I finished reading Fr. Anthony Coniaris' Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia (Light and Life: 2004) this weekend. It is a modern primer on the intellect, the heart, thoughts, the unity of mind and heart, and the Jesus Prayer. Fr. Anthony combines a wealth of citations from the Philokalia, mixed with his own summations and some modern-day (and well-used) parables and applications. In terms of tone, this makes for an uneven work. But it is a useful work, or at least it has proven so for me. If one wants the pure air of the Philokalia, or the compilation, Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, and one's spiritual father or priest has given his blessing, then it is available for those who desire it. For the rest of us who aren't even beginners, Fr. Anthony's book is a useful and practical introduction.
I have already noted, in a previous post, some of the helpful patristic gems from the book. This morning, I want to continue sharing what I have gleaned.
Our minds, and definitely my own, are awash in a miasma of thoughts. Fr. Anthony notes:
Research at the University of Minnesota has revealed that the average human being has about 4000 distinct thoughts in a sixteen-hour day. This means that over a life span of seventy years a person has a total of about one hundred million thoughts. According to the church fathers the majority of these thoughts (logismoi) are not positive but negative due to our fallen nature. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 36)
Four thousand distinct thoughts a day--and somehow I am to unite these in unceasing prayer. St. Theophan both describes my present reality and the goal I deeply desire:
[Thoughts] continue to jostle in your heart like mosquitoes. To stop this jostling, you must bind the mind with one thought, the thought of God only. An aid to this is a short prayer, which helps the mind to become simple and united: it develops feeling towards God and is engrafted with it. . . . Together with this short prayer, you must keep your thought and attention toward God. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 30)
And if I can keep my mind-heart turned ever toward God, such a reality is most sweet.
St. Martyrius elaborated, "You should remember God at every moment, then your mind will become heaven." (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 43)
The present reality of my thoughts, however, is one fraught with sin and the passions, and the disordered soul. It is a constant, moment-by-moment struggle, not only against the thoughts arising from my own sinfulness and habits, but also those arising from the demonic.
St. Thalassios states:
There are three ways through which thoughts arise in you: through the senses, through the memory, and through the body's temperament. Of these the most irksome are those that come through the memory. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 47)
In addition, the Fathers teach that logismoi can come from the Holy Spirit, and also from the demons. St. Hesyhios:
The provocation comes first, then our coupling with it, or the mingling of our thoughts with those of the wicked demons. Third comes our assent to the provocation, with both sets of intermingling thoughts contriving how to commit the sin in practice. Fourth comes the concrete action--that is the sin itself. If, however, the intellect is attentive and watchful, and at once repulses the provocation by counter-attacking and gainsaying it and invoking the Lord Jesus, its consequences remain inoperative; for the devil, being a bodiless intellect, can deceive our souls only by means of fantasies and thoughts. . . .Intellect is invisibly interlocked in battle with intellect, the demonic intellect with our own. So from the depths of our heart we must at each instant call on Christ to drive the demonic intellect away from us and in His compassion give us the victory. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 62)
Fr. Anthony summarizes the progression as: a suggestion (prosbole), a dialogue (syndiasmos), consent (synkatathesis), and finally, the act and captivity, passion or obsession (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 63).
