The Art of Praying Ceaselessly

Prayer is a strange word isn’t it?

We bandy it around as if everyone somehow know’s what it means and how to do it. But in reality most people feel they’re either getting it really wrong or that everyone else know’s some special secret they don’t.

When you think about how foundational and essential prayer is to the christian life it’s astounding how little it’s really taught and embodied in our church communities.

In my experience most people when they think of prayer don’t think about adventure, rest, rejuvenation and pleasure, they think of work, chores and often feel a sense of guilt or shame.

If I pressed those from my past church backgrounds about what they truly thought the definition of prayer is, I imagine the response would be some kind of conscious mental dialogue - a conversation between us and God.

A dialogue centred around praise (declaring God’s worth), intercession (praying on behalf or for others), petition (asking God for things), repentance (seeking forgiveness) and if we were really feeling spirro…prophetic declarations!

All of that is prayer, of course. But is that the whole of it?

I’d like to suggest it’s not, and to explain why I’d like to introduce you to 19th Century Russian Saint, Theophan The Recluse.

St Theophan was a prolific writer on Christian spirituality and helped to translate the impressive Philokalia (a collection of texts written by 14th and 15th century monks about prayer and the spiritual life). He collected sayings about prayer and taught on it himself. His definition of prayer has become my go-to for what it means to live the God-soaked life.

He tells us,

‘The principle thing is to stand with the mind in the heart before God, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life’

(Image: Icon of St Theophan The Recluse by uncutmountainsupply.com)

Head in our heart, standing before God, always.

For St Theophan, prayer was this practice of living in attentiveness to God not just mentally, but with our whole soul. He calls this bringing the mind down into the heart and praying from there.

The way I think about this movement is by thinking about a conversation with a friend on an empty stomach. You’re there, and you’re genuinely listening, but you’re also really hungry and so you’re not truly in the moment with them. You’re not giving them your full attention.

But then, at some point you realise they’re talking about something vulnerable and important and in that instant you decide to put away your thought’s of eating to really pay attention. To listen not only to the words, but with your heart as well.

In that moment, your attentiveness toward your friend moves from our head - an informational/intellectual exercise - into your heart centre where empathy, seeingness and body-awareness exist.

This is a great way to understand all kinds of prayer, but it’s particularly helpful here with understanding St Theophan.

The early church called this way of living nepsis, or watchfulness. Just as the watchmen would stand on the walls of Jerusalem keeping an eye out for the good or the bad, so the attentive soul keeps awareness open to God in every moment. Looking for him in every place and thing.

The author of A Beginners Introduction To The Philokalia tells us that;

“Nepsis means to be completely present to where we are, just as a mother is completely present to the least sound of her baby in the crib, even as she talks on the phone or vacuums the rug.”.

In other words, it doesn’t mean occupying our minds only with God 24-7, but maintaining a persistent awareness in our heart that God is somewhere to be found in any moment. Even when we’re working.

This life of learning to bring our whole attention to God is how the early church understood ceaseless prayer. Not as an unbroken chain of conscious mental dialogue but as a whole life lived open to God, attentively.

That means all of it - the dishes, studying, parenting, labouring, intellecting, sleeping, exercising or socialising. God soaks it all because we live before him through it all.

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? But the reality is that our minds aren’t naturally formed this way in our age of distraction and stimulation overload. So how do we go about becoming forever attentive to God?

Well, the reality is that it’s a lifelong journey, one filled with the practice of ascesis, or discipline. Something we’ll look at in a future post and, as I mentioned briefly in ‘An Invitation To A Journey’, is part of the journey of Theosis.

But when we spend time in silence, in intentional and focused prayer, when we meditate on his love and contemplate him, we’re building the spiritual muscles of nepsis (attentiveness). We’re training ourselves in bringing our minds down into our hearts.

The desert fathers and mothers would tell us that these practices will eventually help to create a rhythm of inner stillness and prayer that begins to pray on its own. This is at the heart of contemplative spirituality.

Personally, I’ve come to understand this as beholding - the act of gazing into God, gazing into us, gazing into him. It’s a life lived before and with God as prayer, not just the moments of discipline we can carve out of our schedules.

I take regular breaks in my day just to stop and recenter my being on this attentiveness, light a candle beside me while I’m typing so that in my peripheral vision I can see the flame of the Spirit, and repeat the name ‘Jesus’ quietly and persistently in my heart amidst externally chaotic environments (aka parenting!)

Because prayer is so much more than conscious mental dialogue, it’s a way of existing.

Yes, it’s all the intercession, petition, praise and repentance we’ve always understood it to be. Those are all the work of prayer. But nepsis is the deeper invitation. The invitation to an engulfed friendship with God himself.

In the next few posts I’m going to explore a little deeper how to pray with our minds down in our hearts and what it might look like to build a life of attentiveness - a life of ceaseless prayer - with God.

How would you say your church community might define prayer? Or what’s been your most common experience of it? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.