Every relationship has different "movements," times to work together, times to play together, times to talk and express ourselves, times to be silent. Our relationships with God are also love relationships, because God is our Divine Lover. We communicate with God in prayer and prayer also has many movements.
Prayer demands that we use our minds, our emotions, and our bodies. People communicate with God through prayers of praise, petition, and thanksgiving. People chant together or separately, pray Divine Office, pray during Mass or other Church services. People pray using rosaries or Divine Mercy chaplets or pray using Novenas, or pray spontaneously. People sing in praise of God, dance in praise of God, and pray quietly to God while walking. People read and meditate on their sacred Scriptures. People consider every action done through God, with God, and in God a prayer. Rumi says "There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
Because God is in a love relationship with us, our relationship grows and matures. Love by its nature can never stand still! Scripture and prayers written by holy men and women of every age teach us how to pray, give us words to use, passages to memorize. Some passages are words and "lines" we can say to God as we pray.
But - what if every time we talked with our lover or spouse, we used love poems? Wouldn't we grow tired of using someone else's words? Wouldn't that feel artificial and stilted after a while? So as we grow closer to God, we occasionally put aside Scripture or pre-fab prayers written by others and begin to talk to God spontaneously, using our own words to talk about our own lives, our own fears, sufferings, questions, confusion. We discover that God is a good listener. And God responds to us with subtle, unmistakable "impulses of grace" in the depths of our hearts, consoling us, giving us guidance, telling us over and over again how much we are loved.
For some who pray, there is yet another step to take as they grow still closer to God. In fact, I believe that all can come to this "place" in their unique relationship with God, if they persevere in prayer. What happens is that the closer we draw to God, the more words seem to no longer suffice. Our hearts are filled with yearning to be one with the One Who loves us endlessly; the only prayer that feels "real" is silence. We sit in a chair, lie on a bed, walk through a garden, sit on a beach, and with full hearts desire to simply "BE" with God. Rumi tells us "Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation."
Mirabai Starr observes "Where once you were fed on the Word, now you find the Holy One in the center of a luminous silence." (in "God is Love.") In this silence, you are swimming in the Ocean of Mystery, in a Light so bright that it seems darkness. For the closer we come to God, the more we realize God's utter vastness and Otherness and paradoxically God's wholly intimate Nearness to us.
This desire for silent, Centering Prayer can generate confusion and even pain in our souls. The ways we used to pray before can seem at the moment to be meaningless jargon. "The hymns and prayers that used to fill your heart with the presence of God have become dried husks. Where did the juice go? you muse, more curious than distressed....Even as you recite the familiar liturgy, you find yourself perplexed: What in the world does that mean? you ask." (Starr.) Words have begun to seem empty simply because God is so overpoweringly MUCH. The emptiness of silence, the unknowing because you know you do not know everything about God becomes preferable to recited prayers. You know that you need to set aside time every day, if only for a few minutes, to be quiet and rest in God.
Silent Centering Prayer is our ultimate surrender to God, our putting aside our insistent egos, our ultimate "Yes" to God's silent, unknown work in our souls. We school ourselves to receptive silence, allowing our thoughts to pass through our minds (because nothing can stop our thinking!) and "pay attention" to God's ongoing Presence. Sometimes we use a particular word or mantra about God to focus our hearts; sometimes we simply concentrate on breathing in and out. We are not waiting for Him to come to us because God is always with us. We are waiting for ourselves to become aware of Him in faith, so that our hearts and souls can kneel before Him, giving Him our all.
The discipline of Centering Prayer prepares us to receive the free gift of God known as Contemplative Prayer, when we can experience His Presence in a sudden, inexplicable flood of love and peace so pure and unmistakable that we know God truly exists! Fr. Thomas Keating describes it as "The gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God's presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself." Then, when that passionate love ebbs, when God "lets go" of us, there is left only our yearning for God Who is Love to visit us again. For a brief moment, we have tasted the very beginning of heaven.
Beautifully, our prayer life can be a holy cycle. Our other ways of praying "feed the fire," preparing us for this centerpiece of silent Centering Prayer, leading to contemplative prayer. And, amazingly, silent prayer ( and contemplative prayer) give us back our desire for every other way of praying, but now we pray at a deeper level, purified by our times of silence. Our life with our Beloved can then mirror and enrich every other love relationship that we have: working together, playing together, conversing with each other, and then that special, private beautiful time of resting and cuddling together, beating heart to beating heart in silent, Centering prayer. In these wonderful, varied ways, we can pray always without ceasing!
If you want to know more about Centering Prayer, Fr. Thomas Keating has a wonderful website on Contemplative Prayer practices.