So, I must remain always vigilant (the discipline of wacthfulness or nespsis) if I am to experience the union of mind and heart, the union with the Holy Trinity, and the transformation of body and soul. St. Symeon the New Theologian writes:
In short, if you do not guard your intellect you cannot attain purity of heart, so as to be counted worthy to see God (cf. Matt 5:18). Without such watchfulness you cannot become poor in spirit, or grieve or hunger and thirst after righteousness, or be truly merciful, or pure in heart, or a peacemaker, or be persecuted for the sake of justice (cf. Matt 5:3-10). To speak generally, it is impossible to acquire all the other virtues except through watchfulness. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 82)
And St. Hesychios adds:
Watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer, as I have said, mutually reinforce one another; for close attentiveness goes with constant prayer, while prayer goes with close watchfulness and attentiveness of intellect. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 98)
In particular, we should guard our thoughts by guarding the senses. St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain writes:
St. Isaac has noted, the enemy is standing and observing day and night directly against our eyes to detect which entrance of our senses will be opened for him to eneter. Once he enters through one of our senses because of our lack of vigilance, then this devious shameless dog attacks us further with his own arrows. We must also struggle to protect our senses because it is not only through curious eyes that we fall into the sin of desire and commit fornication and the adultery of the heart, as the Lord noted. There is also the fornication and the adultery of the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of touch, and all of the senses together. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 69)
As St. Hesychios teaches us how to combat the logismoi:
The name of Jesus should be repeated over and over in the heart as flashes of lightning are repeated over and over in the sky before the rain. Those who have experience of the intellect and of inner warfare know this very well. We should wage this spiritual warfare with a precise sequence: first, with attentiveness; then, when we perceive the hostile thought attacking, we should strike at it angrily in the heart, cursing it as we do so; thirdly, we should direct our prayer against it, concentrating the heart through the invocation of Jesus Christ, so that the demonic fantasy may be dispersed at once. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 98-99)
Having vanquished such thoughts, however, we must not relax our vigilance, but we must remain on guard. St. Theophan the Recluse writes:
After every thought has been banished from the soul by the memory of God's presence, stand at the door of the heart and watch carefully everything that enters or goes out from there. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 69)
This seems an impossible and daunting task, but St. Philotheos of Sinai said:
Be extremely strict in guarding your intellect. When you perceive an evil thought, rebut it and immediately call upon Christ to defend you; and while you are still speaking, Jesus in His gentle love will say, "Behold, I am by your side ready to help you." (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 64)
And St. John the Dwarf adds:
I sit in my cell and I am aware of evil thoughts coming against me, and when I have no more strength against them, I take refuge in God by prayer and I am saved from the enemy. (Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 75)
This is a great comfort. I have a very simple yet powerful tool against which to fight the battle of impure thoughts: the name of the Lord himself and his promise to be with me always, even unto the ages of ages.
But as I confessed previously, I am torn. I have been greatly concerned about my use of the Jesus Prayer. I know it is to be prayed reverently and fearfully, not lightly or inattentively. Herein is my dilemma: my prevailing state of mind in prayer is chaotic thoughts and lack of attention. To pray the Jesus Prayer in this context is to risk praying inattentively, to, apparently, invoke the Lord's name in vain.. But apart from praying the Jesus Prayer, is there any other way to unite one's thoughts in the heart? It is like not being able to begin because I cannot accomplish that which is necessary and which I so greatly desire.
Abbot Nazarius has said about the Jesus Prayer that we should practice it always and everywhere:
The head and beginning of all virtues, is, to the extent possible, unceasing prayer to our Lord Jesus Christ, which is called, by way of abbreviation, the Prayer of Jesus; the Apostle says concerning it: Pray without ceasing (I Thes. 5:17). That is, one must call upon the Name of God always, whether we be conversing, sitting, walking, working, eating, or doing anything else. At every time and in every place it is fitting to call upon the Name of God. For by this means, writes Chrysostom, the temptation of the enemy is consumed. Beat the warriors, says St. John Climacus, with the Name of Jesus, and a stronger weapon you shall not find either in heaven or on earth. Praye is the banishment of sorrow and dejection, the germination of meekness and angerlessness, the offering of joy and thanksgiving; and innumerable good things are acquired through prayer. (Abbot Nazarius of Valaam: Little Russian Philokalia vol. I [St Herman Press: 1983] 66)
And he lived this in his own life.
The Blessed Elder was meek and humble, and his heart was aflame with love toward God, so much so that at no time would he cease to say the mental Jesus Prayer, constantly going over the knots in the prayer rope in his hand. "Let us pray with the spirit and let us pray with the understanding also, " he wrote to a nun. "Let us enter into the words of St. Paul: I had rather speak five words with my understanding than ten thousand words in a tongue (I Cor. 14:15, 19). I am unable to express how fortunate we are that we have become worthy to utter these five words. What joy! Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner. Just think! O Lord! Whose Name am I pronouncing? That of the Creator, the Founder of everything, before Whom all heavenly powers tremble! Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God! Thou has shed Thy blood for me, hast saved me, hast come down to earth. . . . Put your understanding and your heart together, close your eyes, raise your mental eyes to the Lord. . . . O sweetest and dearst Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God . . . ." (Abbot Nazarius of Valaam: Little Russian Philokalia vol. I [St Herman Press: 1983] 22)
But still, there is the deep concern that I not engage in vain babbling, that I do not carelessly pray the Jesus Prayer without attention. Yet, if I do not at least begin to pray the Prayer, how can I begin to gather my thoughts to attention and unceasing prayer?
