“What is the point of contemplative prayer?”

I’ve been writing these articles about prayer almost every month for three years, and this will be the last one. Not because I have run out of prayer-related things to write about, but because now seems the right time to end.

Over the months I’ve written about embarking on the journey and forming habits of prayer; different approaches through for example scripture, the imagination, the body, nature, liturgy; various methods and their limitations.

But you may still be asking what is the point of contemplative prayer. I’ve written about intercession and thanksgiving, and like confession, they seem to have a purpose. But the point of contemplative prayer is more obscure.

But then, why do I drive all the way to Dartmoor to take a circular walk back to the car, and do the same route more than once? Or why am I learning Welsh, when almost everybody in Wales speaks English?

I think that perhaps these are the wrong questions. Wrong because they come from a utilitarian mindset, as though everything we do has to have a reason and an outcome. For one of the points of contemplative prayer is that it has no point, and our goal-oriented and purpose-driven world finds this hard to grasp.

Contemplative prayer is not instrumental; it is not about doing. It leads us away from assuming that we are the active agent in the parable of the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46) towards the insight that God is the merchant seeking us, willing to sell all to purchase each one of us.

Contemplative prayer is hidden and solitary (Matthew 6.5-6) leading us into encounter and deepening our relationship with God. It is slow and in God’s time rather than our time. It rests not our own efforts or successes, but on God.

So we don’t practise contemplative prayer for the outcomes. But nevertheless there are side-effects.

Contemplative prayer offers healing for our bruised spirits. Over time we are transfigured. Contemplative prayer confronts us with the reality that we have built a false self (or ego or mask) and progressively dismantles it to uncover our deepest true self, who we are, made in God’s image.

Walking on Dartmoor anchors me to myself and the world. Contemplative prayer anchors us. As TS Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

“Little Gidding”, Four Quartets, TS Eliot

Sometimes God will spin the world on its axis, so someone or something that we thought we knew appears in a completely different light.

Learning Welsh gives me joy in exploring a new language, making discoveries and connections, opening me further to people and culture. Imagine prayer as a cart wheel. As we each travel down the spoke of a wheel to the centre, we draw closer together. So contemplative prayer connects us in God to fellow pray-ers all over the planet, and to seekers and practitioners in other traditions.

Who knows? It might be God’s will that contemplative prayer might just be holding the world together and anchoring it to God.

Each of us lives and moves and has our being not in instrumental self- and action- and goal-orientation, but in the God who made us and loves us and longs for us to find our true image.

God bless you in your exploring.

-oOo-

This is the final article of a series appearing in Exeter Cathedral’s monthly news, complementing the material I contributed to the “Explore Prayer” section of the Cathedral website. I hope you find them all helpful.