Wilkie Au, S.J. 

CHAPTER FOUR

"The mystical lives in the field of daily action.'' (1)
 DIANE M. CONNELLY All Sickness Is Homesickness

ZACCHAEUS, PERCHED on a sycamore tree looking out for the Lord, is a fitting image of a person n at prayer (Lk 19:1-10). Moved by a desire to see Jesus, he positions himself in sue h a way that the Lord might be revealed to him. We who grapple with prayer easily identify with him. We are often stirred by a similar desire to encounter the Lord, but like Zacchaeus, struggle with knowing how to go about making contact. The short tax collector's inability to see above the crowd is paralleled by our shortsightedness and inability to peer over the many tall concerns and preoccupations that line the path of our busy days, blocking our view of Jesus. Like Zacchaeus, we need to find our own sycamore tree with branches strong and tall enough to lift us above whatever crowds out the Lord and prevents us from seeing him.

The story of Zacchaeus captures the spirit of holistic prayer. Such prayer invites us to look for the Lord dose to home, in our own backyards where the Word has "pitched His tent among us" On 1:14). It is essentially earthy. It places more emphasis on our ability to see the Lord in the mundane world of daily life and annual events than on the beatific vision that will be ours later. That is why it insists that when we pray, we must bring all of our actual experiences into prayer, not leave them at the door.

Holistic prayer involves imitating Zacchaeus' resourcefulness and spontaneity. Finding creative ways of making contact with the Word made flesh demands that we be experimental, and not rigid or stodgy in our approaches to prayer. When discouraged about our prayer, the temptation is often to give up completely. Instead of hopeless abandonment, holistic prayer encourages us to try new approaches. Like Zacchaeus, we need the courage to stand apart from the crowd and to try out unaccustomed practices. Sitting on the floor with legs crossed in a Zen posture may not be the way we grew up learning how to pray. Yet, there may be times when we experience so much noisy agitation that the quieting effect of Zen meditation offers the only access to the Lord's small, still voice within. Whatever our condition, we must be committed to doing whatever we need to do to encounter the Lord, even if that means climbing a tree! Sometimes our preconceptions about prayer hinder effective prayer. For example, thinking that we should not bring our strong negative feelings or our struggles with sexual desires into prayer can rob our prayer of all vitality. We may think that in prayer, as in most of our daily relationships, it is inappropriate to be emotionally transparent, to wear our feelings on our sleeves. Or, thinking that prayer should always be dignified and calm may prevent the Spirit from bursting into our hearts with a joy that makes us want to clap and stomp our feet. It does not seem that such self-consciousness deterred Zacchaeus. It may have been a faux pas for an establishment-type like this wealthy, senior tax collector to be so obviously excited about seeing an upstart, itinerant preacher. But Zacchaeus' desire was so strong that it led him to do spontaneously what needed to be done, despite the possibility of social embarrassment.

In prayer, desire to encounter the Lord is primary. Only a deep desire can sustain our efforts. If our desire is weak, our efforts will be unimaginative and short-lived. A guru was once approached by a disciple asking for help in prayer. Agreeing to help, the guru led the eager disciple to a shallow river. Standing next to each other in the river, the guru proceeded to dunk the disciple's head into the water. Quickly, twenty seconds passed, followed by another twenty. Then suddenly, gasping for air, the disciple jerked his head out of the water and faced his guru with bewilderment. Then the master instructed his disciple: "Unless your desire for prayer is as single-minded as your desire for air, you will not succeed."

Desire for prayer is itself a gift from the Lord. Holistic prayer endorses any means that deepens that desire and brings us into more intimate contact with the Lord. Thus, it does not ally itself with any single school of thought or method of prayer. Rather, it encourages the use of whatever works for individuals at different times. We should be hopeful in our prayer because faith reassures us that, as in the case of Zacchaeus, the Lord is al so seeking contact with us. Our heart's desire for God is met with divine mutuality.

An important aspect of my ministry has been to help people with their prayer. Because many lay men and women today are asking for help with prayer, I want to make available to them what I have shared with Jesuit novices and other religious in workshops and retreats. Of course, different life circumstances will necessitate some adaptation. Nevertheless, the basic attitudes and approaches to prayer remain the same for all. This chapter may also be helpful to those who share with me the privilege of caring for God's people at prayer.

AN EXPERIENTIAL APPROACH

When Kakichi Sato, 24, of Tokyo first makes his way to Engakuji monastery in Kamakura to learn zazen (sitting meditation), the master invites him to learn by doing. After a brief instruction, covering the basics of how to sit, breathe, and focus, the disciple is led into a room and asked to start his practice of Zen. It is in the context of his "sitting" that he receives ongoing instruction on how to improve his practice. Similarly, when Al Noone, 25, of San Jose makes his way to our Jesuit novitiate in Santa Barbara and comes to me for help in prayer, my approach is based mainly on experience and practice.

Al, like most people seeking help in prayer, already possesses prayer experiences which need to be respected and affirmed. So the first way of helping is to invite him to learn from his own experience by reflecting on his history of prayer: How has God communicated with him in the past? What ways has he discovered to be fruitful? What ways unhelpful? Next, I would encourage him to continue praying regularly. Although the ability to pray is essentially a gift of God, only regular practice can develop it into a lasting habit. Practice is important because learners benefit most when they receive instruction in the context of actual experience, and are not just learning in a theoretical and passive way. Finally, I would encourage Al to pay attention to his daily experience and to let his thoughts, feelings, desires, and fantasies flow into his prayer. Personal experience is important because it is the arena of God's present revelation. Thus bringing alert eyes and ears to the events of our day is a good way to start praying. As with Zacchaeus, awareness of the parade of events that constitutes our reality will help us to spot the Lord passing by and attune us to God's saving word being addressed to us.

"THE PLACE ON WHICH YOU STAND IS HOLY GROUND" (Ex 3:6)

The story of Moses' encounter with Yahweh before the burning bush (Ex 3:1-6) emphasizes the importance of respecting our experience when praying. One day Moses was tending his flock in the wilderness and carne to Horeb, the mountain of God. There Moses saw a flame of fire, coming from the middle of a bush. While the bush was blazing, it was not burning up. Drawn by curiosity, Moses approached the bush. As he drew closer, he heard God call to him from the middle of the bush: "Moses, Moses! . . . Come no nearer. . . Take off your shoes, for the place on which you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father" (vv. 4-6).

