I come upon a new way to revitalize your prayer life. One that I have not found in reading the lives of the saints or even from the preeminent Doctors of the Church when it comes to the prayer life — St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Mostly my prayer life instead of wondering at the supreme mysteries of God and faith instead wandered into the vapid concerns of everyday life. Sure I have heard that just trying to pray is prayer and not to worry about distractions. But considering the number of distractions while praying I decided to try another tact.
Now what I try to do each day is to set aside some time to be distracted. To do this each and every day even if I am not in the mode to be distracted. I now prepare myself each day by first turning on the TV to set up my time of disquiet. I then read some upsetting news and I am just about all set. I then start busying myself with mundane worries. Subsequently I am all prepared for my time of deep distraction with thoughts flying to and fro colliding with each other and concentrating on first one distraction one minute and then another. While working and trying to be deeply distracted I would then be interrupted by prayer. When I would notice my mind had wandered into prayer I would then concentrate and try to go back to being distracted, but it was no use prayer just kept getting in the way and I was just unable to stay distracted. Instead of miseries, mysteries popped into my head. Instead of the benign, the divine.
I call this the way of distraction. I had figured if I had been interrupted by distractions while praying that I would be interrupted by prayer while trying to be distracted. Now you might not be the master of the distracted life as I am, but just keep at it. After all the whole world is working to help you to achieve the distracted life. From what I have read I know there are a lot of you out there who are already deep into the distracted life. I have been thinking of setting up "distracted groups" that could get together to help each other out in the distracted life. Or maybe I will write about called The Interior Cubicle all about the levels of distraction. There are seven basic levels of distraction and maybe I can help people out by detailing the signs and effects of each level of the distracted life so that they can see which cubicle they are currently in. Though I would warn people not to think they are superior because they are in a higher cubicle of the distracted life than others.
Now on a more serious note I would point you to this post on the subject of distractions by one of my favorite bloggers Steven Riddle.
9 comments
The Interior Cubicle! I love it! And you may be jesting, but I think I’ll give it a try…. (hee hee)
Dear Jeff,
This is wonderful. The Way of Distraction. I’m sure I can master that one!
shalom,
Steven
This is called paradoxical intention and may actually be effective in some cases.
Ah, I see you have found the way that I already have mastered.
I think I am already on “The Way”…
Get on the floor to exercise. Begin exercising. Discover a dust ball under the chair. Get up to get a dust rag. Find a long ago stashed box of Twinkies (still good, of course). Sit down and eat Twinkie. Lament that you should exercise more. Get on the floor to exercise…
Would you recommend digital cable to help me reach a higher level of distraction? A subscription to Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar?
I found the article amusing. St. Teresa wrote a lot about how she was distracted and how her intellect would be very “noisy” while she was praying. Entering the prayer of recollection is some what dependent on being distracted in a certain way for many people. Most people just have to experience it to really understand what I aam talking about.
The whole approach sounds great and it reminded me of this joke:
“Two Jesuit novices both wanted a cigarette while they prayed. They decided to ask their superior for permission. The first asked but was told no. A little while later he spotted his friend smoking. “Why did the superior allow you to smoke and not me?” he asked. His friend replied, “Because you asked if you could smoke while you meditated, and I asked if I could meditate while I smoked!”.
When a distraction (such as someone’s name or face) comes to me while I am in contemplative prayer I meditate on that person assuming that God has sent that person to me because they need my prayer more than I need to be contemplating whatever was the subject of my earlier contemplation.
I was telling someone else this once and he said that he felt that when that happened to him it might be the evil one trying to draw him away from prayer.
Why would you allow the evil one any foothold into your prayer time. Every image that comes to me in prayer is a gift from God, to draw me closer to Him. I would never consider that any image no matter how far from my original intended goal was not from God.
No prayer is ever wasted, sometimes it just takes us on an unexpected journey.
I loved your post. The way of distraction has led me on many a great meditation. Be open to where God will lead, not where you want to go.