Cultivating a Contemplative Culture Within

The contemplative mind prays from a different sense of Who–I–am. It rests, and abides in the Great I AM, and draws its life from the Larger Vine (John 15:4–5), the Deeper Well (John 4:10–14).

Lean into God, trusting that being with him in silence will loosen your rootedness in the world and plant you by streams of living water. It can form your life even if it doesn’t solve your life. The anonymous author of The Way of the Pilgrim wrote, “I need peace and silence to give free play to this quickening flame of prayer.” Let the silence lea

For me, most simply, contemplative spirituality is a fidelity to beholding the divine in all things. In the field, on the walk home, sitting under the oak tree that hugs my house. A sacred attention.

Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom—freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them

Contemplative spirituality, on the other hand, is concerned with slowing down to be with God, focusing on such practices as:2 awakening and surrendering to God’s love in any and every situation; positioning ourselves to hear God and remember his presence in all we do; communing with God, allowing him to fully indwell the depth of our being; practic