Higher Forms of Prayer

In preparing for my presentation tomorrow at United Methodist Women, I've been reading Jeanne-Marie Guyon material. (each month I speak on a different historical Christian woman)  She lived in France from 1648 to 1717. She wrote books and taught after she became a widow. You can look her up, but I want to focus in this post on a bit of her ideas on prayer:

There are two means by which we may be led into the higher forms of prayer. One is Meditation and the other Meditative Reading. By meditative reading I mean the taking of some truths, either doctrinal or practical — the latter rather than the former — and reading them in this way: 

Take the truth which has presented itself to you, and read two or three lines, seeking to enter into the full meaning of the words, and go on no farther as long as you find satisfaction in them; leave the place only when it becomes insipid. After that, take another passage, and do the same not reading more than half a page at once. It is not so much from the amount of reading that we derive profit as the manner of reading.

We might call this Lectio Divine or Divine Reading, which I adore.

Context is essential in understanding almost anything, any time or any person. There she was in a seemingly impossible context - imagine the horrified men who indignantly asked what made a woman of all things think she was capable of teaching men? I love it when people rise about their prescribed roles, one of my favorites is Hildegard of Bingen. So Madam Guyon is another heroine to me.

Her ideas of the two primary ways to higher prayer are meditation and meditative reading and are in agreement with my experience. Ordinary prayer of many people is something like a list to Santa Claus - give me this, give my friend that, etc. Mystics usually end up saying something like Thy Will be done. 

Meditation is the stilling of the mind with various techniques from mantras to focusing on one's breath. It is the stilling of the background noise, the yaya, the judgments, the stream of nonsense that runs in the background of many people's lives. It is the negative soundtrack of one's life. I often say that in order to hear the wee small voice, we have to turn off our noise.

Meditative reading is a big part of my spiritual practice. Officially it is recommended that we randomly open a book of scripture or some spiritually oriented book, read until a line grabs us, savor it, reread it several times. Be still and let it roll around in your mind, maybe one word at a time. Then write in our journals whatever comes to mind. The whole process is maybe 5 minutes. Mme. Guyon suggests a longer reading, up to half a page, and as long as it takes. I think both ways are useful. The idea is that Spirit leads us to deeper understanding of the passage, and helps us to sort of mine it for new and varied ways to understand. There are many ways to look at, to understand, everything.

Let's practice. Read the verse slowly a couple of times. Read each word and be still with it for a moment, then go on to the next, etc.:

Be still and know that I am God.

Be...

still...

and...

know...

that...

I...

am...

God...

Be still and know that I am God

I know that if you do this meditative prayer, you will nestle into God in new and surprising ways. You'll not be the same. Your understanding will expand and deepen. I urge you to add this practice into your daily devotions if it is not already there. Godspeed.