Our present experience is the place where we stand. As with Moses, our personal experience is also holy ground because the Lord is present there. It is where we too are to encounter Yahweh and to hear the Lord of the universe call our name. We must take seriously what Yahweh said to Moses. We should not trample on the holy ground of our experiences, treating them like rough gravel. Rather, we must take off our shoes and reverently tend the fertile soil that is our experience. Only by being attentive to our experiences will we be able to encounter the Lord in the wilderness of our lives. As the authors of a recent book on prayer insist, "The being, the force, the God who carne to us in the flesh meets us there in the flesh of our experience, all of it, all of our self and our world, our conscious and unconscious lives.'"

Our ordinary life is where we will encounter God, for "in fact, he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Since no one of us could exist without God's sustaining love, divine love must be as near as the beat of our hearts. When we view ordinary life with the eyes of faith, every bush can be a burning bush, revealing the Lord's presence. In her poem "Aurora Leigh," the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning gives poetic expression to this:

"Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes, 
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries." (3)

In theological language, what Browning is talking about is the sacramentality of all reality. It is the belief that the gloriously risen Christ reigns over all creation and can use any particle of created matter as a vehicle to embody and manifest God's loving presence. In the words of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will £lame out, like shining from shook foil." (4) The word of God is an incarnate word, draped in the richly diverse forms of matter.

Detecting the presence of this omnipresent God in the world of our experience, according to Teilhard de Chardin, is not a matter of seeing extraordinary objects in miraculous apparitions, but of seeing the ordinary things of our experience in a different way. Our faith does not cause us to see different things, but to see things differently. A rabbinical story expresses well the truth that our encounter with spiritual meaning is to be discovered exactly in the earthly context where God has placed us, not in a heavenly city.

In the hiddenness of time there was a poor man who left his village, weary of his life, longing for a place where he could escape all the struggles of this earth. He set out in search of a magical city-the heavenly city of his dreams, where all things would be perfect. He walked all day and by dusk found himself in a forest, where he decided to spend the night. Eating the crust of bread he had brought, he said his prayers and, just before going to sleep, placed his shoes in the center of the path, pointing them in the direction he would continue the next morning. Little did he imagine that while he slept, a practical joker would come along and turn his shoes around, pointing them back in the direction from which he had come.

The next morning, in all the innocence of folly, he got up, gave thanks to the Lord of the Universe, and started on his way again in the direction that his shoes pointed. For a second time he walked all day, and toward evening finally saw the magical city in the distance. It wasn't as large as he had expected. As he got closer, it looked curiously familiar. But he pressed on, found a street much like his own, knocked on a familiar door, greeted the family he found there -and lived happily ever after in the magical city of his dreams. (5)

Faith does not transport us to a magical city, but enables us to appreciate the significance of what we find at home. Teilhard de Chardin speaks of the radiance of the divine milieu which changes nothing in the relationships between things, but bathes the world with an inward light which leads us to a sense of God's presence. We could say that the great mystery of Christianity is not exactly the appearance, but the transparency of God in the universe. In a word, God is to be recognized not in special visions, but in the way divinity shines forth like shook foil through all creation for all with eyes of faith to see.

God's presence has been homogenized with the ordinary. An affirming word when failure has slain self-confidence, a look of understanding when the death of a spouse has rudely ruptured years of companionship, an ice-breaking word of reconciliation when a bitter family feud seemed destined to last forever-all point to the inspiring Spirit's presence. Other movements of grace are traceable elsewhere, sharpening our instincts of compassion and love: experienced, for example, when we shed our cautious feelings to reach out to AIDS patients or when we work against our sexist resistance to female ministers of communion. Situations like these serve as our burning bush, signaling the presence of the living God.

It has been conjectured that the primary reason why Teilhard touched so many with his message was that he knew how again to make of the universe a temple. (6) His deep faith in the pervasive presence of God in all reality is echoed in his prayer: "Lord, grant that I may see, that I may see You, that I may see and feel You present in all things and animating all things." (7) This vision of the universe as soaked in divinity is, of course, directly traceable to his roots as a son of Ignatius of Loyola, who defined devotion as the facility to find God in all things.

The consistent testimony of scripture assures us that the Lord who informs every living thing with life is revealed to us in our ordinary experiences. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a God of the living, who mingles with our acquaintances and colleagues. If we open ourselves to life as the arena of divine self-disclosure, we may find the Lord who undergirds our lives with the certainty of dignity and value at any point in our experience. Holistic prayer directs our searching eyes to our experience so that we might recognize the risen Jesus there and proclaim, in the words of the beloved disciple John, "It is the Lord" (Jn 21:7).

BEING TRANSPARENT IN GOD'S PRESENCE

The good news of Christianity is that God's presence is a saving one. The prophet Zephaniah exhorts Zion to shout for joy because "Yahweh, the king of Israel, is in your midst; you have no more evil to fear" (Zep 3:15). Present to save us from whatever threatens us, God is not someone to fear or avoid. A story is told of the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who as a young boy caught in the midst of a childish prank, cursed when told of God's presence everywhere. Later, Sartre would spell out his belief that the very notion of a God destroys the possibility of human freedom. For him, human freedom can be preserved only if the existence of God is disallowed. Sartre's understanding of God as a negative and restricting reality stands in stark contrast to the Christian view of the loving God whom we are invited to approach in prayer.

In prayer, we are invited to come as we are. Leaving our defenses and facades behind, we try to make ourselves transparent before the Lord. Although past hurts can cause us to hesitate for fear of making ourselves vulnerable, God, nevertheless, invites us with reassuring words to draw near.

Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name, you are mine.
should you pass through the sea, I will be with you;
or through rivers, they will not swallow you up.
Should you walk through fire, you will not be scorched and the
flames will not burn you.
For I am Yahweh, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your savior.
I give Egypt for your ransom . . .
Because you are precious in my eyes,
because you are honored and I love you . . . 
Do not be afraid, for I am with you (Is 43:1-5).

Scripture presents God as one who is near and deeply concerned with our existential plight. Like the Lord of the exodus, our liberator sees our oppression and is present to set us free. Like Jesus who multiplied the bread in the desert, our provider sees that we are lost and hungry, like sheep without a shepherd. Our plight always floods God's heart with compassion. The divine intervention on our behalf is available, if we but draw near to the Lord with all that besets us.

