There’s a lot of noise around us. We're the makers of most of it. It’s everywhere, and comes in all forms. The noise can lead to fatigue - Fatigue with one another. Anywhere social media is found, we fall prey to envy, bitterness, compairson, and worse. We now live in a time where everyone can voice their opinion, discontent, frustration, or issues at any given time.With these mediums of noise there is good to be found as well. We can now encourage, share insight, inspiration, and ideas openly. Many of us aren’t holding our imaginations back from the general public anymore. That can be GOOD. But, let’s look at the tension and reality. Whether we want to admit it or not, we now find ways to compare ourselves to each other with what we perceive from our online personas. Let's remember, we are all presenting an alternate reality. Our lives are not as interesting, cool, or exciting as Instagram makes them out to be.Centering Prayer is a method of silent prayer that prepares us for contemplative prayer, a time in which we experience God's presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to enable our communion with our Creator.If we as the Church are going to continue to BE who we say we are, we must return to our origins. Stilling ourselves will calibrate everything else in our lives. We will be more compassionate, patent, productive, and engaged.“There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find God I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find God.” ― Thomas Merton Many of us find it difficult to press pause on life and even give ourselves permission to be still. It is one thing to find a rich contemplative life, it is another to simply begin the path. Making time to slow down or even make an effort to turn down the noise in our life is a good way to start. Please consider this:If you have a 30 minute commute to work, you could take half of the trip in silence. That’s 75 minutes of silence if you were to only do it 15 minutes one way, each day of the work week. 300 minutes of silence per month may be very peaceful even though you’re still navigating the drive to / from work.If you spend 2 hours per day on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, imagine only spending 1 hour. Use the other hour to be still. That’s 5 hours per work week. 20 hours per month!Here are a few great books that I believe can assist with this pursuit.1. Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr2. The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel3. Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton4. The Cloud of Unknowing
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