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Prayer as listening to God: Looking back at last year

Lynne Baab • Saturday December 30 2017

A year is ending. A new year begins in a few days. Newspapers and magazines are full of ideas for New Year’s resolutions, and how to keep them.

I wish more people wrote and talked about how to look back on the past year in a way that is fruitful and helpful. As a way to do that, I want to propose a prayer of examen for the whole year.

I wrote last week about Examen, an ancient prayer form that focuses on identifying where God was present and where we resisted God. The prayer has four movements, which I’ll describe and illustrate...

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Listening to God in Prayer: Noticing God’s Presence

Lynne Baab • Thursday December 21 2017

Have you noticed all the emphasis these days on mindfulness? Pay attention, people are saying and writing, to what’s going on right now in your life. Breathe. Be present and notice.

Christians have emphasized a form of noticing for centuries. In the ancient prayer of examen, we take time to look back and try to see the hand of God in our lives. Examen, like all contemplative prayer forms, is most effective when it is unforced, when we try to let our awareness of God float into our minds rather than forcing ourselves to review every event in an analytical fashion to...

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Prayer as Listening to God: Distractions in silent prayer

Lynne Baab • Wednesday December 13 2017

If we want to listen to God in prayer, we have to quiet our racing minds. Several metaphors involving water have been helpful to me as I have encountered the inevitable struggles with wandering thoughts during contemplative prayer.

The wandering thoughts can include worries and preoccupations about my own life or the lives of people I love, projects I’m working on that I can’t resist thinking about, noises or other distractions from the physical environment, or even analysis of the spiritual profundity of what I’m experiencing. These distracting thoughts are particularly common at the beginning of a quiet prayer time, but they...

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Listening to God in prayer: Breath prayer

Lynne Baab • Wednesday December 6 2017

The simplest form of silent prayer involves focusing on our breath. Slowing down our breathing has the physiological effect of slowing down all our systems, including our racing minds. Therefore, a brief focus on breathing at the beginning of any prayer time can be very helpful. Breathe slowly and deeply – from the diaphragm rather than from the upper chest – as you begin to pray, and you will often find it easier to relax into God’s presence, love, and peace.

After the initial slow-down using our breath, we can move onto another form of prayer, such as intercessory prayer, confession, thankfulness,...

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