Quotes About Contemplative Prayer

#1. It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.

Henri Nouwen

#2. Contemplative prayer is natural, unprogrammed; it is perpetual openness to God, so that in the openness his concerns can flow in and out of our minds as he wills.

Ray Simpson

#3. Hence monastic prayer, especially meditation and contemplative prayer, is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself.

Thomas Merton

#4. Other forms of relating to God that have unique value in connecting us to Him include contemplative prayer and centering prayer.

Larry Crabb

#5. They were creating a program on contemplative prayer called Be Still. They asked me to be a part of this project that was designed to help Americans see the importance of spending time before God in stillness. I knew immediately that God wanted me to be a part of the project.

Priscilla Shirer

#6. There's no Biblical definition of contemplative prayer

Mike Bickle

#7. Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call "meditation" or, in Christian terms, "contemplative prayer". It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.

Sara Maitland

#8. The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.

Thomas Merton

#9. In contemplative prayer we seek to become the person we are called to be, not by thinking of God, but by being with God. Simply to be with God is to be drawn into being the person God calls us to be

John Main

#10. Contemplation, sadly, helps you see your woundedness! That's why most people do not stay long with contemplative prayer, because it's not very glorious. It's a continual humiliation, realizing, Oh my God, I did it again. I still don't know how to love!

Richard Rohr

#11. This mystical stream [contemplative prayer] is the Western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality.

Tilden Edwards

#12. Every one should find some suitable time, day or night, to sink into his depths, each according to his own fashion. Not every one is able to engage in contemplative prayer.

Johannes Tauler

#13. We should all without shame enrol in the school of contemplative prayer.

Richard J. Foster

#14. Kind of prayer we here speak of as properly "monastic" (though it may also fit into the life of any lay person who is attracted to it) is a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of "the heart.

Thomas Merton

#15. Empty orators and silent scholars
died without having understood Being and non-Being.
Ignorants, my brothers, let us continue tasting
the juice of the grape attentively and let
the authorities satisfy themselves
with dry raisins.

Omar Khayyam

#16. Centering prayer involves consenting to God's presence and action within - beyond thoughts, images, and perceptions - in order to form a contemplative relationship with God.

David Frenette

#17. The one necessary thing. - A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#18. Learn to listen to subtle cues from your spirit instead of the barrage coming from your brain.

David Brazzeal

#19. A contemplative is not one who takes his prayer seriously, but one who takes God seriously, who is famished for truth, who seeks to live in generous simplicity, in the spirit. An ardent and sincere humility is the best protection for his life of prayer.

Thomas Merton

#20. Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.

Barbara Kruger

#21. The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer

Thomas Merton

#22. Without spontaneity in any sport, you cannot succeed.

Eric Cantona

#23. Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.

Morris Gleitzman

#24. To separate meditation from prayer, reading and contemplation is to falsify our picture of the monastic way of prayer. In proportion as meditation takes on a more contemplative character, we see that it is not only a means to an end, but also has something of the nature of an end.

Thomas Merton

#25. Love and death," my father said. "It's all love and death.

Sherman Alexie