In prayer, we must speak all that is in our hearts and minds. If we sit quietly and endure the silence, we will hear all the bits and pieces of ourselves crowding in on ourselves, pleading to be heard. Prayer must begin with this inner racket, because "prayer is noisy with the clamor of all the parts of us demanding to be heard. The clamor is the sound of the great river of being flowing in us." (8) To bring our total selves in transparency to prayer is to let the Lord listen in on this inner racket.

DEVELOPING A PRAYER REPERTORY

Because active people need a repertory of diverse methods to maintain a vibrant prayer life, I suggest various approaches that can be tried. Naturally, the frequency and length of prayer will have to be decided by each person and perhaps determined only after some experimentation. Some people may find that on certain days, they can afford only ten minutes or just the few minutes before turning off the lights at night. On other days, however, they may decide that a longer period of a half-an-hour or more is what they need and desire. The type of prayer engaged in must suit the amount of time that can be set aside for it. For example, a short aspirational or mantric prayer like "Help me, Lord, for I am sinking!" can be rhythmicalIy recited while waiting for the bus or driving, whereas contemplating a scriptural passage with the use of the imagination would require a different setting and length of time. Rigidity can turn a commitment to regular prayer into an oppressive burden; flexibility, which a rich repertory of methods makes possible, is needed to integrate prayer peacefully into the day.

Difficulty in prayer often arises not from waning desire or complacency, but from not knowing what to do when feeling stuck. Sometimes, during these periods of dryness and desolation, there is nothing to do, but to wait on the Lord with patience and hope. However, at other times, trying alternative ways and times for prayer can be helpful. To be fruitful, experiential learning in prayer requires periodic reflection on our practice and occasional assistance from a spiritual guide.

St. Ignatius is very explicit about how help can be given to people on a retreat when their prayer is flat, when "the exercitant is not affected by any spiritual experiences." (9) At such times, he suggests that the director ask the retreatant very detailed questions regarding his or her actual practice. Is the retreatant observing all the guidelines for prayer suggested in the Exercises? For example, how are silence and recollection being kept? Are the times set for prayer being faithfully observed? Are the suggested steps in preparation for prayer periods being taken? Is there regular reflection on prayer periods to evaluate what went on? During prayer, are the suggestions for different topics being tried?

Prayer during retreat will naturally be different from prayer in daily life; different forms of prayer also have their own guidelines. The questions suggested by Ignatius are not meant to cover all forms of prayer (for example, less structured and more informal prayer), but they reveal a basic tenet of Christian spirituality: in all things, we must use the available human means to cooperate with God's grace. Although we could not even utter "Abba, Father!" without the support of grace (Rom 8:16), we should not passively presume that our efforts are unimportant. Ignatius' suggestions merely highlight the importance of a generous human response to the gracious initiative of God.

RESPECTING ONE'S RELIGIOUS SENSIBILITIES

When praying, it is important to respect our religious sensibilities; that is, the peculiar ways we find ourselves responsive to the mystery of God's presence. The Lord draws people to intimacy with different strings of love. For example, God attracts some people through the beauty of nature or the wonders of creation. Others feel the allurements of God in the emotional stirrings of their hearts or the penetrating insights of their minds. Music, mandalas, physical movement, and stillness are yet other ways that heighten people's sensitivity to God's ineffable presence. So when praying, it is important to know from past experience how the Lord has dealt uniquely with us. Past experience can be a valuable guide. Since there is no one right way that is equally suitable for all, trying to pray in ways that do not take into account the peculiarly personal manner in which the Lord deals with us can only lead to frustration. Sometimes people do not value their own religious experience enough. They want to pray the way others pray, not in their own way. The prayer methods I will suggest are based on the rich variety of ways by which we perceive and communicate: they employ our mind, imagination, senses, feelings, body, and even our breath. They are offered as possible approaches whose usefulness must be decided by each person on the basis of his or her religious sensibility and past experience of prayer.

THE PSYCHOSOMATIC UNITY OF THE PERSON

An important development in spirituality in recent years is the rediscovery of the body-spirit or psychosomatic unity of the person. Hardly an esoteric concept, the psychosomatic unity of the person can be observed whenever bodily reactions reveal affective states. Blushing, sweaty palms, accelerated heart rate are common examples of these physical manifestations of emotions. Certain forms of psychotherapy, like Gestalt therapy, presuppose the. body-spirit unity of persons and rely heavily on body language for an indication of psychological states. Gestalt therapists generally believe that the body conveys how a person feels more truthfully than words, which often conceal as much as they reveal. Another form of therapy based on the psychosomatic unity of the person is called structural reintegration, popularly known as Rolfing. This therapy is based on the assumption that certain undesirable emotions are locked in the person by muscular configurations shaped through years of habitual response. Rolfing attempts to restructure these muscular patterns in order to make new emotional responses possible.

The most direct influence on the renewed appreciation of the body's role in prayer comes from Eastern forms of meditation. Eastern practices such as zazen (sitting meditation) or tai chi chuan (the slow-motion, Chinese meditational dance) emphasize the dose connection between body and spirit. In these exercises, correct posture is considered important because it is believed that bodily calm can engender internal stillness and that exterior concentration can focus the spirit's awareness. These beliefs stem from the view that body and spirit are closely united.

BODILY PRAYER

Praying with our body includes several aspects. First, because of the body-spirit unity of the person, our interior states are expressed, often unconsciously, by our bodily posture and gestures. Consequently, awareness of our body increases an awareness of our inner state. Awareness of our interiority, in turn, can indicate productive directions for our prayer, telling us, for example, what particular form of prayer would be most useful, given our present condition. Being tired or energetic, rushed or relaxed, troubled or calm are factors that should influence how we go about praying. Each time we pray we have to ask what way is best for now: to meditate on scripture, or to recite some formal prayers, or to do some kind of centering prayer, or to recite a mantra like "Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner," or simply to sit in stillness with trust in God's providence.

Second, bodily expression in prayer can sometimes convey what we feel more effectively than words. Examples of such bodily prayer are: kneeling humbly before the Lord; or holding out our hands, palms up, in receptivity to the Spirit; or simply letting our tears tell of our sorrow, fatigue, and frustration. Third, the interior silence we need to hear the often still, subtle voice of the Lord can be induced by the exterior calm and stillness achievable through the various techniques of yoga, Zen, tai chi chuan, body relaxation, and sense awareness exercises.

