ken wilson online

There is a grinding inner world behind our eyes and between our ears.  Our thoughts being grist for some mill whose operator we only seem to be.  The thoughts themselves are often wrapped in anxiety, born along by fear, an unnamed and therefor wild dread, or thoughts that seem to suck the beauty out of life into the wormhole of boredom.  And this is why we pray and why we avoid prayer.  We seek to pray because of this, to escape it, or move beyond it; but when prayer simply leads us deeper into this grinding world, we avoid it.  Ecstasy is what we seek, to stand outside of all this, or within it, to peer beyond it. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been nearly two months now of meditating my way through the psalms in a more daily-disciplined way. Man, what took me so long? I’ve made my way through psalm 18, so far. But this post isn’t about a particular meditation so much as a reflection on how much we’ve been missing it when it comes to engaging the Bible. Jesus and those of his generation must have mainly engaged the Bible through times of meditation. They didn’t scarf down the bible through reading long stretches of it at a time. They couldn’t have, not having their own copies. The Bible they had was the Bible they heard from each other and the Bible they had committed to memory, itself a form of meditation. Which brings me, to my point: it’s time that we moved beyond the severe limitations of the words “conservative” and “liberal” as descriptors for the way we approach the bible. Read the rest of this entry »

Amy egged me on, so here’s more. The brain is where the God action is; if the body is the temple the brain is the holy of holies. The part of the brain that causes so much stress, burn-out, pre-occupation, is the overdeveloped fear-fight-flight response of the autonomic system, the amygdala, and associated structures. It’s the warning-alert system key to survival, so it’s been super-charged, but it goes overboard often. Hands get cold, heart rate increases, blood pressure rises. So much of our “ruminating” our overthinking is a response to this part of the brain doing it’s job too well. You get the nasty email from the co-worker on Friday at 5:30 and it sets you off, and you write and re-write your response to that email all weekend long in your head. Read the rest of this entry »

Listened to Lauren Winner lecturing Monday night. It’s a lovely thing how God speaks to us–straight into us, me that is–through another. My ears heard such speakings from Lauren: that time is meant to be inhabited rather than spent. (As God himself is meant to be inhabited rather than used.) And that to pray the psalms is to enter the prayer life of Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »

Second or third morning on psalm 6: I weary in my sighing/I make my bed swim every night/ with my tears I water my couch/From vexation my eye becomes dim/is worn out because of all my foes/Turn from me all you wrongdoers/for the Lord hears the sound of my weeping (7-9). Last night Ebony said it well, reflecting on the model of daily prayer she inherited: “I was expected to pray with weeping and screaming and bleeding, and I just didn’t have the energy for that on a daily basis.” Sometimes you just can’t keep up with these psalmists in the intensity department…. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning psalm 4 meditative reading, verse 4, “Quake, and do not offend./Speak in your hearts on your bed and be still.” An extended time of stupid thinking on “quake.” For all the concern about moral trespass in much of contemporary evangelicalism (for all its foolishness, yet the most vibrant form of Christian faith on the planet right now), there is little exhortation to quake. Somehow this lodged in the morning’s meditation. What does the psalmist know that I don’t that allows him to urge others to quake, as if they ought to? Can, on command? As if quaking is something one does, something that is part and parcel of knowing God.

Lectio seems to invite us to accept the experience of the psalmist and to see the world through the eyes of the psalmist. The meditative part is to suspend disbelief or criticism of the psalmist long enough to simply see the world through his eyes for a time. Like the movie Cloverfield, Read the rest of this entry »

I gotta say that this parking every morning with a psalm in the soaking sort of way is so very delightful. Having angsted over the communication part, it must be said, holy moley, why haven’t I spent my life doing this? It’s one of the curiosities of getting older. I stumble into something like this–a way of praying especially that connects especially and I feel this regret for mucking about for years with other kinds of praying that seem more like pious worry or introspection or something that required enormous amounts of will power to come back to next time. I must be a slow learner.This morning, it was the second part of psalm 3. Read the rest of this entry »

Experiment to blog on prayer continues, Monday morning. Meditating on Psalm 3. Lectio is different than studying a text or attempting to figure it out. It feels more like stupid thinking. That is a pondering the words, attentive to images or feelings that emerge from simply holding the word in one’s mind, if that makes sense. I think it requires learning first to be still and silent and ignoring most thoughts as distraction, which allows the brain to function at a different level, or one chooses to focus on a different level than the ordinary analytic thoughts one has when engaging a text. See, this is difficult to describe.

This morning, Psalm 3, vs. 1: Lord, many are my foes…..leads to an awareness of the raw or basic fact of foes. All of our ancestors were to some extent able to survive their foes long enough to mate successfully, at least. So there is something in me that is designed to guard, protect against, foes. This morning feeling the fact of that. In the polite company of civilization that basic human reality is submerged behind many layers, but it’s the raw human material. So, just being aware of that, like a band of early homosapiens surrounded by wolves, or other predators, including other humans. This brought an awareness that foes are simply a common experience of being human: my father fought in WW2, was surrounded by foes, as was his father in WW1, I just missed being drafted at the height of the Vietnam War. Read the rest of this entry »

But obviously willing to try–just uncertain about the outcome, or rather the effect of the process. Blog on prayer that is. My own. A treacherous business. But. But, I found myself emailing what was then becoming a new friend, nearly every morning as a kind of prayer confessional or journal a couple of years back, for about 15 months. Circumstances aligning to allow said emailing to be done with candor and as little caution as I’m capable of mustering (mustering a little of something?). I found it profitable.

I’ve never been able to sustain journaling. Partly because the word itself annoys me. And I’m playing with this blogging thing and know that it will only be sustainable if I hit two or three birds with one blog, so to speak. So there it is. And here it is the first day of a new year and circumstances have aligned to draw my attention to a practice I’d like to sustain over the next year. Knowing myself, if I can keep my attention on it, by speaking of it, if only to myself, chances are, I will sustain it and that I think would be profitable. Or least I’m curious to see if and how it would be.

The circumstances aligning are these: good friend, Rick gave me Michael Casey’s book Sacred Reading (on what catholics call lectio divina–but which I’d rather not call lectio divina, being annoyed by latin for frivolous reasons.) Dang, it’s a good book so far and has whet my appetite for this practice I’ve dabbled in–one can hardly pray for 30 years without stumbling the practice no matter what it’s called. Casey, though, makes the case that to be done with greatest profit, do it daily more or less, and stick with an entire book of the Bible, chapter by chapter, section by section, until you’re done. Instead of flitting hither and yon through the Bible. Something about his writer makes me trust that he knows what he’s talking about and has practiced it for years. And that he’s more a pray-er than a writer using prayer as his next project. And happily, he can write about it well. That, plus I’ve bought The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter, a Jewish writer and Hebrew scholar whom I also trust. Two trusted writers, two new books, a new year, hey, sooner or later, believing in God one has to decide whether he can get through with a little nudge now and again, and I’m deciding this is one of those times–that I’m being led to try this practice beginning with psalms.

So I began today–or tried to, but then the neighbors called for help with the snow. How annoying. But after removing some for and them, I got back at it. Psalm 1. “Happy the man…” Parked with happy for a while and felt it. Then happy the man. What a hopeful few words–that happiness and a man might walk together. And more came–a good start.