Dialogue 4: The Prayer Takes Hold

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season nine of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to the anonymous author of The Way of a Pilgrim. And I'm here with Jim to discuss his fourth session in the season. Welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:38)

Yes, it's good to continue on together with The Pilgrim.

Kirsten Oates (0:42)

Yes, I'm enjoying it so much. So I thought I'd start just with a little recap, grounding us where we are in the book. And so we've been following this Pilgrim who was already living life as a Pilgrim, but he had this quickening or awakening in church one day, the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, when he heard the verse that talks about praying without ceasing. And it quickened him and it sent him on a quest. It called on him to understand what it would mean to pray without ceasing. And so he went looking for teachers or people that might know how to do this. And just when he was about to give up, he didn't know where to go next, the teacher appeared and guided him to the monastery and to this lineage, this wisdom lineage. What the teacher said was mystical teaching. And he showed him the teaching in the Philokalia and this beautiful prayer of the heart, which is a way to pray without ceasing. And after the pilgrim got the teaching, kind of his awakening deepened another layer and he longed to have the habit of this prayer. And so he's made a commitment to the teacher to practice this prayer. So I thought, Jim, it might be helpful just to read the instructions the teacher gave him. So as we talk about the prayer, people have it in mind what the pilgrim's actually trying to do. So I can just read them here. So this is what the teacher read. He said, sit down alone and in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, shut your eyes, breathe out gently and imagine yourself looking into your own heart.

Carry your mind, your thoughts from your head to your heart.

As you breathe out, say, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Say it moving your lips gently or simply say it in your mind. Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient and repeat the process very frequently.

So that's what the Pilgrim's committed to do. And so where you started session four, I might just read where you started the new text.

In church, I felt a glowing eagerness to take all the pains I could to learn unceasing interior prayer. And I prayed to God to come to my help. Then I began to wonder how I should manage to see my starretts again for council or confession, since leave was not given to remain for more than three days in the monastery guest house and there were no other houses near.

So that was where we started. And what struck me about that was this, I love the term glowing eagerness. Like I can imagine inside his chest, there's a warmth and a glow and an excitement. And then also the first thing he did was to pray to God to come to his help, to come to his aid in trying this. And then he realizes he needs to find, he'd like to stay close to the teacher. The teachers told him to keep coming back and checking in with him as he learns the prayer. So he, as he makes this commitment, he now turns to the practicalities, but where am I going to live?

James Finley (4:44)

And so if the way we're proceeding here is taking little details the pilgrim shares and then bringing them out into the open as guiding aspects of our own search for God. So although the details may be very different, than the details of the pilgrim, the underlying transformative graces are pervasively ribboned throughout all the mystical teachings of the mystics. And so right here then one of these teachings is having found a teacher, how to keep in touch with the teacher for guidance. Because the teacher says the inward process requires guidance for someone who's already been transformed mystically in the teaching, because we're subject to self-deception. And so the Pilgrim is fortunate that he has his guide. And when I was in the monastery I had Thomas Merton.

And some people they do have a contemplatively grounded spiritual director they can go to for a guide. But a lot of us don't. A lot of us don't have that. But what we do have is we have the prayer itself, our own prayer to God, we have the scriptures. We have discerning God's will in the unfolding of the details of our daily life.