John Eldridge writes that sometimes, “We see God as a means to an end rather than the end itself. God as the assistant to our life versus God as our life. We don’t see the process of our life as coming to the place where we are fully his and he is our all.” Eldridge affirms my own sense that religious people frequently chose a reward-centered approach to faith that focuses on piety as a path to procuring privilege and power (which are then used to oppress others). But Jesus invites instead into a relationship-centered faith in which what matters most to us is the love we give to God and neighbor, not any goods we might gain from God or neighbor. Too often Christians solely pursue a religion of the head (what we believe about God) or the legs (what we achieve for God) or especially the hands (what we receive from God). But Jesus invites us to pursue a religion of the heart (how we cleave to God). God may indeed be the means to many things. What God desires most, however, is to be the end of all things.
The distinction between reward-based and relationship-based approaches to spirituality manifests itself in many ways. One is the way we pray. The way we pray can either feed a reward-centered faith or cultivate a relationship-centered Christianity. Our posture toward prayer may either push us nearer toward a spirituality in which God is simply a means to an end. Or it may lead us closer toward a spirituality in which God is the end. And the more we experience God as an end in himself the less likely we are to eventually use him as a tool by which we treat ourselves and traumatize others.
One form of prayer designed to focus exclusively on spirituality as relationship is called centering prayer. With roots extending as far back pre-Christian Judaism, centering prayer was popularized by Thomas Merton and his fellow Trappists Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington. Gustave Reininger reveals that African American spirituality, with its unique emphasis on mysticism and experience of God in the earthly ordinary, makes a significant contribution to the place of centering prayer in modern Christianity. Howard Thurman–author, philosopher, theologian, educator, civil rights leader, and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr–portrays the heart of centering prayer in his piece “How good to center down!”:
How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.
With full intensity we seek, ere thicket passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;
A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos.
We look at ourselves in this waiting moment—the kinds of people we are.
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—what are the motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices?
Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? Over and over the questions beat upon the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all of the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!
Jesuit author Mark Thibodeaux explains centering prayer in relational terms. Imagine, he says, the connection and conversations between himself and his Aunt Sally while he was growing up. They passed through four seasons of conversation:
- First, when Mark was a shy toddler who was afraid to speak and didn’t know what to say when Aunt Sally came to visit, Mark talked at Aunt Sally. He used words provided by his mother: “Mark, tell Aunt Sally how old you are”; “Mark, tell Aunt Sally what you’ve been doing at home today.” Today’s liturgical prayer is similar to this. We used words provided by Scripture or other saints to express our devotion and desire to God.
- Next, after a few years, as Mark gained greater confidence in himself and in his connection to Aunt Sally, he talked to Aunt Sally. Now when she entered his home for a visit, he couldn’t stop talking! He had so much to tell her that his words went on and on and on. It never occurred to him that she might have something to say as well. For many of us, this is our most common experience of prayer. An informal conversation open to anything we wish to share with God.
- This led to the third season in the relationship between Mark and Aunt Sally. Mark slowly began to listen to Aunt Sally. While he continued sharing a lot he also created quiet space for Aunty Sally to talk while he listened. Prayer as listening may be the least practiced yet most needed form of prayer.
- The final stage in their relationship was the most intimate. As she grew old, and became frail, Mark would visit her. Often, he simply cherished just being with her. Neither of them talking. Both of them just savoring the presence of the other.
Centering prayer is the fourth stage of prayer. It is silently and simply being with God. It is a quiet confession that what matters most to you is a hushed and unrushed relishing of and reveling in God. It’s prayer as sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair next to God and just rocking time away with him. It’s prayer as reclining at a table with God and hot tea or coffee and just enjoying the idle time together. It’s prayer as walking quietly through the woods or across the plains and delighting in all God’s created.
Centering prayer is silent prayer. But it’s important to note what its silence is not. Barbara A. Holmes–spiritual teacher, activist, and scholar focused on African American spirituality–writes that “Silence isn’t the word that I often use. Just simply because of the problem for people of color, and women, who have been silenced… I tend to use the language of stillness, of centering, and of embodied ineffability.” We come quietly before God, not because our silence is forced, not in the manner of the oppressed. We come in stillness because we ache to simply adore our Father, our Brother and our Spirit.
Centering prayer puts into practice the principles proclaimed in the psalms:
- He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. (Psalm 23:2)
- Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! (Psalm 37:7)
- “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10)
- For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation..For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. (Psalm 62:1,5)
- O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. (Psalm 131:1, 2)
In serenity and quietude we stop seeking something from God and instead start seeking only God. Martin Laird writes that “Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower, the fledgling’s for flight, and the child’s for self-forgetful abandon and joy.” We are home when we are resting in God. It’s the space for which we were made.
Centering prayer is a form of prayer uniquely empowered to help you experience and express your faith and spirituality as relationship-only. With no words spoken, there are no temptations to turn the moment into a self-centered shopping spree. With no words uttered, there is no chance the Evil One can twist the time into a self-focused frenzy that ultimately results in the supremacy of self over all others. In the calm, we rest contentedly in God. We find ourselves satisfied with God. We fall in love all over again with God.Take twenty minutes each day for several days to be peacefully in the presence of God. Savor the Savior. Dwell with the divine. As distracting thoughts surface, acknowledge them and return to God. If it helps, use the imagination God created you with to conceive your Creator. Use sacred art if you find it beneficial. The important thing is just to enter into a space of speechlessness and stillness during which your entire world revolves around God.
