Active and passive moves in prayer

If you find these reflections useful to you, that’s my goal. I’d love to hear from you. Thank you for stopping by.

Loss of pastoral care and counseling centers and training programs

I first encountered Gerald May through his book Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology, (1982). At the time I was a full-time resident at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care (VIPCare), one of pastoral care and counseling’s premier institutions. We didn’t know then, but only one resident would come after me. Economics would slowly squeeze the educational program, until today it is a faint shadow of what it was.

Although almost nobody noticed, we lost one of the most valuable assets in the field, and not only at VIPCare. Across the nation pastoral counseling centers themselves are going out of business, and training and certification has been handed off to the university and the state.

Pastoral counseling uniquely focuses on the personhood of the counselor and her spiritual and professional formation. Secular training programs, modeled on the university, train the intellect and barely nod at the person, whose own largely unexamined unconscious and spirit will drive her counseling practice.

Active and passive praying

Anyway. Back to G. May and his writing. Gerald May’s The Dark Night of the Soul is deceptively simple. (G. May, of course, is distinct from Rollo May, also an outstanding psychologist and author.)

He gives an overview of the lives and writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, 16th century religious geniuses. John also is Spain’s national poet.

I’ve never had much success reading either of these people.

May defines “meditation” as primarily all the exercises and forms of prayer that we do, whereas “contemplation” is God’s sheer gift. All we can do with regard to the latter is “to welcome it with open arms.” These definitions vary with different writers. The definitions I’m more familiar with are:

• meditation, the first stage of praying, active, characterized by use of methods, images, thought.
• contemplation, a usually more “advanced” stage of praying, passive (receptive, welcoming with open arms), open, imageless, thoughtless.

I”m sorry to use the word “advanced” because it brings in all kinds of unwanted associations. But I can’t think of a better term.

May says prayer is active and passive. The two intermingle. You go back and forth from beginning to “advanced” phases. (There is no such thing as “advanced”; in prayer we’re all beginners.)

I like the image of God and soul as dance partners. (The “soul” is the deepest part of yourself, where you are most truly you, where God also is.) In active praying the human partner’s movement is more in view; in passive, God’s movement is. But both are interactive in both.

The human activity in the “passive” phase, however, is being receptive, welcoming with open arms. This is what Buddhists and others call “mindfulness,” a relaxed state of loving attentiveness to all that is.

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 Your feedback will be especially valuable to me. I hope you find these explorations of use in your daily walk with God.