September NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #94
A true prayer is one that you do not understand.
— St. Anthony of the Desert
St. Anthony of the Desert said, “A true prayer is one that you do not understand.”
This short, curious phrase has been a beacon of not understanding for me. What is this sanctified desert rat getting at? What is it about not understanding that I need to understand in prayer?
Let me walk up to this form of prayer from four different directions.
I.
Beguine mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp has this to say in a poem.
“May your life
Be nothing
But burning longing
Until at last
You live
Annihilated in him.”1
Praying without understanding makes you are a burning log close to the fire of God. Unmistakenly touched by the flames, but not annihilated in them yet. With edges singed you cannot pretend to be in control or live in circumstances separated from the fire. In true prayer you have no comfort or certainty to cling to. You are a naked log before the elements. A longing, a homesickness, for the Beloved silently burns inside without definition or direction as incarnational incense mingling before the fire of God. This is the soft flame of true prayer.
II.
When perplexed—without hope or clarity—an unforceable and anguished sigh is true prayer. No promise of what comes next. The wrecking ball of reality continues to swing.
III.
A prayer that I do not understand is routinely dropped off by words and then picked up by silence waiting in the background. Words are vehicles of meaning that only get me so far. After words, where do I go with the silence that is always present? I am silently praying, but what does that mean? Thoughts still pick the lock of my mind’s front door and parade clear through my unkempt palace. These intruding thoughts touch everything they can get their mitts on in an effort to get me to cling to them before they are blown out the back door. The bustling uninvited thought guests make a mess as they try to make themselves at home. How do I respond to parading thoughts in prayer? Without reasonable solutions. Invoking a sacred word. Reciting a mantra. Repeating the prayer of the heart. Exercising rhythmic breathing. Does doing so help me understand what I don’t understand? May it be so.
IV.
Another way I think of not understanding my true prayer (it is ok if you do not understand, we must each find our own way to not understanding our true prayer). Words drop me off oceanside, to sit like a rock outcropping; settled, jagged, still, and in silence. This is not idle. I am consenting to be present in this in-between space, touching land and water, in high tide and low tide, exposed to the whimsy of the elements. When I sit like this, I am sitting like an ancient boulder on the ocean’s edge and welcoming it. The Unseen Unborn Guileless Perfection reaches out as waves in the reality of the moment. Some days breaking over me, surrounding me, and submerging me. Other days gently lapping at the edges. Other days still, I remain as dry as the red chile hanging on my porch.
When the waves break over me they surround and submerge me, changing the shape of my being. Immersed and expanded by this oneness, this is powerfully done unto me and yet ever so slightly, in ways I do not understand. Then when the water is lapping around me, each movement is tranquil, tenderizing my mesial but leaving the extremities. Sure, I can predict high tide and low tide, but I cannot understand how I am being formed by this stillness. And when dry, for weeks or months at a stretch, the wind howls and longing fills this absence. I can barely take it. Is one bead of sweat infused with enough oceanic memories to mark me? Does the trail of sweat dripping down my body cool and salt my being with further longing?
Is it comfortable to sit between ocean and land? No, my seat is wet. I am aware of each jag in my body. Do I know why I come? I come to sit in a wet seat and be aware of each jag in my body in the oceanic oneness and my perceived separateness. What do I hope to get? What is there to get? When I sit here my unknowing is held with a tenderness from a beyond as close as my breath, as inevitably present and invisible as the salt-tinged moisture hanging in the air.
“A true prayer is one that you do not understand.” This is why we show up in practice and ritualize it. Words we understand, but silence is baffling because it refuses punctuation in the Mystery. Words only take us so far in prayers. So let us drop them off here. Silence saturates our longings for God. As the poet Carolyn Forché says, “the silence of God is God.”
Contemplify is born out of unknowing. My desire to create and share it is drawn from a well not of my making. Contemplify is habituated into my rhythms, seeking for myself and kindred spirits alike to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. Thank you to all who support this orison by means and presence in the Contemplify offerings (podcasts, NonRequired Readings, Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practices). For those who wish to support Contemplify through monetary means, press the button below. Becoming a paid subscriber is a kindness that humbles me and keeps the microphone plugged in. Some folks want to support just for the sake of supporting Contemplify (a long reaching high five to you, folks), but paid subscribers are also automatically invited to the weekly Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Session on Wednesday mornings. Good, clean, unglamorous contemplative fun. Hope to see you there (see the footnote if you want to join the weekly practice but do not want to become a paid subscriber, always happy to add more practitioners).2
September NonRequired Reading List
A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis by Susan Murphy. (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
You have likely come across Buddhist koans in your reading, like, show me your original face before your mother and father were born? Or what is the sound of one hand clapping? (that was my first introduction via a Simpsons episode). Koans offers stories of encounter or paradoxical inquiry that pierce beyond the rational thinking mind. Susan Murphy Roshi has written a marvelously poetic, intimate, and wise book on climate crisis delivered by koans. I ran out of ink in my pen taking notes.
Our planet is ailing, much harm has been done thanks to underthought and overconsumption of western humanity since the industrial revolution. A Fire Runs Through All Things focuses its energies on the ways we can engage in clear acknowledgement, safeguarding, and healing of our shared planet. This begins with the ‘self’ through a grounding principle from Dōgen Zenji, “When you know the place where you are, practice begins.”3 Knowing the ‘self’ as a koan discovered in a place, the book expands to introduce climate crisis as a koan itself. Murphy deftly encourages readers to not get stuck in the mud of certainty, but walk the wayward way of not-knowing with Zen koans as guideposts of engagement.