Archimandrite Sophrony, disciple of St. Silouan, provided me the encouragement I needed, as he writes in His Life is Mine (SVS Press: 1977):
Often when we would pray the Jesus Prayer the mind is besieged by inopportune thoughts of every kind which distract the attention from the heart. Our prayer seems fruitless because the mind is not participating in the invocation of the Lord's Name and only our lips continue mechanically to repeat the words. But there is meaning in this influx of untimely thoughts: our prayer becomes as it were a shaft of light focused on the dark places of our inner life, revealing to us the passions or attachments occupying the soul. We learn what we have to fight against: we see the iniquities that sway us. And then we call all the more urgently on the Name of God, and our repentance is intensified, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me. (cited in Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia 101)
I have come to see my very praying of the Jesus Prayer itself as a training in doing the very thing I am called to do. The irreverence is not in the mere inattentiveness. I am a sinner bound by the passions I have invited into my heart and mind and soul and flesh. I have a mind that knows only the habit of chasing after unfruitful thoughts. So, though I am careful to pray the Prayer in moments when I can give such attention as I am able (while I am walking, on the bus or the el, as I am waiting in line; not while I am driving or speaking with my wife and daughters), I also recognize that it is part of the discipline that I chase after this wandering mind and return it to focus on Jesus and to offer such attention and devotion as I can now offer. By God's grace, and in time, each moment of attention will be followed by another moment, and another, until I learn, pray God, before I die, to keep that attention always on the Lord, and learn, at last, to pray without ceasing.
(Please note: That one should always discuss these matters with one's spiritual father or priest. My own unworthy words and sinful example are to be ignored in favor of the pure wisdom of Christ in the Church the and example of the holy saints and elders and fathers the Lord has given us.)
I have begun reading one of the books I purchased at Eighth Day Books on my trip home: Fr. Anthony Coniaris, Confronting and Controlling Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia (Light and Life Publishing, 2004). (Note: all quotes will be from Fr. Anthony's book.)
To borrow the title of a blog out there in the 'sphere, it is a holy whapping. When I read the words of St. John of Kronstadt, it nearly brings tears to my eyes. I stand convicted and laid bare. This is me:
St. John of Kronstadt talks about people who "call prayer that which is not prayer at all: for instance, a man goes to church, stands there for a time, looks at the icons or at other people, and says that he has prayed to God; or else he stands before an icon at home, bows his head, says some words he has learned by heart, without understanding, and without feeling, and says that he has prayed--although with his thoughts and his heart he has not prayed at all, but was elsewhere, with other people and other things, and not with God."
Dear Lord, forgive me. In the words of the Liturgy, "help me, save me, have mercy on me, and keep me, O God, by thy grace." (This, by the way, is a prayer much-prayed as I go about the day. An "arrow-prayer.")
I have been, in my life, especially in the very beginning of my journey toward liturgy, the daily office and the historic Church, back in 1989-1990, a great connosieur of spiritual literature. I took great satisfaction in that I was much unlike, so I thought, my school and ministerial colleagues, who were either focused on rationalistic doctrine or pragmatic techniques for numerically growing their parishes. Not me. No, I cultivated the inner man.
There was some pride in this, of course, but there was much sincerity. I tried very hard to live what I learned, and persaude others to do so. There were the texts of Richard Foster, Thomas a Kempis, Madame Guyon, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius of Loyola. Yes, in 1991 I even read The Way of a Pilgrim. These things did help my prayer life. But it was almost entirely intellectualized or emotionalized. It was not real spiritual knowledge, largely because I did not move such knowledge from my head to my heart. As St. Maximus the Confessor says:
When a man has not received knolwedge by grace, even though he calls a particular thing spiritual, he does not know its true character from experience. For mere learning does not produce a state of spiritual knowledge
Such knowledge is unattainable by me in my own natural gifts. I cannot save myself. Nor can I attain to spiritual knowledge on my own effort.
A soul can never attain the knowledge of God unless God Himself in His condescension takes hold of it and raises it up to Himself. For the human intellect lacks the power to ascend and to participate in divine illumination, unless God Himself draws it up--in so far as this is possible for the human intellect--and illumines it with rays of divine light. (St. Maximus the Confessor)
Thus, any talk of progress is foolish. I am not responsible for, nor able to actualize, anything like progress in the faith. I am called to pray, to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. But I cannot move myself, or grow myself, or accomplish this union of my mind in my heart.
That does not mean I must sit passively by and wait for it to happen. God works in me both to will and to do his good pleasure, but I am to work out this salvation he is accomplishing in me.
