Christian Spiritual Practices II

The Heavenly Banquet

In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia talk some more about spiritual practices in the Christian tradition, but this time they get a bit more practical. They discuss specific practices and their experiences with each, and they make some suggestions for finding space for God in our current context.

Chad: One thing I’ve learned in keeping up a practice of contemplative prayer, of just sitting, (at this point I do twenty or thirty minutes), is eventually there becomes this space between what’s happening in the world and my reaction to it. I don’t know if that makes sense. Because what you’re doing as you’re sitting in prayer is you’re watching thoughts go by, and you’re not clinging to them, right? You just try to let them go. If you start thinking about the laundry— And I’ll share a trick that I use. If I’m sitting there trying to be aware of God and I start thinking about the laundry, I will simply say to myself, “I’m thinking about the laundry,” and the moment I name it, I can let it go. But when you nurture a practice of letting thoughts go, you begin to realize, “I am not my thoughts.” You know, thoughts come and go all the time. I don’t have to cling to them. I think that’s part of what creates a space between what’s happening in the world and my reaction to it.