Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

we see that judging others really is not about our perceptions and assessments of others, but the way in which the jaws of our convictions lock so tightly around people that we actually think we know what life is like for them,

There is still an important role for intercessory prayer, but don’t be surprised if you discover that silent communion with the ground of all being becomes the most natural and simple way of being in solidarity with all humanity and holding all our needs before the Creator of all.

Sorrow must be allowed to blossom into self-forgetful love of God.

There are two contemplative practices of fundamental importance in the Christian tradition: the practice of stillness (also called meditation, still prayer, contemplative prayer, etc.) and the practice of watchfulness or awareness.

Simone Weil. “Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”

There is a certain wisdom that settles into a life that does not attempt to control what everybody else ought to be thinking, saying, doing, or voting on.

this perfect humility is caused by “the superabundant love and excellence of God in himself, at the sight of which all nature trembles, all scholars are fools, and all saints and angels are blind.”14 Perfect humility is meeting the unfathomable love of God, who is the ground of our being.

Second, once we have crossed this threshold of realizing we are not the mind-stream of thoughts and feelings, we find the tensions of life easier to live through. Our interiority is not so cramped; indeed it is a vast and spacious flow.

As we approached the First Doorway we gained the ability to see when the attention had been stolen by angry thoughts. As we approach the Second Doorway the stillness of the prayer word allows not only the resentful thought to be spotted, but also the mental-emotional pattern that undergirds the thought.