THE WAY OF IMAGES AND THE IMAGELESS WAY

The journey of prayer for Christians can follow along two distinct paths: the way of images called the kataphatic tradition and the imageless way known as the apophatic approach. After briefly describing these two basic traditions, I will present methods of prayer based on these two paths.

The kataphatic approach emphasizes the use of images and words, especially those found in scripture, to transport us into the mystery of faith. This approach affirms that divine self-disclosure has occurred in a history that reaches its high point in the person of Jesus Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is God's self-manifestation in history. Thus, the way to God is through uncovering the meaning and message of Jesus, who told his apostles: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you know me, you know my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen him" (Jn 14:6-7). In the life of Jesus Christ, the Ineffable has expressed itself, disclosing to faith the ultimate meaning and significance of all life. The kataphatic tradition reaffirms our ability to find God in all things. The fingerprints of the divine artist cling indelibly to the works of God's hands and can serve as clues to discovering the divine presence. God can be contacted through images and symbols because the Lord of creation is manifested in created things. Above all, God's face has been shown in Jesus, the living icon of God.

The apophatic approach, on the other hand, emphasizes the ineffable, unknowable mystery of God. Experiencing God is valued over knowing. Because God is the ever-greater God, so wholly other than anything in creation, divinity is best known by negation and elimination. In talking about God, for example, it is more appropriate to say what God is not than to say what God is. Using concepts and images to represent God leads easily to idolatry, the worship of a false God formed in our own image and likeness. Thus, the apophatic approach to prayer is a way of emptying, of letting go of our images and thoughts about God. For example, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, a classical expression of the apophatic tradition, states: "Thought cannot not comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love."'" Union with God moves us beyond knowing to loving in darkness. Underscoring that God is infinitely greater than our human capacity to apprehend, the apophatic tradition encourages humble surrender to the mystery of God and total reliance on the divine initiative. As nameless mystery, God can only be loved because God has first loved us.

Both traditions enrich our Christian faith and must be retained for the sake of balance and integrity. The apophatic tradition reminds us that God is always more than the human mind can ever conceive or imagine. Any real knowledge of God must be received as a gift of divine disclosure. As limited creatures, we can only bow in awe and adoration before the infinite mystery of God and wait to be visited. On the other hand, the kataphatic tradition reminds us how blessed we are that the word of God has become flesh and has revealed to us the mystery of God. The Christian God is not the faceless "unknown god" of the Areopagus (Acts 17:23), but the person Jesus intimately addressed as "Abba," loving Father. The Aramaic term "Abba" connotes all the warmth and familiarity that the term "daddy" does. We have been invited by Jesus to address infinite mystery as "Abba." Jesus proclaimed the good news first to Mary Magdalene when he told her, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (Jn 20:17-18). Because of Jesus, we have been made children and heirs. Through him, we now have access to ineffable mystery.

To maintain a healthy balance between the kataphatic and the apophatic in prayer, we need to oscillate rhythmically between worship and iconoclasm. Worship consists in meeting the living God in our religious experience; iconoclasm involves destroying all the concepts and images we construct to articulate our religious experience to ourselves and others. The human processes of knowing and communicating make it necessary for us to conceptualize our insights and symbolize our feelings. When we do this with our religious experiences, we sharpen our understanding of God and improve our ability to share our religious experience with others. Nevertheless, we must always remember that our impoverished words and images can never capture the reality of God. Because our words, no matter how eloquent or poetic, ultimately fail us, we must regularly put aside our theological lexicon and approach the living God with open hands and dependent hearts.

Together the kataphatic and apophatic paths offer Christians a rich repertory of prayer methods. Although these two ways to God are clearly distinct, they can be part of our storehouse of prayer and used at alternate times. Prayer often flounders when we are not resourceful enough to adapt our prayer to concrete situations. Consequently, holistic prayer encourages us to become familiar and facile with as many approaches as possible so that we can flexibly adapt our prayer to different circumstances. It is not my intention here to give an exhaustive list of prayer methods, but merely to illustrate the difference between the kataphatic and apophatic traditions by describing a representative sampling of various prayer forms.

SCRIPTURAL PRAYER

Falling into the kataphatic category, praying with scripture by reading or listening to the Bible has been for centuries an important way of praying. Scripture contains the story of God's saving interaction with humankind, and is full of rich images that can lead us to a greater knowledge and love of God. It is a favorite source of prayer because Christians consider it to be inspired. In the Second Letter to Timothy, the author exhorts his reader to remember "how, ever since you were a child, you have known the holy scriptures-from these you can learn the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. AH scripture is inspired by God and can profitably be used for teaching, for refuting error, for guiding people's lives and teaching them to be holy" (3:15-16).

Without getting into a technical discussion of the complex issues regarding the meaning and nature of biblical inspiration, we can say that scripture is inspired in this basic and important sense: it contains within itself the rich power to effect a religious experience in the lives of readers today. Although many different interpretations of inspiration are available, underlying them all is the central conviction that Christ is present in the words of scripture. Thus, perusal of the sacred text can lead to an encounter with Jesus.

There is a simple three-fold method of praying with scripture. (11) First, there is a reading of the text with the dispositions of faith and openness to the power of the Lord's word. After a brief preparation to clear our minds of distractions and to focus our wandering hearts, we read the text slowly with a hunger for the spiritual nourishment contained in the text. Second, there is a period of dwelling with the text, repeating a word, sentence, or phrase. Repetition allows the seed of God's word to sink into the inner soil of our souls. Third, there is a ti me for praying spontaneously or maintaining a loving silence in response to what the word of God has stirred up in us. This approach to scriptural prayer is reflected in the experience of the prophet Jeremiah: "When your words came, I devoured them: your word was my delight and the joy of my heart; for I was called by your name, Yahweh, God of Sabaoth" (15:16).

IGNATIAN CONTEMPLATION OF SCRIPTURE

St. Ignatius of Loyola has given us a rich way of praying with scripture through the use of the imagination. Called Ignatian contemplation, it has led many to a more intimate relationship with the Lord. The basic thrust of Ignatian contemplation is to dispose us to meet the risen Jesus at the deepest level of our beings, and to actualize this experience by more fully living a committed Christian life. By employing our senses and imaginations, we are asked to immerse ourselves into a gospel mystery so totally that we receive an intimate, felt knowledge of Jesus that goes far beyond something merely abstract and impersonal.

