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Spiritual practices and “life-giving, non-cerebral prayer”

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 29 2023

After my first post on Christian meditation, where I discussed the purpose of meditation for Christians, I got an interesting email from my friend Viv. She describes herself as “an ‘active senior’ Presbyterian minister who has also served in the Baptist movement." In Viv’s email, she said she “lives in the cognitive” and is a “studious introvert whose main pathway to the sacred is thinking and sorting.” Viv wrote that she has learned that many spiritual disciplines can “lift me into God's presence in life-giving, non-cerebral prayer.” She believes that too often we look to spiritual practices to help us live in a...

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Christian meditation and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 15 2023

I’m in my late 30s, and I’m talking with a Christian man I know slightly. He’s telling me about his pattern of meditation. He says he begins by emptying his mind of all his concerns so he can focus on a sacred word or verse from the Bible. I argue with him a little. I tell him I can’t empty my mind just like that. Instead, when I try to engage in Christian meditation, I try to identify the things on my mind and give them over to God, perhaps by using some imagery like putting them in Jesus’s hands or...

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Silence and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 1 2023

When you think of praying in silence, what comes to mind? Walking in a beautiful park? The dark, quiet hours in the middle of the night? Reading a passage from the Bible and praying in response to what you read? Praying a written prayer like the one at the end of this blog post or a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer or another collection of prayers?

A month ago, when I started pondering the spiritual practices of silence and solitude as they relate to prayer, I saw silence and solitude as practices with a lot of overlap, but I wasn’t...

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Silence, solitude, and prayer

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 20 2023

I knew I wanted to write a blog post about the Christian myth that the most spiritual form of prayer is prayer in solitude. Throughout much of Jewish and Christian history, many believers have done a lot of their praying with others, and many passages in the Bible show the significance of communal prayer. I wrote an article for Christianity Today about this. And yet Christians also pray alone in many diverse settings, including in the “prayer closet” (literally “storage room”) that Jesus mentions in Matthew 6:6. I wanted to write some thoughts about these equally valuable places for prayer.

I wasn’t sure which language to...

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Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life A book for people grieving because of the pandemic, health challenges, family conflict, or other losses, while also seeing so many things to be thankful for. A book for small groups – each of the seven chapters has discussion questions at the end. A book for Advent and Lent. This book draws on a vivid word picture of holding grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, and allowing ourselves to be stretched large by both.
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Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation Although interest in spiritual practices has grown in recent years, most of the books available address individuals who wish to try Christian disciplines such as fasting or fixed-hour prayer.

This book, by contrast, offers guidance and examples to Christian leaders as they seek ways to involve their congregations or small groups in spiritual practices. Buy online »

Lynne Baab