When we have habituated our minds to rest in God, finding God in the center of our being, undistracted and quiet, then we are able to listen like never before. We are able to see. We are able to find creative solutions to what might have previously baffled and confused us. I hope you will share in this journey of daily discipline and spiritual experience.

Some will dismissively call these mystical forays ways of escaping reality, but they are not that at all. The active, experienced Christian mystic knows that she is entering more deeply and fully into reality than she has ever before. And in that deeper vision of reality, she finds fulfillment and freedom that invigorates her activism.

Contemplation is not something we “achieve.” We fall into contemplation like falling into a river. Yet, to fall into the river is not enough. We need to learn to swim the river. We need to learn to stabilize the practice of centering prayer. This requires discipline. Any art form worth doing well, such as playing the violin, requires daily practice.

Since the spring of 1999 I have applied the discipline of an athlete to centering prayer, rarely missing my forty minutes of daily centering prayer and my extended yearly retreats. As my own practice became integrated into my busy life as a husband, dad, and minister I explored mystical texts of Christian tradition that spoke to me. I was amazed to find that silence, stillness, and mysticism are implicit in so many passages of Scripture. And I realized that silence and stillness are the starting points of the deepest prayer forms in Christian tradition.

One of the great contemplative books of the last generation is Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, by author James Finley. (A fortieth anniversary edition has just been published.) Finley writes, “Prayer never touches us as long as it remains on the surface of our lives, as long as it is nothing but one more of the thousands of things that must be done. It is only when prayer becomes ‘the one thing necessary’ [Luke 10:42] that real prayer begins.”

Our underlying communion with God in Christ through silent prayer and other contemplative arts matters more than the myriad divisions in our hearts and minds. It is the rock that can withstand any and all storms, and that revives us again and again. It is the exquisite unity we long for, which puts everything else into perspective. It is what our divided world needs to hear above the din of the factions and their spin doctors.

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Amazon is offering the kindle version of Be Still and Listen for $6.99.

Also by Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots

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Centering prayer, a term first coined by Thomas Merton, is a method of silent prayer with deep historic roots. Centering prayer is preserved in Western Contemplative tradition, most notably in The Cloud of Unknowing and in the teachings of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

Centering prayer was made contemporary in recent decades by Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating, William Meninger, Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, David Frenette, Phileena Heuertz, Richard Rohr, and many others. Perhaps the fourth-century monk Evagrius gave the best description of all, calling centering prayer “the shedding of thoughts.” It trains the mind to become free from thoughts and distractions so it can “rest in God” (Ps. 62:5).

A primary evangelical arm, so to speak, of contemporary centering prayer tradition is Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. Contemplative Outreach produces resources, facilitates centering prayer retreats worldwide, and administers a website.

Thomas, a disciple of Jesus and the apostle to India, taught that there are three vocations. There’s the active life, the contemplative life, and a mixture of the two. Thomas taught that the most exquisite path is the mixture. The contemplative life, focused primarily on liturgy and prayer, is suited to some, but is not the most balanced way. The active life, focused on work and efficiency, is also ultimately unbalanced. Thomas sought a combination of the two.

To skillfully serve God and each other we need a deep well of stillness and the unshakable interior resources that follow. From this interior well, we can drink and never grow thirsty (John 4:14). From this deep well of stillness we can satisfy the thirsts of this world. We can become people upon whom others can lean.

I’m amazed how many times I’ve seen Mary and Martha referenced by the Desert Fathers and Mothers and by The Philokalia writers. Jesus’s words, “Mary has chosen what is better,” affirms a contemplative approach to living (Luke 10:38-42).

For the Desert Elders the Mary and Martha story affirms the decision to renounce all and enter the desert. In the twenty-first century, the story sometimes simply confirms the decision to renounce the laundry and sit on the cushion for twenty minutes.

It’s not the desert, or the cave in the desert, or the cloister, or the monastery that ultimately matters. What matters is our desire to let go of all secondary busybody pursuits in order to pursue the spiritual life—in order to gaze upon Jesus, like Mary (Luke 10:38-42). “The hesychast, in the true sense of the word, is not someone who has journeyed outwardly into the desert, but someone who has embarked on the journey inwards into his [her] own heart,” says Kallistos Ware.

Amazon is offering the kindle version of Be Still and Listen for $6.99.

Also by Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots

Centering Prayer Course:  A Training Course for Opening to the Presence of God – Centering Prayer is a silent prayer practice that can move you toward a profound relationship with the Spirit of God within. It is a way of praying that opens the door to the Divine Indwelling—the ground of our being. With Centering Prayer, Father Thomas Keating and his colleagues Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler and Father Carl Arico present the first online course in this method for deepening your intimacy with God and ultimately consenting to the presence and action of the Divine in all aspects of your life.

A Quaker elder once told me, “There’s one thing that’s required of us: to do absolutely nothing and to do it very well.” When we do absolutely nothing in solitude—when, after years of practice, all thoughts are but a distant planet—then another dimension of life opens. It is a holistic dimension in the bosom of God. Thoughts plunge us out of delicious union as the unknown fourteenth-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing writes: “God may be reached and held close by means of love, but by means of thought, never.”

Beyond thought, words, images, and sounds, there’s unity. At first the unity feels like darkness. It’s darkness to our reasoning minds—to the left brain, which distinguishes and verbalizes everything. But when we frequent that uncomfortable darkness, we find home.

In her book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Cynthia Bourgeault writes that in the beginning the deep stillness of centering prayer is a place we go to. In time, it becomes a place we come from. It goes from foreign landscape to familiar homeland, like a lover who we’ve taken years to get to know.

Amazon is offering the kindle version of Be Still and Listen for $6.99.