In contemplating a gospel scene, we are invited to move with our imagination and senses directly into the event and relive it as if it were our own experience. This immersion allows the gospel event to spring to life and to become a lively happening in which we participate. When we encounter Jesus this way, he is not a pale figure in a book, but a vibrant person who takes us into the historical events of the gospel mystery and reveals the fullness of its meaning.

In teaching people how to use the method of Ignatian contemplation, I rely on a procedure used by Gestalt therapists when working with dreams. The technique employed in Gestalt dream work contains three steps. First, the client is asked to narrate the contents of the dream, just as he or she would in telling a story or recounting a past experience. Second, the client is asked to shift the narrative into the present tense and describe how the dream would be reenacted, as if staging a play and giving directions to actors about how they should position themselves and what they are supposed to be doing and saying. Third, the client is asked to take the part of the different characters or aspects of the dream. This last step invites the client to fully identify with the people and action contained in the dream.

Dramatization is a key to the Gestalt approach to dreams. Instead of relating a conflict in words and tracing their track to deeper levels, as one might do in analyzing a dream with a psychoanalyst, the Gestalt subject reenacts it by alternately playing out its different parts. Normally several chairs are used and the client shifts back and forth between them as different parts of the conflict are enacted. The patient may first play his overbearing conscience (what Fritz Perls labelled the "top-dog") and yell at an imaginary self in the other chair to do better. Then switching chairs, the client will be the submissive, whining, yet obstinate and wily, "underdog" who limps through life spitefully defying his conscience. The point, of course, is that both parts are really the patient himself, though each is trapped in struggle against the other. By getting the client to give each part its say, he is led to realize vividly that, despite his experience of fragmentation, he is only one organism.

An important goal of Gestalt therapy is to help the client achieve greater wholeness by re-integrating parts of the self that have been divorced from consciousness. According to Gestalt therapy, each element of a dream represents a disowned fragment of one's personality. For example, an angry and violent character in a dream suggests that the client's feelings of anger and violence are being repressed. Or, a taken-for-granted and trampled doormat in a dream may help the client, while identifying with that mat, get in touch with feelings of

being abused and unappreciated. As a royal road to the unconscious, dreams call our attention to things that we repress in our waking moments. Awareness of these repressed elements allows us to re-own them and thereby achieve a greater wholeness. Awareness also leads to greater "response-ability" because when we bring these forces which impinge on our lives out of the dark cave of the unconscious, we expand our capacity to deal with them.

The three-step approach of Gestalt dream work is helpful for someone learning how to do Ignatian contemplation. By applying the same three steps to contemplating a mystery of the Bible, we can achieve a progressively deeper immersion into the mystery of faith. An application of this Gestalt procedure to praying with scripture could take this form: First, re ad the account of an event or mystery in scripture, like the cure of the blind beggar Bartimaeus at the end of the Way section in Mark's gospel (10:46-52). Second, identify with one of the onlookers and describe the action from his or her point of view. Do this as if the event were actually unfolding right now in front of your eyes. Third, insert yourself into the event by identifying with one of the active participants in the scene. As you experience what is happening in the gospel scene, be aware of what you are thinking, sensing, and feeling -your entire subjective response.

The value of this approach is that it can plunge us so deeply into a gospel mystery that we get caught up in a personal encounter with the Lord. As often happens in a psychodrama or a play, there can come a time in contemplation when the artificiality of the put-on identity slips away and the gospel character comes to life in us. Then, it is no longer Bartimaeus the blind beggar who is being summoned to Jesus and being healed. It is the blind person in us who is being led out of the darkness of personal confusion by the Lord's healing touch. It is no longer Bartimaeus who is crying out with desperation for help, but a desperately blind part of us that seeks enlightenment. Then, it is no longer just a study of the historical Jesus interacting with people in biblical times. When our contemplation shifts from imaginative role playing to spontaneous identification, we can get drawn into a graced encounter with the risen Christ today.

Ignatian contemplation can be a powerful way of hearing the word of God being addressed to us in the present. Contemplation, like Gestalt dream therapy, can put us in contact with parts of ourselves that we have unconsciously repressed or consciously suppressed in order to cope with some troubling reality. In either case, disowning parts of ourselves is like saying to members of the family that there is no place for them at home. It is a denial of self that often leads to self-alienation and fragmentation. The struggle for wholeness can be greatly supported by prayer, if we accept our fragmented state and let our struggling parts be addressed by the word of God. When we suppress parts of ourselves, we not only blot them out of our minds, but also exclude them from our prayer-keeping these often wounded parts out of the Lord's healing reach.

In Ignatian contemplation, we can be surprised by the sudden emergence of suppressed parts demanding attention. The attention they need is not only ours, but also the Lord's. Contemplative prayer allows the word of God to address these self-depreciating parts with the good news of the savior's affirming love. In the safety of prayer, for example, these parts, like Nicodemus under the safe cover of darkness, can surface to meet the Lord: the frightened inner child can drop the pretense of worldly self-sufficiency and hear the Lord say to it, "Do not be afraid, for I am with you" (Is 43:5); the chronic worrier of sleepless nights can find consolation in the Lord's assurance that "There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom" (Lk 12:32); the sexually compulsive part can let its confusion and guilt be dissolved by the unconditional acceptance of Jesus who says to it what he said to the adulterous woman, "Has no one condemned you? . . . Neither do I condemn you" (Jn 8:10-11); or the unfeeling and selfish self can have hope in the Lord's promise that "I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead" (Ezek 36:26-27). By allowing these parts to approach the Lord in the intimacy of prayer, Ignatian contemplation can bring about a powerfully transforming encounter with the living word of God.