I have quickly discovered the hard truth that this is a rigorous battle in and with the whole man, body and soul. Praying the Jesus Prayer is not just about the spirit. It is about the entirety of who I am. I will only be healed when the intellect, the chief intuitive organ which both knows and experiences God in his energies, is enshrined in the heart, adoring the Lord who is to reign from there, and bringing the whole soul and body into union, and into union with God in Christ.
Our heart is, therefore, the shrine of the intelligence and the chief intellectual organ of the body. When, therefore, we strive to scrutinize and to amend our intelligence through rigorous watchfulness, how could we do this if we did not collect our intellect, outwardly dispersed through the senses, and bring it back within ourselves--back to the heart itself, the shrine of the thoughts? . . . Do you see, then, how greatly necessary it is for those who have chosen a life of self-attentiveness and stillness to bring their intellect back and to enclose it within their body, and particularly within that innermost body within the body that we call the heart. (St. Gregory Palamas)
"Let us attend" is the exhortation in the Liturgy. If I must be called to attend to the heavenlies that are present to me in the worship of the Church, how much more so throughout my entire day? Let us attend. I will say it again: I am finding that this bringing the mind into the heart is, well, exceedingly difficult.
You must descend with your mind into your heart. At present your thoughts of God are in your head. And God Himself is, as it were, outside you, and so your prayer and other spiritual exercises remain exterior. Whilst you are still in your head, thoughts will . . . always be whirling about like snow in winter, or clouds of mosquitos in summer. . . . All our inner disorder is due to the dislocation of our powers, the mind and the heart each going its own way. The mind must come to an intitial concord with the heart, growing eventually into a union of the mind with the heart. (St. Theophan the Recluse)
My life in God has been lived largely in my head. I do not know what it means to focus my attention in prayer. My thoughts do buzz about like gnats. In my prayers I am elsewhere with other people. This morning as I was praying the Jesus prayer so as to, as St. Theophan the counsels, warm my heart for prayer, I finished and I was stung by how often and how quickly my mind strayed. Before I could finish the first word of the prayer, I was thinking about work, or about the logic class I teach tonight. I would force myself to attend again to the words, but even before the next couple of words were out of my mouth, once again my mind was off with my wife and daughters, wondering if Sofie would be getting up soon or Anna would bring Delaina to me to watch. When I was done with the Prayer, I was almost in tears. I was physically invoking the almighty Lord of the Universe, him who gave his life for me, and I could not watch with him for even a few seconds. I ignored him for other thoughts.
O Jesus, save me.
Fr. Roman Braga, priest of the Dormition of the Mother of God Orthodox Monastery, has said:
Prayer is something to be practiced; you do not speak about it. It works mysteriously. (On Prayer of the Heart: Excerpts from Exploring the Inner Universe, by Fr. Roman Braga)
He was speaking about a movement of intellectuals in Romania who sought to renew the practice of the Jesus Prayer, but surrounded it with a whole theology and intellectual activity. Fr. Roman, himself a prisoner in the Soviet Communist gulags, and in solitary confinement for several years, notes that the Prayer is not about theories or theologies, but about practice.
I’m ashamed to say that I was forced to find myself in prison. I had some ideas about prayer . . . , but it was mostly theory about what prayer is; but there in those difficult moments I confess that I started to recite the Jesus Prayer and practiced it intensely. Only then was I able to discover how beautiful the interior life of man is. I liked it very much. A couple of months before I discovered this, I thought that I would go crazy because the solitude was a total break from the world with which I had been so much involved. And you know that our culture is oriented outside ourselves; it is a cosmological knowledge directed toward existence outside ourselves. Now I needed a method to find myself, to liberate myself from the slavery of the books, because there were no books there. It is not an exaggeration to say that in freedom we become slaves of the books; we do not have time even to know who we are because we are made out of quotations....
So I struggle to reflect on the Jesus Prayer, to talk about it but not to theorize on it. To pray and not to theologize.
But to do so I must, as the Fathers teach, descend with my intellect into my heart. Here is the beginning of my problem. For I do not know how to do this. If I think too hard about doing it--if I'm asking myself as I pray, "Is my mind in my heart?"--I immediately turn my attention away from praying the prayer. As St. Ignatius writes:
[T]he Jesus Prayer should be recited loud enough that you can hear yourself, without any hurry, and by locking the mind into the words of the prayer. (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, "On Practicing the Jesus Prayer")
So, I focus on the words. Which means I am chasing my mind all over the place to lock it into, to focus it on, the name of Jesus and his mercy to me.
