| NURTURING OUR INNER LIFE IN PRAYER AND QUIETNESS "We need to find God and He can't be found in noise and restlessness ... see how nature, trees, flowers grow in silence ... the more we receive in silent prayer, the more we give in our active life"
Henri Nouwen once said, "There was a time when silence was normal and a lot of racket disturbed us. Today noise is normal fare and silence is the real disturbance." Nowadays an eclectic, generic, spirituality is culturally and even academically in vogue, not only respectable, but pushed and practiced from many pulpits and disciplines. Practices such as soul yoga, spiritualism, zen, all promise peace within, through specific mind/body exercises. All are, however, predicated on specific assumptions, often pantheistic, about God and pathways to spirituality. Letting, "cosmic energies", or "getting in touch with the god within you", are not what Christian spirituality or developing the inner person as Christians, are all about. Nevertheless, Christians, especially "word" Christians (versus "spirit" Christians) have been at fault, for reducing their faith to a series of doctorinal propositions or rationalizations. As someone once said, "we can know a lot about God and not know God". A fiancee has a deeper "knowledge" of her lover than an outsider friend, even though the outsider may have much information about his friend. God, in Hosea, talks about the intimacy he wants with his people and he uses the example of underwear, in describing the hoped for closeness with his people. In counselling, when people come in with "burnout" or stress overload, a counsellor will present an array of stress management techniques, which are coping strategies that employ a variety of very helpful mind/body exercises, but omit a fundamental refocusing on our inner selves or what ultimately we are created for - "our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee" - which would lead to a richer, deeper joy and peace than simple stress management. In counselling couples, therapists, often find the amount of meaningful sharing time a couple have to be very little and therefore an emotional distance results. The amount of daily time we spend with God by most folks is often even less than their couple time. David in contrast (who had a few wives to care for) talks of meditating on God through the night (Psalm 63). Christian mystics, such as Teresa of Avila, describe one's soul so changed by simply being in the presence of God, in the experience of quietness and prayer. When Henri Nouwen was in anguish he found much inner healing and peace through a prayer of contemplation (versus one of requests) quietly, silently, meditating at length on God's love by viewing Rembrandt's "The Prodigal Son". At the same time it seems, at least in my experience, that when the goal in this process becomes stress management or relaxation, i.e. a freedom from something, it eludes us, but when a deeper connectedness or intimacy is our focus, i.e. a freedom for something, the consequence is peace within.
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