In A Fire Runs Through All Things the Zen tradition partners with the legacy and teachings of Australian Aboriginal wisdom, specifically from Uncle Max (Dulumunmun) Harrison, a Yuin Elder, who taught from the unbroken and distinct Country (a magnanimous word that is difficult to define fully, but you can hear Susan communicate its depth in our conversation here.)
A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis is for contemplatives who seek a perspective on climate crisis that honors the complexity, necessity, and possibility of being a part of the healing of our ailing planet.
Practicing The Way : Be With Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did by John Mark Comer (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
I am embarrassed it took me this long to read John Mark Comer. His work had been recommended to me on a few occasions, but I wrongly dismissed him as a lightweight evangelical. That was my mistake. There is a profound simplicity in the Practicing the Way; Comer builds momentum from the jump on the theme of apprenticing to Jesus. By taking the model of apprenticeship, the seeker learns their craft by closely tailing their teacher, watching their moves and being guided by their practice, listening with a deep lean in, and finally taking on the work themselves when readied. I still remember an undergraduate professor saying to my class that apprenticeship was the learning model that has the most potential to effect the whole person. Comer invites readers to span the two millennia gap with this apprenticing approach to Jesus.
John Mark Comer writes with most welcoming words that have a slyly sharp focus, “Disciple is a noun, not a verb.” Pay attention to become one. He is teaching a contemplative way and practice inside of evangelical Christianity. By sidestepping political dog whistles, retrograde Christian theology, and contemporary contemplative teachers, Comer is preaching the slow transformation that follows in the way of Jesus to a very large audience. And he never says it is easy. Quoting mystics, saints, and Orthodox with ease on theosis, hospitality, and prayer—this is not the evangelical Christianity that I dipped out of. At the end of the book, there is an outline and invitation to create a rule of life (check his non-profit’s elegant website to build your own). My hope is that his next book will gather the guidance, goodness, and wisdom of what communities of have learned by trying to live this way together.
Practicing the Way is for any contemplative who still exercises their faith in evangelical Christian context or those raised as evangelicals who seek a different sign of life in their tradition of origin.
Contemplify Update
Season Five is sweet on the ears. And a few more to come. As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are the four most recent episodes of this season.
Jeffrey Martin on Thank God We Left the Garden, Letters, and Literature (Season 5, Ep 8)
Susan Murphy on Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis, the vast meaning of Country, and Cooling Fires (Season 5, Ep 7)
Drew Jackson on Touch the Earth, Poetry as a Lifesaver, and the Importance of Lucille Clifton (Season 5, Ep 6)
Tracy Cochran on the Art of Presence, Mistakes as Practice, & the Grief of Awakening (Season 5, Ep 5)
All episodes are available from Contemplify through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts worth their salt.
Arts & Articles
THE HOLY ORDINARY by the Community of the Incarnation (Community of the Incarnation): Join the Community of the Incarnation (my new monastic community) for an engaging online conversation with a vowed member Mark Longhurst, author of The Holy Ordinary: A Way to God, a new book that explores the availability of every person to a contemplative life. Co-hosted by Adam Bucko, Director of the Center for Spiritual Imagination and Kris Coleman, Program Director, this online event promises to be a space for reflection, inspiration, and community as we gather to explore the sacred in the ordinary moments of life. Register here.
THE UNIVERSAL FIRE by Jeffrey Foucault (jeffreyfoucault.com): When Jeffrey Foucault puts out an album I rejoice with a pot of coffee and the knowledge that a fine purveyor of musical craft and lyrical intelligence still has a place in this world. Listen, buy, or gift Foucault’s latest, The Universal Fire here.
LIGHTHOUSE by Sierra Ferrell (YouTube): Getting to catch Sierra Ferrell in concert recently was luxurious. Her voice carries a song to that high lonesome call beyond joy and sorrow. When she played ‘Lighthouse’ I once again found myself with tears streaming.
A BALLET THROUGH MUD by RZA, Colorado Symphony & Christopher Dragon (Apple Music): RZA is of one of the founders of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan. During the pandemic he filtered through old notebooks of lyrics from high school and was inspired to take the themes to a new space, classical music. Check out the album wherever you get music or order you copy here.
When prayer is true
I stand
under it,
not
under-
standing,
catching
what I would
otherwise miss.
Dropped off by words,
Paul
All Bookshop purchase links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and to Contemplify. Big thanks.
Hadewijch of Antwerp translated by Andrew Harvey, “September 23” in Love is Everything: A Year with Hadewijch of Antwerp (Medio Media, 2022), p.317.
Contemplify never wants money to be a filthy barrier to practice. So if you want to practice weekly with this contemplative basecamp at Lo-Fi & Hushed but aren’t able to offer support (no sweat!), follow the instructions here to email me, would be thrilled to have you practicing with us.
Susan Murphy, A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis (Shambala, 2023), p. 24.
Thank you Paul.
I thoroughly enjoyed your chat with Susan Murphy. It was wonderful to hear her talk about the meaning and importance of Country to Indigenous Australians. So much wisdom to learn from.
I must also thank you for the Sun House recommendation. It took a while for my copy to arrive in Australia; but it’s been hard to put down since- this book makes me feel alive.
A similar quote from Evagrius “The monk who knows that he is praying is not truly praying; the monk who does not know he is praying is truly praying”