Contemplative prayer is like....

Contemplative prayer beckons me to loosen my strangle-hold on life. It whispers of a freedom, intimacy and joy in life that I have only barely tasted – a life of seeing and knowing God and others for who they are, instead of what I demand them to be. This life is….(gulp) just over the cliff. All I have to do is let go. Let go of managing my schedule, my health, my friendships, my relationship with God. Letting go of the many words and feral thought-life that plague me. Simple, right?

The problem is that this “managed” life is sooooo real to me. Like the cliff. Rock solid and “safe.” I don’t know what’s over the cliff! I only know that it appears to be a very long way down. And what will happen to my tidy packaging of life if I take the leap? Over the cliff can be a frightening place.

But that is where the light shines. And in those moments of solitude and silent prayer…those times when the Jesus Prayer settles so sweetly in my heart and trickles into the air around me…those seconds when typing emails at work becomes a holy sacrament…that is when I know that in letting go, in putting my full weight into the fall, I’ll find a Hand. Simple, silent, and still. It catches me gently and there I am held above the raging waters, finally free to be my true self, to love others as they are, and to live intimately with my Abba.

So my grip loosens…my shoulders relax…and with Luther’s prayer (“I am Yours, save me!”) as my only remaining “defense,” my hands open and I’m falling.

Lord, free me from care for myself.