Also by Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots

Centering Prayer Course:  A Training Course for Opening to the Presence of God – Centering Prayer is a silent prayer practice that can move you toward a profound relationship with the Spirit of God within. It is a way of praying that opens the door to the Divine Indwelling—the ground of our being. With Centering Prayer, Father Thomas Keating and his colleagues Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler and Father Carl Arico present the first online course in this method for deepening your intimacy with God and ultimately consenting to the presence and action of the Divine in all aspects of your life.

Contemplation can be defined as progressively quieting the mind. Contemplatives can be counted on to listen because their minds aren’t full. Their minds aren’t preoccupied. They are not distracted by broken records that play in the background.

It’s hard to describe someone who’s at home with prayer. There’s a quality about such people, a quiet composure and dignity. Someone who’s at home in prayer knows three words: solidity, peace, and freedom. Prayer orders priorities. It connects us with the love of God so that we can reflect that love in a consistent and reliable way. To reflect that love does not require know-how. It requires letting go and getting out of the way so that Light can shine through.

Contemplatives are people like Mary, who prioritize their relationship with God, and who courageously back away from the relentless vacuum of deadening busyness. Mary put aside her “duties” and made Jesus the priority. Then Mary laid aside her thoughts and opened herself to Jesus’s presence and utterances (Luke 10:38-42).

Amazon is offering the kindle version of Be Still and Listen for $6.99.

Also by Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots

Centering Prayer Course:  A Training Course for Opening to the Presence of God – Centering Prayer is a silent prayer practice that can move you toward a profound relationship with the Spirit of God within. It is a way of praying that opens the door to the Divine Indwelling—the ground of our being. With Centering Prayer, Father Thomas Keating and his colleagues Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler and Father Carl Arico present the first online course in this method for deepening your intimacy with God and ultimately consenting to the presence and action of the Divine in all aspects of your life.

One Veterans Day I listened to a World War II veteran on the radio talk about adversity. He went without food for a week or ten days at a time and was often so hungry he wished that he could rummage through a restaurant dumpster. On a march to a concentration camp half the soldiers in his platoon died. He and his fellow soldiers bartered in rubber and leather for shoe repair. Shoes meant the difference between surviving a march or not. For months they were forced to dig all day. If a prisoner slowed down, he was prodded with a bayonet. Prisoners worked six days a week, twelve hours a day. Many of his friends died of exhaustion.

One day the vet started to draw. In time, he searched for anything to draw on. Bits of charcoal became his pencils. Drawing kept him alive.

When he got back to the United States he spent a year in the hospital. The doctor said his heart had enlarged to twice its size as a result of poor nutrition and too much hard labor.

What amazed me was the veteran’s comment that he would do it all again. What? He explained that the reason he would do it all over again was that he was a different person now. The wounds of brutal imprisonment gave him renewed appreciation for the countless garden-variety blessings of everyday life. He also became a success in business. He said that most the people he knew who survived the concentration camps went on to success in their personal and professional lives. Adversity gave them perspective and tenacity. Nothing seemed hard compared to the hardships of the camps. And the suffering they endured made them empathetic.

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How to Write a Devotional: Plus How to Get Them Published – If you read devotionals, you already know how they can be a true blessing. A devotional can uplift you when you’re feeling discouraged, sad or lonely. It can allow you to feel a keen sense of fellowship with another Christian, even if the two of you never actually meet. And, if you are feeling called to write devotionals, know that you have a unique opportunity to bless others and make a genuine difference in their lives. This course takes you step by step through the process, and then guides you towards publishing, if that is your goal.

Drawing from the wisdom of monastic life, modern psychology and best practices in personal productivity, the Monk Manual provides a daily system that will help you find clarity, purpose, wisdom, and peace in the moments that make up your life.

For many Christians, the foot washing stands out as one of the most significant events in Jesus’ life. Jesus was known for teaching by example. So, we can’t miss the significance. Jesus does this downwardly mobile service before his final day. Thereby, he establishes the service model. Any who follow Jesus will follow in similar kinds of humble service.

The Jewish and Roman culture of Jesus’ time wasn’t a whole lot different from our own: the point of life was (and is) to succeed, or get on top, and once on top to stay on top, or else attempt to go further up. Salaries need to be ever-increasing. Houses need to keep getting larger. Vacations, longer. Perks, more of them. But here is a man who was in some ways already on top – who was rabbi, teacher, master to these disciples – who suddenly got down on the bottom and began to wash their feet. In that one act Jesus symbolically overturned the social order. Even his own disciples couldn’t comprehend it and were shocked.

Jesus wanted his followers to model downwardly mobile service with their lives. Jesus wanted us to approach the odious smells and the grime in between the toes, to get into the cracks and crevices of broken and dysfunctional human lives.

On the evening of the foot washing a dispute arose among the disciples as to who was greatest. Pointedly, Jesus did not deny the human instinct of competition and ambition. He simply redirected it: “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:26)” In other words, the dominion of heaven is based on downwardly mobile service.

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Amazon is offering the kindle version of Be Still and Listen for $6.99.

Also by Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots

How to Write a Devotional: Plus How to Get Them Published – If you read devotionals, you already know how they can be a true blessing. A devotional can uplift you when you’re feeling discouraged, sad or lonely. It can allow you to feel a keen sense of fellowship with another Christian, even if the two of you never actually meet. And, if you are feeling called to write devotionals, know that you have a unique opportunity to bless others and make a genuine difference in their lives. This course takes you step by step through the process, and then guides you towards publishing, if that is your goal.

Drawing from the wisdom of monastic life, modern psychology and best practices in personal productivity, the Monk Manual provides a daily system that will help you find clarity, purpose, wisdom, and peace in the moments that make up your life.