Prayer and Presence

## Two Modes of Prayer There are, broadly, two great traditions of prayer in the contemplative literature of the world.

The first is **kataphatic**, prayer as speech.

We bring our needs, our gratitudes, our griefs, our intercessions, our praises, and we offer them in words.

This is the prayer most of us learned first.

It is good and true and the world needs more of it, not less.

The second is **apophatic**, prayer as presence.

Here we stop speaking.

We sit.

We notice the breath.

We let the words drop.

Not because words are unworthy, but because, as the contemplative tradition has always known, the One who is closer to us than our own breathing rarely needs many words to be heard. ## A Simple Beginning If you have a daily prayer practice already, do not abandon it.

Add five minutes of silence to the end of it.

Sit.

Let the words stop.

Notice the room, the breath, the small sounds.

When the mind wanders (it will), return, gently, without judgment, to the breath.

That is the practice.

That is all of it.

Do this for thirty days.

Then write down what changed. ## The Whole Point The whole point of the contemplative life, the long work of prayer, the slow disciplines of attention, the years of patient study, is not to *reach* God.

God is already here.

The work is to learn, slowly, to be present with the Presence that is already present.

The mystics call this *theosis*, *union*, *enchantment*, *the indwelling*.

They are talking about the same thing.

It is yours for the taking.

It always has been.