The words of theologian William Spohn pro vide a pithy summary of the value of contemplating scripture through the method of identification with gospel characters:

As we tangibIy and visually move into their narrated encounter with the Lord, we find in ourselves some echo of their response: If Peter could be forgiven, so can I. If the father could welcome home the prodigal son, then my fears of God's anger are without foundation. We Iearn to "ask for what we want" in these contemplations by the example of these characters in the story. They raise our expectations and open us to hear the Lord's word to us today. (12)

According to Spohn, an important value of Ignatian contemplation is that it trains us to spot the "rhyme," the similarities existing between biblical narratives and our own times. By helping us identify the analogy between biblical situations and our own, it moves us from the memory of God's intervention in the past to a perception of divine intervention in our present crisis. Ignatian contemplation teaches our imaginations how to catch the "rhyme" that can be revelatory for us today. (13)

PRAYING WITH OUR SENSES

Another kataphatic form is praying with our senses. Sense-prayer can be particularly beneficial when we find our minds racing or cluttered with a thousand thoughts. Simple sense awareness exercises can bring about a state of calm attentiveness. For example, by closing one's eyes and concentrating on the various sounds around, one can escape the distracting pull of abstract thought and be transported back to the present moment with greater stillness and awareness. Focusing on sounds, colors, textures, and temperatures is a way of going out of our minds and coming to our senses. Our senses root us in the present and thus enable us to better encounter the Lord in prayer. Effective prayer requires us to be psychologically present to the Lord, not far away in thought.

Sense-prayer is based on the fact that "awareness of the divine begins with wonder." (14) In his Apology for Wonder, Sam Keen points out the relationship between wonder and worship, contemplation and celebration. A dominant response to the shock of a wonder-event is the "movement from admiration to contemplation to celebration. " (15) By returning us to objects that were given in wonder so that we might prolong admiration and appreciation, contemplation has the capacity to evoke certain affective responses to reality. Admiration generates "gratitude and the impulse to celebrate, or possibly even to worship." (16) Sense-prayer can simply take the form of standing in grateful awe before the dazzling colors of a rose garden or the majestic shapes of Yosemite's stone monuments; it can occur when taking delight in a sunset or marveling over the sparkling beauty of a star-studded sky. A colorful illustration of wonder is the incident recounted in Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, Zorba the Greek. One day, Zorba was riding on a donkey with his boss. As they passed an oncoming traveler on another ass, Zorba's eyes were transfixed on the stranger. When chided by his companion for so impolitely gawking at someone, Zorba proclaimed in child-like simplicity his awe over the fact that there are such things in the world as donkeys! To view reality with wonder is to see ordinary things as donkeys with a sense of astonishment-as if seeing them for the first time.

Reality, when regarded with wonder, alludes to something beyond itself. It is this allusion that conveys to us "the awareness of a spiritual dimension of reality, the relatedness of being to transcendent meaning. '' (17) Perceiving creation with marvel leads naturally to awe - a sense for the reference everywhere to God who is beyond all created things. Praying with our senses can lead to this awe-inspired vision of reality which enables us to find the creator in all things. Sense-prayer can help us to make of the universe a temple, to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal, and to sense the ultimate in the simple, common, ordinary experiences of our lives.

Wonder is a sense of radical amazement over the very existence of the material universe. In the words of the philosopher Wittgenstein, "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. " (18) The source of wonder as radical amazement is the fact that something exists rather than nothing. A blade of grass, for example, does not contain its own adequate explanation or necessary reason for existence. At one time it did not exist and at another ti me it will cease to exist. It need not be, yet it enjoys the gift of being. Radical amazement is caused by our "sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. " (19) Wonder refers, then, not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at our very ability to see. The question that confronts everyone who ponders the existence of being is: "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Wonder is linked to experiencing the holy because when we regard reality with awe, we open ourselves to receiving "an answer of the heart and mind to the presence of mystery in all things, an intuition for a meaning that is beyond the mystery, an awareness of the transcendent worth of the universe." (20) Heschel describes the religious experience that comes through wonder when he states:

True, the mystery of meaning is silent. There is no speech, there are no words, the voice is not heard. Yet beyond our reasoning and beyond our believing there is a preconceptual faculty that senses the glory, the presence of the Divine. We do not perceive it. We have no knowledge; we only have an awareness. We witness it!'

When we pray with our senses, we attempt to enter reverently and gratefully into the garden of creation and there to witness the presence of the divine, who at every moment sustains all things in existence. "God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity," states Dag Hammarskjold, "but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. (22)

THE IMAGELESS W A Y

The apophatic tradition is best illustrated by what is called centering prayer, an attempt to experience God shorn of all images. Centering prayer reflects the advice given in The Cloud of Unknowing that "in the real contemplative work you must set all this [thinking] aside and cover it over with a cloud of forgetting. " (23) Thus, this prayer form eschews the use of the imagination and the mind. In using centering prayer, we try to still our cognitive faculties and eliminate anything that detracts from our focusing on the indwelling presence of the word. Void of thoughts and feelings, the self possesses a greater vacancy for the Lord. By quieting our cognitive processes, we seek to attend singlemindedly to the mystery of God dwelling at the core or center of our being. Because the ineffable mystery cannot be grasped by our limited minds, centering prayer emphasizes the importance of simply waiting in stillness for the Lord's visitation. In prayer, we are called to surrender to the coming of the Lord in whatever fashion the divine chooses to manifest itself.

Perhaps the best way to convey an understanding of centering prayer is to describe how we would go about practicing it. Basil Pennington, the best known proponent of centering prayer in the United States, has delineated three "rules" for centering prayer (24) He surrounds the word "rules" with quotation marks because he wants to use the term loosely, since the intimate spontaneity of prayer precludes the usefulness of strict rules. The following are his guidelines:

Sit, relax and be quiet.
l. Be in faith and love to God who dwells in the center of your being.
2. Take up a love word and let it be gently present, supporting your being to God in faith-filled love (e.g., "Abba," "Jesus," "Lord," "Love").
3. Whenever you become aware of anything, simply return gently to the Lord with the use of your prayer word.
At the end of the prayer, take several minutes to come out, mentally praying the "Our Father."

