Saturday, September 18, 2010

classic Saturday

Thomas Kelly (1893-1941) in his work A Testament of Devotion, writes about how we are to develop the habit of ordering our mental life on more than one level...one level may be active and busy in our outer life, but at the same time we have ordered our inner life to be in ongoing prayer and adoration.

"There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.

Between these two levels is fruitful interplay, but ever the accent must be upon the deeper level, where the soul dwells in the presence of the Holy One, forever bringing all affairs of the first level down into the Light, holding them there in the Presence, reseeing them in a new and more overturning way and responding to them in spontaneous, incisive, and simple ways of love and faith."

Kelly suggests repeating inwardly, over and over, short and simple breath prayers, and to keep coming back to that prayer when we recognize that we've forgotten God for an interval. Progress comes with much practice and grace.

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