St. Theophan the Recluse tells me that this placing of the mind in the heart can remain with me all day, in all I do.
It is wrong to think, as some do, that prayer of the heart requires that one sit somewhere hidden away and by this means contemplate God. There is nowhere one needs to hide but in one's own heart, and having established oneself there look upon the Lord before you, as if He were at your right hand, as did King David. (Prayer of the Heart: the duty of those living in the world)
But despite my efforts--walking to the busstop or sitting on the el--I lose whatever momentary focus, whatever fleeting reality of placing my mind in my heart, that I might have gained in my morning prayers. St. Theophan does give me one aid in keeping that union of mind and heart: what Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim called "pain of heart."
Everyone has had the experience that when someone is pained at heart over something, it doesn't matter if he finds himself in the merriest company, he hears nothing, he sees nothing; instead, he sits alone with himself in his heart. If this is true of earthly concerns then why shouldn't it be possible also in spiritual life? When someone is afflicted by pain of heart relating to this worldly life, what can distract him from dwelling on this pain in the solitude of his heart? It follows that one need only establish this [inner] solitude m order to be alone. and from this point it is not tar Stir up the fear of God, and you will experience the most contrite pain of heart which will cement the attention and the feelings to the "one thing needful," and in this way we shall come and appear before the face of God. Here, then, is solitude!
I dare not say that there has even yet been a nanosecond of reality to the descending of my mind in my heart. How could I know such a thing, as prayerless as I am? How could one who has lived so long in his mind speak meaningfully of the prayer of the heart? It is not only foolishness, it is deadly pride. So I stay silent and struggle on, with the hope that St. Theophan gives:
The spiritual life is a life in God, and God shows particular care for those who seek it. Only be zealous--and you will find everything necessary nearby.
I have had it pretty easy these last few years when it comes to the daily practice of the Faith. My investigation into Orthodoxy has been one of growing understanding, feelings of blessedness, a growing love and devotion to the Holy Trinity, the Church and the Mother of God. I certainly have had the waxing and waning of feelings and motivations to pray, and I have had periods of time when I have consistently failed to pray. I have had similar experiences and feelings when I was still a Restoration Movement Christian in Bible College, and as an Anglican.
I have also had moments of ongoing and deep pain as has been my lot these days, such as when my parents' marriage finally dissolved during my last couple of years of college, the same time that Grandpa Healy died. And I have had times of great financial need, as the time when the campus ministry I served ran out of funds to pay me, and I moved back to Kansas where I was doing temp work in Lawrence.
But I have not experienced quite the unremitting opposition within myself to all things of the Faith that I am now experiencing and have for some few months. It is not that I find the things of our Faith distasteful. Indeed, my desire for these things is greater than it has been. But there is in me this great struggle just to pray.
Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim has written of the struggle to live one's faith:
[T]he less you think of spiritual life in the abstract and the more you are just struggling in the labors of daily life, praying according to your strength . . . the better for you. Orient yourself towards zealous Orthodoxy, and then just struggle from day to day, and God will give you wisdom. (Letters from Father Seraphim, p. 133)
Readers of my blog will recognize that I have groused about how my faith is often so much of the mind that it does not get down to the heart. I have prayed since this past spring that through the prayers of Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim and the Great Martyr Katherine that I would be able to unify my mind in my heart. Perhaps it is time for these prayers to start being answered. And all I have is now, this present moment in which to work these things out. I do not have the luxury of time. I cannot wait till my mornings are regularly free of childrearing obligations and noise and distratction. I cannot wait till I finally become Orthodox. I cannot wait till I am more mature in the faith. I must work out my faith with fear and trembling now, for now is the day of salvation. Fr. Seraphim also writes:
"We are told by the Holy Fathers," Eugene [Fr. Seraphim] explained elsewhere, "that we are supposed to see in everything something for our salvation. If you can do this, you can be saved."In a pedestrian way, you can look at something like a printing press which does not operate. You are standing around and enjoying yourself, watching nice, clean, good pages come out printed, which gives a very nice sense of satisfaction, and you are dreaming of missionary activity, of spreading more copies around to a lot of different countries. But in a while it begins to torture you, to shoot pages right and left. The pages begin to stick and to tear each other on top. You see that all those extra copies you made are vanishing, destroying each other, and in the end you are so tense that all you can do is sort of stand there and say the Jesus Prayer as you try to make everything come out all right. Although that does not fill one with a sense of satisfaction (as would watching the nice, clean copies come out automatically), spiritually it probably does a great deal more, because it makes you tense and gives you the chance to struggle. But if instead of that you just get so discouraged that you smash the machine, then you have lost the battle. The battle is not how many copies per hour come out: the battle is what your soul is doing. If your soul can be saved while producing words that can save others, all the better; but if you are producing words that can save others and are all the time destroying your own soul, it's not so good." (Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, p. 380)
One of the things that I have begun much more intentionally and regularly to do is to pray the Jesus Prayer. Fr. Patrick, The Way of a Pilgrim and many Fathers counsel me to disregard the esoteric, all the breathing exercises, all the surface experiences and focus on the simplicity of praying the prayer with attention.
