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 »

As a younger believing pray-er I got it into my skull that sensory input during prayer was somehow verboten. Even though I read the Bible through my eyes, uttered words that I could hear with my ears, nevertheless, somehow the use of the senses was restricted, or so I assumed. But life beats you up, and it either softens or hardens you, and either way it tends to wear you out, until you’re ready to loose your grip on some unexamined assumptions. So several years ago, I began to “cheat” in prayer by using my senses more intentionally. Lighting a candle, and, looking at the flame. Playing some background music that lifted my heart or calmed my nerves. Don’t make fun of me, but I found a bar of soap with myrhh and some of the other biblical oils in it. And kept it nearby for prayer. Because we’re permitted to be human while praying. 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 »

Talking to experienced blogger Garret who suggested I distinguish between”praying brain” blog entries and  “lectio” entries.  Makes perfect sense.

On the praying brain: I love reading science, especially on the emerging understanding of what is happening in the brain during prayer, especially of the mystical variety.  Prayer is something everyone does but few people understand or have a vocabulary for what’s going on when we pray.  Much prayer is experienced by the person praying as a kind of pious anxiety: a mulling over one’s problems or the problems of those for whom we are praying with a vague sense of aiming the mulling in God’s direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Psalm 7 this morning, and something accumulating or dawning already in this slow motion walk through the prayers of these psalmists. When it comes to content, how polite my prayers are in comparison to theirs.  All these years of skim reading the psalms doesn’t  do  the difference  justice.  But the discipline of lectio lets you slip into the mindset of the  psalmists.   And you realize these lads are praying  straight from the amygdala, the reptilian complex, the limbic system, or some of the most primitive parts of the brain. Read the rest of this entry »

Of course it figures that I’m a U2 fan. Went with daughter Grace and two other friends to the IMAX yesterday after a funeral, the dear brother of a dear friend. So the heart was already well pummeled over and tenderized. The movie is about as close to the concert experience as is possible. The sound was enormous. And again, as at every other U2 concert (four live ones under my belt, hoping for more) there is this liturgical quality in the best sense–a joining with others to experience one’s self beyond the borders of one’s self, which is, so far as I can tell, the quivering nerve of mysticism. (You may drop out from this post now if you’re in a cynical, or even a sober-minded mood, because this will only get worse…..) Read the rest of this entry »

Second or third morning on psalm 4, Robert Alter translation. I’m still intrigued by the process or way of praying that is meditative rather than analytic. Which is not quite the way of saying it because thought is happening. But it’s more like awareness. Stupid thinking. Or very slow thought. The thoughts don’t cascade as in normal thought mode. Whatever it is, it’s a different way of being inside your head, and it’s an important way of being inside your head. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday morning prayer is usually about the sermon. So rather than mediate on a psalm (4 is up next) I let things spin out from the sermon, third in the happiness series on the role of focused attention through gratitude and pondering-dwelling on the good as forms of meditation. Mechanics of prayer this morning: lit a candle, read over the sermon notes based on Philipians 4: 1-9, then closed eyes and gave myself over to the focused attention practice of gratitude (meaning decided to spend a chunk of time in prayer to let my mind/heart/brain focus on things I’m thankful for.) Read the rest of this entry »

Day 2 of psalm 3 for lectio. Still on the first few verses, Robert Alter translation: [arggh, difficult to write it in Word Press the with the poetic stanzas–alas!]

More awarenss of the ubiquity of foes; it’s not me, it’s just part of being human. We were wired, our brains that is, to react to foes of all kinds, so the “fight and flight” response, alarm, and all that is a major part of our inner life. Read in the NYTimes today an article about terrorism. The chances of being killed by a terrorist are equivalent to one’s chances of drowning in the toilet. But the fear of terrorism has a discernible, measurable efffect on increased heart disease risk. Even with major terrorist events, more people are likely to die of the effects of the increased fear, which wears out the body faster. So alarm, fear, and things like cortisol released in the body when fear is happening are a big deal. All generated by our inward response to the presence of “foes.” Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s been a couple of weeks blogging. A few impressions. I’m more hopeful that this is valuable (to me) than I first thought. It does have the effect of keeping a journal, though I can’t say that it’s nearly as candid as a journal. But it does help me to be a little more attentive or mindful of my own life, and it has the effect helping me to focus on things I want to focus on. The categories feature, for example: I have to really think twice before committing to a category and ask whether it’s a passing enthusiasm or something I want to pay attention to over the next year, say. Read the rest of this entry »