Orthodoxy.

:) Lene

To even out with your Greg, I later thought of Christ's Thou shalt love The Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul.... that yes, that is the greatest commandment, and if that is what we ought to do, the converse might well follow logically, that that is what God would like from us.

Lene,
I love reading your views and if we were all of the same mind then there would be no discussion.
Relationships must have stones in them that continually rub together to smooth us out. We are all, in a sense, stones in an unconventional relationship here. Doesn't mean we will agree but that we will learn.
Z

Kind of you to say so, Zaina. You're totally right about not coming from the same views, and it's also hard to read other people and know where they are coming from. Electronics is a difficult medium for discussion, and the only basis we have is our own understanding, while we get to know the other people and their thoughts.

Lene, I'm really sorry. I spent this time in prayer, and rereading the book. I was trying to find the things that you said you objected to, because I'm trying to understand you. But all I found were the things that you seemed to want when you cried "help!" here.

There is no "this is what God wants of you". There are no self-help steps. Everything you mentioned that you object to, he does not say, neither can I 'hear' a tone or manner of speaking that would imply them. And what you say he should say, he does say, almost word for word.

In fact, he objects to the same things you do, even explicitly stating, on page 26, that "perusing manuals of prayer often makes him feel very uneasy." Is there anyone else here who can help us out of this confusion? I would be grateful for the help, and to be corrected where I am being blind. Lene, you could help us all understand if you could provide some actual quotes and page numbers of things that bother you.

I really hope that you can find a teacher, a spiritual father you can trust. As much of an autodidact as I am, I wouldn't trust myself to do surgery after just reading books about it; without being trained by someone who had actually done successful surgery on a body.

Have you ever found a book which helped you? Knowing the authors of such books would also help - I'm always looking for new recommendations.

Kimberly,
I fear I have caused you more work than my questions merit. I was simply trying to discuss the book by bringing up things I disagreed with.

I never mentioned not having a spiritual father (indeed I do have one) or not wanting to have a spiritual father, I merely commented on Greg's comments about a spiritual father, and that I would be wary about blindly following any human, which is a far cry from saying that I was opposed to having a spiritual father.

In fact, every single thing I objected to was an issue of nuance, not an issue of strong abject disagreement, Kimberly. And no, I do not, as you said above 'struggle so' with anything in particular in the Orthodox faith (at least not in particular with respect to this book, and no more or less, I am guessing, than any other Orthodox human).

I was trying to enter into discussion about a book, not out of a sense that I struggle mightily, but to discuss the interesting parts that I did not totally agree with, and in hope of delving into the nuances of what these things meant. I don't have any great need to be understood, so I am mostly responding to acknowledge your kindness in trying so hard to understand what I meant.... not trying to resurrect my arguments which don't matter. I am not that important and what I have to say is of no particular import either.

Your point is well taken, I should bring up the parts of the book to make my objections clear, but I cannot do so at this point, since I returned it to our church library, so I cannot comb through and give evidence, but I will certainly remember in the future to note specific passages, so that it is easier to follow what I am referring to. I apologize for not doing so. IN fact, I am the source of this sort of 'miss' situation, where I say one thing and someone who read the book in a completely different spirit see something very different from what I saw ...and... and likely also read what I said differently from the spirit in which I said it and what I meant by it... because you all do not know me well enough to see where I might be coming from.

But no harm done, just a case of not quite being on the same page literally or in spirit.

I thank you for your kindness, Kimberly, Lene