Pennington insists that centering prayer should be kept simple: first, in the sense that it should not be a complicated procedure or method; second, in the sense that there is only one, undivided focus, that is the Lord. In centering prayer, we choose God "as the Center of our life, the Center beyond our self-center," states Pennington, and thus we allow the Lord full sway over our lives. "That is the whole prayer . . . it is that simple, that total." (25)

INTEGRATING EASTERN TECHNIQUES

In the last twenty years or so, there have been valuable contributions made by spiritual writers attempting to introduce Eastern approaches into Christian prayer. A decade ago, I was fortunate to spend nve months in Japan working with two fellow Jesuits, who have been pioneers in this effort to enrich Christian prayer with Eastern ways. My work with William Johnston, an Irish theologian who has spent dose to 40 years in Japan, and with Kakichi Kadowaki, a J apanese philosopher at Sophia University, provided me with many insights, which form the basis of my remarks here. (26)

"Christian Zen" can be described as sitting with faith. This adaptation of sitting meditation (zazen) requires that we learn the rudiments of Zen-sitting27 as any other Zen practitioner, but that we approach the practice with a completely different frame of mind than a non-Christian Zennist would. Zen Buddhism can be accurately understood more as a psychology than a religion. Its devotees seek a sense of harmony with the universe, a feeling of solidarity with everything based on a deep intuition that the underlying unity of all reality makes visible differences merely illusory. This sense of unity allows all tensions and strife, all divisions and conflicts to fall away and to be replaced by inner

calm and compassion. The Zen practitioner sits in stillness and silence, waiting for the flash of insight, called kensho, that allows him or her to see beneath the superficial level of sensible multiplicity and to perceive the essence of unified reality in its unchanging depths.

When we as Christians practice Zen, however, we do so primarily to encounter the living God, who is the ground of our being. Unlike Zen's merger with the Absolute which destroys all individuality, the union we seek as Christians is interpersonal. We enter into the depths of silence to hear the voice of the risen Lord. With Paul, we believe that "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (GaI 2:20). In practicing Zen as a form of Christian prayer, we seek the peace of the risen Christ, who allows it to be felt in the core of our being. While we try to become proficient in the technical aspects of Zen-sitting, we realize that it is not our technical proficiency that will bring about an enlightening encounter with the risen Christ. Only God's grace can lead us to the light that will shatter the darkness of our lives. So, as in centering prayer, Christian Zen practitioners sit with faith and hope, waiting to be struck by illuminating grace.

Both centering prayer and Christian Zen are a response to the Lord's invitation that we "Be still and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). Believing that the Lord is capably in charge of the universe, we merely try to sit in God's presence with an attitude of trust and acceptance; we let go of our planning and rely on God's providence. This attitude helps us to live in the present, and not be dragged off from prayer by an anxious and calculating mind. Both approaches to prayer attempt to induce an inner calm that will allow us to be more present to the ever-present God within. The major difference lies in the fact that Zen follows a body of precise and technical rules regarding proper posture and breathing. Centering prayer is less concerned about the techniques of posture and breathing, insisting only that we assume a relaxed position when we sit. The Zen approach is a rich and ancient tradition. While requiring a degree of discipline, its method of inducing spiritual awareness through proper posture, correct breathing, and undivided attention has been prove n through the ages. Christians needing more methodic help in prayer to stifle the "monkey mind" which swings distractingly from one cognitive branch to another would well profit from the practice of Christian Zen.

PRAYING WITH OUR BREATH

In Asia, training of the breath is the first step in the spiritual path. Inner stillness is achieved through proper breathing, which is slow, rhythmical, and abdominal. Breathing through our nose, with lips tightly closed, our breathing can be slowed down by simply lengthening our exhalations. Our breathing is ordinarily irregular, dominated by our emotional life and changes in mood. It can become rhythmical simply by our watching or following it. Without trying to change it, we watch our breathing by counting our inhalations or exhalations, or both. Finally, to breathe abdominally, we breathe in such a way that the incoming air swells the muscles of the lower abdomen. When we breathe abdominally, our abdomen expands as we inhale and contracts as we exhale. By sitting with a straight back, so that there is an unobstructed passageway for the flow of air through the body, and by breathing slowly, rhythmically, and abdominally, we can achieve inner and outer stillness.

Praying with our breath can also be very helpful, when words and thoughts are inadequate to express the deep sentiments of our hearts. When lonely or longing for the Lord, we can, by inhaling with faith, take in the divine presence, which sustains us in existence every moment of our lives. Like the air around us, the life-giving Spirit's presence should be seen more as inevitable than as evanescent. As we are reminded in Acts, it is in God that we live, move, breathe, and have our being (17:28). In the upper room, where the fearful apostles huddled together after the crucifixion of Jesus, the risen Christ breathed upon his disciples and passed on his life-giving Spirit (Jn 20:22). Like the apostles, we too can receive the Spirit which Jesus continues to breathe upon his followers today. Because we live in a divine milieu, the Spirit of God is present to us in the air we breathe.

We can al so let the Spirit dwelling within help us utter with deep sighs and groans what words simply cannot express. When we pray, it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. In a prayer exercise called "breath-communication," Indian Jesuit Anthony de Mello has suggested a simple way of praying with our hearts through breathing. (28) We can breathe in a way that tells of our deep yearning for God by extending our inhalation. We can express our trusting surrender to God's providence by extending our exhalation. Breathing out deeply, we imagine placing our whole selves in God's caring hands. Or we can let the sadness of our hearts be communicated to the Lord by our deep sighs. Communicating with our breath in prayer can al so let the Lord know of our love, gratitude, praise, as well as our need for healing, mercy, and love. In faith, we can breathe in what we need from God and breathe out whatever impurities taint our souls: for example, we might imagine ourselves breathing in God's love and breathing out our self-hatred; breathing in the Lord's mercy and breathing out our self-condemnation; breathing in the savior's peace and breathing out our anxiety; and breathing in Jesus' compassion and breathing out our self-righteousness.

MANTRIC PRAYER

Related to breath-prayer is mantric prayer. A mantra is a word or a short phrase of about seven syllables that is rhythmically repeated in prayer in order to focus our attention or to bring about inner stillness. When we repeat a mantra reverently, it becomes part of our internal timing. As one writer puts it, "Synchronized with our breathing, the mantra resonates at a depth that can touch the very essence of our lives . . . helps us to slow down, to journey deep within, to feel the pulse of our inner life, to live from a deeper source. " (29)

Synchronizing our breathing with a word or phrase can be easily developed as a form of prayer. For example, we might select a word like "Abba" as a mantra. Then, as we inhale, we mentally say the first syllable, "ab," and then the second syllable, "ba," as we exhale. Doing this in a rhythmical way and with a sense of addressing God as a loving Father can be a simple, yet profound, experience of prayer. Other words such as "Jesus," "Lord," or "Amen" can be used in mantric prayer. Besides such single words, phrases from scripture can also be used. When using phrases in mantric prayer, seven-syllable ones fit most easily into the form. As we inhale, we mentally say the first three words, pause with the fourth word, then finish the phrase as we exhale. Longer or shorter phrases can al so be used. The important thing is to be able to find a phrase that can be repeated in a way that synchronizes easily with rhythmic breathing. In any of its variant forms, the well known Jesus prayer ("Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner") can be prayed in a mantric fashion. Some other scriptural examples of helpful mantric phrases are:

There is nothing I shall want. (Source: Ps 23)
A pure heart create for me. (Source: Ps 51)
Give me the joy of your help. (Source: Ps 51)
Live through love in his presence. (Source: Eph 1:3-12) 
Your love is better than life. (Source: Ps 63)
You are precious in my eyes. (Source: Is 43:1-5)
I carne that they may have life. (Source: Jn 10:1-10)
Be still! Know that I am God. (Source: Ps 46:10) (30)

Besides the Bible, other sources can provide phrases that can be used profitably for mantric prayer. The rosary, for example, can be a form of mantric prayer, if we emphasize the rhythmic repetition of the prayers rather than meditating on the mysteries of Christ's life.

PRAYER AND PERSPECTIVE

Our prayer can become lifeless and dry, if it is disconnected from what is actually going on with us. Such compartmentalized prayer quickly comes to feel irrelevant. The prayer method proposed by St. Ignatius called "the general examination of conscience" (31) addresses this problem by helping active people forge a link between their formal prayer and their daily lives. In recent years, it has been renamed the "awareness examen" or the "consciousness examen." (32) This renaming has been significant because it highlights the value of this prayer for monitoring the quality of our daily lives and for keeping our spiritual growth moving forward. (33) The original name of "examination of conscience" is too often associated in the minds of older Catholics with the negative type of introspection that preceded going to confession.

The awareness or consciousness examen is more helpfully seen in positive terms, as a prayer to gain perspective on our lives. A combination of two Latin words, per (through) and spicere (to see), "perspective" means being able to see through details for a sense of the total picture and to see through superficial appearances for a deeper appreciation of reality. The examen carves out a few moments of solitude in the midst of a busy day to allow us to reflect on what is going on and where our actions and choices are taking us. It is a form of discernment, because it enables us to look concretely at events and ask: "What is really going on here?" "Where is God in this situation?" "How was God there for me in that experience?" "What in my present situation is leading me to God and others in love? What is leading me away?" "What is the underlying spirit in my dealings with others?" Such questions invite us to find God in the concrete particularities that make up the reality of our lives.

The examen enables us, with the help of God's illuminating assistance, to stay in touch with the currents and undercurrents of our fast-paced lives. It is often difficult, at the actual time, to know what is really going on (meaning and significance) in what is taking place (occurrence or event). Perhaps, what is really going on in the fierce fight that flares up suddenly between a husband and wife facing imminent separation may be more than meets the eye. A struggle to let go of each other or an unconscious effort to ease the pain of separation may be a truer picture of what is going on than the observable conflict over a small issue. Or, perhaps, their fight is at least a way of making contact, after months of misunderstanding, alienation, and stony silence. Our human lives are filled with many such ambiguous occurrences. We ne ed solitude and distance to gain some understanding of what is really going on in all these situations. The examen is a perspective-providing prayer that allows the Lord's grace to illumine our hearts and minds.

The structure of the awareness examen can take various forms, but essentially consists of five steps. Step 1 is praying for God's enlightenment so that the Spirit will help us see ourselves a bit more as we are seen. Here we are praying for a Spirit-guided insight into our actions and our hearts. Step 2 is praying in gratitude for all the gifts that God has given us. Instead of taking God for granted, we reflect on our many blessings. This reflective thanksgiving can lead eventually to a more spontaneous gratitude as we start to recognize these gifts throughout our day. Step 3 involves a survey of the day in which we pay attention to our feelings, moods, thoughts, and urgings as a way of getting a sense of what is going on in our lives. Step 4 is praying for forgiveness for ways we have not lived up to the twofold commandment of love. And step 5 is asking for the help we need to improve our love of God and all those our lives touch. Meant to be a short prayer of ten to fifteen minutes, done at mid-day and before bed, the examen can serve as a prayerful pause to remind us that the Lord is with us in the activities of our busy days, as well as in the quiet moments we can find for formal prayer.

DEVOTION AS THE FACILITY TO FIND GOD IN ALL THINGS

In the final analysis prayer is not meant to be a complicated affair, but simply a matter of finding and loving God. St. Teresa once summed it up nicely when she said that "the important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love." (34)

In prayer, we are called to find and love God in the concrete experiences of our lives. As with Moses before the burning bush, the place where we stand is holy ground. It is there that we find God, not elsewhere. There is a story of a drunkard who was staggering around looking for his missing car keys. To a stranger who ran into him bent over in search, he said, "I lost my keys over there in the dark, but I'm looking for them here because there's more light." W e are called to take our experiences to prayer and to recognize the risen Christ in faces and features not his own. Not to turn to our personal experiences in our search for God will cause us to flounder in frustration, like the drunkard searching in the wrong place.

The prayer methods offered in this chapter should serve us as the sycamore branch served Zacchaeus. They are meant to help us spot the Lord in our daily lives and to receive the salvation that our savior wishes to bring to our house this day. If these methods take on an exaggerated importance, they can turn out to be hindrances rather than helps. Techniques in prayer can help dispose us to receive God's self disclosure and love. But techniques can never replace grace, which alone can help us love the Lord with all our hearts. An ancient Chinese proverb is very instructive here: "Only the fool stares at his finger when it is pointing to the moon." Prayer techniques are like fingers pointing to God. To become preoccupied with them is to be foolishly distracted from our heart's desire.

Finally, we need to appreciate that the only way to know God is to proceed in humility, simplicity, and poverty, enter God's silence, and there in patient prayer wait until divinity reveals itself according to its own good timetable. Often, it seems that we do not wait long enough. Our waiting can be improved through the faithful practice of prayer. To support the life of prayer, I suggest three guiding principles: (1) Adapt your prayer to fit your concrete situation each ti me you go to pray, to match your mood and physical state, to make your prayer congruent with your existential concerns; (2) Experiment freely and learn from experience what place, posture, and prayer forms work best for you; (3) Trust your intuition and the Spirit's lead in your prayer. Go peacefully where you are drawn by the Spirit of God.