[T]he Jesus Prayer should be recited loud enough that you can hear yourself, without any hurry, and by locking the mind into the words of the prayer. (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, "On Practicing the Jesus Prayer")
Indeed, quoting St. Isaac, St. Ignatius writes,
"Mental prayer," [St. Isaac the Syrian] continues, "is the result of much vocal prayer, and mental prayer leads to the prayer of the heart." (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, "On Practicing the Jesus Prayer")
So, I say the Jesus Prayer. I try to locate my mind in my heart, but what do I know of these things? I followed St. Theophan the Recluse's counsel and said the Jesus Prayer several times prior to my morning prayers this morning. I did, indeed, find my attention much more focused than yesterday when I just prayed morning prayers. Is the focus, the warmth in my heart really the fruit of my labors? Who knows? It is more likely my own self-deception inventing feelings and experiences. Mine is not to wonder about these things. It is only for me to pray the prayer and try to do that which I have no personal knowledge of. I simply trust in God, trust in the prayers of Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim that I not be misguided and be led to the true practice of the prayer. I can lead no one. I am no one's example. Everyone should seek the counsel of their parish priest and spiritual father and disregard my own words.
But I struggle on. Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim, pray for me a sinner.
More resources on the Jesus Prayer and making a prayer rope:
Jesus Prayer Area on Monachos.net
The Jesus Prayer, a pamphlet by Fr. Steven Peter Tsichlis
How to tie an Orthodox Prayer Rope
Though I have no doubt that some of my Orthodox readers are aware of Fr. Joseph Hunneycutt's blog, Orthodixie ... Southern, Orthodox, Convert, Etc., others of my readers may not be. It's a great blog from an Orthodox priest and former Episcopalian. Quite possibly the best thing I've ever read from Father Joseph, is his post on the prayer of St. Ephrem, O Lord & Master of My Life ....
Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.
I'm not sure if it's coincidence or not, but yesterday the Light & Life catalog came in the mail. There were a couple of books featured that piqued my ad hoc interest: Confronting and Controlling Your Thoughts According to the Fathers of the Philokalia and Thoughts and How to Confront Them.
No, I'm not hearing voices in my head--though some of you may well wonder. No, my problem is much less interesing and far more vexing.
I can't keep myself focused during my prayers. From "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" to "Through the prayers of thy immaculate Mother . . ." my mind is all over the map. As soon as I bring it back to attention, it flies off again. Apparently it's far more important to try to remember which bills are due next than it is to praise the Holy Trinity. From the way my thoughts go during prayer, you would think it's much more critical that I contemplate whether or not to splurge and buy a coffee at work today than it is to intercede for my family and friends.
Sheesh.
This was a problem when I was still reading my prayers. I could read them straight from the book, start to finish, and realize when I finished that my mind had been off somewhere else the whole time. So I memorized the prayers. This helped immensely. I learned to try to move my mind into my heart--still trying that--and it was so helpful to focus on the words.
Now it's the memorization that's the problem. I turn on the "machine" and blam, when I'm done I've finished the grocery list, added three items to my "to do" column, and daydreamed about Sofie going to grade school. So I pulled out the prayerbook and tried reading the prayers again. It helped . . . a little.
Again, I keep trying to "rassle" these dang flighty thoughts, but with almost no success. As soon as I grab them, they wriggle free.
I suppose the good news is: I'm normal. The bad news may not so much be bad news as just a slightly overwhelming reality: It's going to be this way for a long, long, long time.
Does God accept these futile and flimsy prayers of mine? I think so. I sure want him to. Sofie pays far more attention to me than I do to God. What must God think of my own attention to him? Or, rather, inattention.
Pray for me, a sinner.