Wednesday, January 22, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>As in the early church, the desert Christians\nwere deeply committed to Jesus\u2019 teachings and lived practice. Their chosen\nsolitude and silence were not anti-social but a way to become better at\nseeing clearly and at loving deeply. Withdrawal was for the sake of deeper encounter\nand presence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of\nthe relationship between contemplation and action, Diana Butler Bass describes\nthe natural flow from solitude to prayer to active love: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those who went to the\ndesert, \u201ccome follow me\u201d [Matthew 19:21] was not an escape; rather, it served\nas an alternative practice of engagement\u2014the first step on the way toward\nbecoming a new people, a universal community of God\u2019s love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Their response to Jesus\u2019] \u201cCome\nfollow me\u201d was intimately bound up with the practice of prayer. For prayer\nconnects us with God and others, \u201cpart of this enterprise of learning to\nlove.\u201d Prayer is much more than a technique, and early Christians left us\nno definitive how-to manual on prayer. Rather, the desert fathers and mothers\nbelieved that prayer was a disposition of wholeness, so that \u201cprayer and\nour life must be all of a piece.\u201d They approached prayer, as early church\nscholar Roberta Bondi notes, as a practical twofold process: first,\nof \u201cthinking and reflecting,\u201d or \u201cpondering\u201d what it means\nto love others; and second, as the \u201cdevelopment and practice of loving\nways of being.\u201d [1] In other words, these ancients taught that prayer\nwas participation in God\u2019s love, the activity that takes us out of ourselves,\naway from the familiar, and conforms us to the path of Christ. [2] <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through their\nsolitude, the <em>abbas<\/em> and <em>ammas<\/em> learned to be\nsparing and intentional with their words and to preach more through their\nlifestyle than through sermons. There were few \u201cdoctrines\u201d to prove at this\ntime in Christianity, only an inner life to be experienced so the outer\nlife might be changed. Abba Isidore of Pelusia said, \u201cTo live\nwithout speaking is better than to speak without living. For the former who\nlives rightly does good even by his silence but the latter does no\ngood even when he speaks. When words and life correspond to one another they\nare together the whole of philosophy.\u201d [3] <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An old <em>abba<\/em> was asked what was\nnecessary to do to be saved. He was sitting making rope. Without glancing up,\nhe said, \u201cYou\u2019re looking at it.\u201d James Finley, a member of our Living\nSchool faculty, puts it this way: \u201cThis dance of infinite love is rhythmically\nplaying itself out in the rhythms of our life standing up and sitting down,\nwaking up and falling asleep. The rhythms of the day by day are the rhythms of\nlove given to us as this inherently sacred nature of life\nitself.\u201d [4] Just as so many of the mystics have taught, doing what\nyou\u2019re doing with care, presence, and intention is a form of prayer,\nthe very way to transformation and wholeness. There is no trick, no\nmagic formula to becoming one with Reality. There is only\nliving and, as you know, this is much harder than it first\nseems. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, January 22, 2020 As in the early church, the desert Christians were deeply committed to Jesus\u2019 teachings and lived practice. Their chosen solitude and silence were not anti-social but a way to become better at seeing clearly and at loving deeply. Withdrawal was for the sake of deeper encounter and presence. Speaking of the relationship between contemplation and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18551"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18552,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18551\/revisions\/18552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}