This post includes a lot of prayer and God talk. If that’s not your thing, you might want to skip this.

I’m a fair way into my year of renewal and am keen to get more forward movement in the spiritual area of my life. With this in mind, I picked up several books on prayer and spirituality last time I was at the DML. As I promised myself, I’ve been working on establishing more routine in my days and once that feels embedded, I’d like to start trying some different quiet time practices. I hoped these books might help me make those plans more concrete.

I was keen to get into this one because I thought this might give me a bit of direction on what I should prioritise. I think it has. I’m a FIVE, which is a head-centred type. This book has six chapters. The first three chapters discuss the Enneagram’s foundations, describe each type’s characteristics, and then look generally at prayer, conversion and centring. The next three chapters examine the head, heart and gut-centred prayer. Confession: I read the first three chapters and the chapter on head-centred prayer. It is a quick read—especially if you only read the parts directly applicable to your type.

I do find the Enneagram to be quite helpful in understanding myself. For instance, the authors write, “These persons have a very difficult time accepting both aggression and affection. They are guarded and do not want the environs of their lives to be infringed upon.” This is an accurate description of me, and I think it’s helpful to be aware of your tendencies so you can make the most of your strengths and avoid the worst pitfalls of your weaknesses. The authors come to the heart of the issues in the chapter on head centred prayer (note the following concerns centering prayer, not other types of prayer):

The head centrered persons, living in their own inner space much of the time, experience within themselves an elaborate inner city. There is much richness within, ideas to be explored, plans to be developed, possibilities to be entertained, palaces to be visited. Entering into prayer for them, being present to the presence of God, is a question of restraining the natural desire that comes in the quiet to listen to and to follow the many voices within that begin to clamor for attention.

They offered the following practical suggestions:

• Genuine, focused meditation is required. This may be done by focusing on an outer object such as a cross, candle, icon, or mandela. They recommend choosing the symbol carefully and keeping to it.
• Another option is to use a repeated word or phrase. It is essential to focus on the meaning of the words. An example would be the Jesus prayer.
• When using scripture head centred types, naturally focus on a line or phrase in a passage—YES! (That is exactly what I do). They don’t fall easily into imaginative or affective prayer.
• Head individuals naturally move from universal concepts to particular ones, connecting what they read to scripture to their own lives.
• They do not need to be pioneers but will learn from the spiritual classics.
• Simple structures of prayer can be useful and freeing. It is easy for head centred people to use established forms.

So, do I think there is anything in this? The comments regarding focusing on a phrase and not falling easily into imaginative prayer certainly ring true. When I have been in groups or doing guided prayer focused on imagining something, I usually struggle and don’t find it that helpful. This year, I’ve begun my bible reading with the same prayer and also using Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book, which I’ve found helpful. I am keen to try using an object or phrase to help focus, which leads to the next book I read …

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This book is a collection of writings from Orthodox sources, with many of them concerning the Jesus Prayer. I have a heap of quotes from this one, so I think I’ll just pick a few and add my thoughts on each one.

• “It is here, in the ‘deep heart’, that a man comes face to face with God. … So long as the ascetic prays with the mind in the head, he will still be working solely with the resources of the human intellect, and on this level he will never attain to an immediate and personal encounter with God. By the use of his brain, he will at best know about God, but he will not know God. For there can be no direct knowledge of God without an exceedingly great love, and such love must come, not from the brain alone, but from the whole man- that is, from the heart. It is necessary, then, for the ascetic to descend from the head into the heart. He is not required to abandon his intellectual powers—the reason, too, is a gift of God—but he is called to descend with the mind into his heart.” – Uniting the mind with the heart was a big topic in this book.
• “In one spiritual authority after another, the Jesus Prayer is specially recommended as a ‘quick way’ to unceasing prayer, as the best and easiest means for concentrating the attention and establishing the mind in the heart.” – this ties in with the idea in the previous book of using a word of phrase to focus.
• “Being so very short and simple, the Jesus Prayer can be recited at any time and in any place. It can be said in bus queues, when working in the garden or kitchen, when dressing or walking, when suffering from insomnia, at moments of distress or mental strain when other forms of prayer are impossible: from this point of view, it is a prayer particularly well adapted to the tensions of the modern world.” – a way to keep Jesus front and centre as I go about my day.
• “From those who have experience in raising their mind to God, I learned that, in the case of prayer made by the mind from the heart, a short prayer, often repeated, is warmer and more useful than a long one. Lengthy prayer is also very useful, but only for those who are reaching perfection, not for beginners … it is better for me to pray to God briefly but with attention, than to pronounce innumerable words without attention, vainly filling the air with noise” – to begin it is better to spend a short time well than drawn out my prayer time but be unfocused.
• “The essential thing is to unite the mind with the heart in prayer. This is accomplished by God’s grace at the proper time which He Himself determines” and “Because all have grace, only one thing is necessary: to give free grace scope to act.” – I can’t make anything happen, but I can create a space to allow God to act.
• “Books cannot teach us inner prayer, they can only show us external methods for practising it. One must have persistence in performing it.” – this feels like a special message for me. Give it a crack and persevere!
• “You regret that the Jesus Prayer is not unceasing, that you do not recite it constantly. But constant repetition is not required. What is required is a constant aliveness to God—an aliveness present when you talk, read, watch, or examine something.” – the idea is to take your experience in prayer with you throughout the day.

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The final book I read is about Celtic spirituality, especially its emphasis on seeing and experiencing God in nature and how that was stifled by Augustinian stream theology. Celtic spirituality drew heavily on Johannine writings, which make room for an encounter with “the Light of life wherever it is to be found.”

Spiritual awareness, then, was about being aware of God in the midst of the change and movement and flow of life, in the rising of the morning sun, in the work and relationships of daily life, in the great struggles of society and nation, in alertness to the interior life of the soul, in times of rest and sleep and even dreaming.

I feel that this idea has been recovered in some (many?) parts of the church over the last few decades. I enjoyed learning more about the various Celtic Christian thinkers over the centuries.

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The first two books really helped me think through the next steps. Once my current routines run smoothly, I will introduce some time to practice the Jesus prayer. Note to self: start small and persevere!

Do you tend to read for learning or pleasure or a bit of both? Or is learning pleasure for you, like it is for me? Do you ever get stuck in the researching phase and fail to move into doing?