The Power of Contemplative Prayer

Summary

This week on Speaking of Faith, Bishop DeDe and Adam discuss the importance of and the role of contemplative prayer, and the interplay between faith and action. They explore the challenges of vulnerability in prayer, the need for humility, and the hope for the church to embody the teachings of Jesus in the coming years. The conversation emphasizes the necessity of listening to God and the transformative power of silence in our spiritual lives.

Takeaways

-Contemplative prayer allows us to listen to God.
-Silence is essential for reconnecting with God.
-Faith and action are intrinsically linked.
-Vulnerability is a source of strength and healing.
-Humility is necessary to receive God's guidance.
-We often resist what God is calling us to do.
-The church should be a safe haven for the vulnerable.
-Prayer is a discipline that leads to empowerment.
-Our hope for the church is to embody Jesus' teachings.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Faith Conversations
02:55 The Importance of Speaking About Faith
06:11 Contemplative Prayer: Listening to God
09:04 The Interplay of Faith and Action
12:00 Vulnerability in Prayer and Listening
15:04 Facing Fear and Embracing Humility
17:45 The Role of Vulnerability in Our Lives
21:07 Hope for the Church in the Coming Years

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:02.626)
Welcome friends to the podcast. Speaking of faith, I'm DeDe Duncan-Probe, the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York. That's Canada to Pennsylvania, Utica to Elmira, and all those great places in between. I'm joined by Adam Eichelberger, who is our communications director. And today we're going to speak of faith. This podcast is meant to be a conversation, a discussion. You're welcome to send in comments and topics you'd like to talk about.

things that you're not sure how to talk about. And my hope for this podcast is that it will inspire you or motivate you or prepare you to talk with others about your faith. In this time, in this age we live in, speaking about faith can seem very risky and make us feel very vulnerable. And I find that it's helpful if we start out by preparing ourselves for that to kind of practice.

to practice so that we can talk about our faith. Because our faith, what we believe, those core values we hold, are really what could guide our lives and often do, but when they go unnamed, then they're not empowered. And so often the pressures and world's values and the things that are happening around us can cause us to either go silent and feel like we cannot speak.

or confuses where we're not sure what to say, or they can just sort of inculcate us where we end up kind of going with the flow and saying things or approving of things we don't really want to say or approve of. And so in this time, I find that speaking of faith is a vulnerable, even a revolutionary, an act of resistance almost to the way in which our world wants us to quietly stop talking.

I've been really struck in recent weeks by the repetition of an act where a person speaks up and is either vilified or silenced or punished for speaking. In the United States of America, we have long prided ourselves on welcoming free speech, but in this time, that free speech sometimes means that we do not speak of the things we value most. Now, in this

Bishop DeDe (02:28.11)
a world in which so much is happening, where there's conflict, where there's all of these things that are pressing down and pushing us back. It is understandable that many people feel silenced or freeze or not sure what to say. And so I want us all to be encouraged that the things we need most right now are truth, authenticity, and the opportunity to voice our care or concerns.

So however your life is happening for you right now, my prayer is that we will speak of our faith because we need faith in this time. We've talked a lot about the baptismal covenant. We've talked about when we disagree. We've talked about when we have felt hurt by others. We have talked about when we may have hurt others. And we have even talked about the ways in which we pray and speak to God.

And so today I want to talk a little bit about that, about how we speak with God and how that can influence our life. Now, one of the things that I want to really zero in on is often we think of praying as a laundry list for God, that we're going to tell God all the things we want God to do and line them up and sort of say, pray for this, pray for that, pray for that. But often we forget the most crucial part of prayer.

which is to open our hearts to listen, to the silence, to hold before God not our laundry list, but our open and receptive heart, that we're listening for the ways in which God is calling us to be. And in that still but purposeful silence, to know that God is calling and emboldening us to respond. God knows what is on our heart.

but we also do need to say what is on our heart and then to offer the opportunity for us to hear God. I don't know if you are familiar with the idea of contemplative prayer, of sitting still before God and finding a comfortable place to sit, a place that is quiet, a place that allows us that opportunity to be focused on God alone.

Bishop DeDe (04:47.848)
Often in our lives, we're so busy filling it with noise that we don't have those times of silence. So I invite you to consider contemplative prayer as an act of either resistance or empowerment or the things that you need in your life to stop and to be silent and to create space to know that God is God. This is not the first time that the world has been in crisis and it will not be the last.

But in this moment, God is with you. And to be quiet and still and open our hearts to God and find that peace of knowing that God is not lost. I think often we think because we're confused or we don't know what to do or we feel like we should do something but we're not sure what it is, that God feels the same way. But God does not feel the same way because God is God and we are not, we know this.

And so opening ourselves to what God is calling us to do and to be about, to stop and to listen, and to yield not to our own knowledge or our sense of self-importance, but rather to God's goodness, God's immense grace, God's living that is beyond all knowing, and to allow ourselves to tap into something that's larger than the problems before us.

And so when we pray for the world, often we talk about it as if we're not doing anything. sitting in silence before God, well that's good, but go feed somebody. Sitting in silence before God, that's okay, but maybe we should do something else. Feeding people, caring for people, walking with people, supporting people is essential to our faith. It's how we act our faith out. It's how our faith is embodied in us.

is the way we use our body. However, before we do those things, to sit with God and open our heart to God will change how we do those things. It will change the way in which we engage with our neighbor. If we're feeding people and doing all sorts of good works because it makes us feel better or it feels like it empowers us, that's not necessarily bad, but how much more important or more helpful would it be?

Bishop DeDe (07:09.088)
if we came into that space of helping others, connected with God, connected with the source of love and life that is beyond this life, where we're rooted and grounded in something larger than ourselves. We'll listen with different ears, we'll see with different eyes, we'll understand with more open hearts that it's not about this one temporal reality, but about all that God is. I know this week, as I have

read and listen to the news, my heart can grow very concerned. I'm alarmed at the way we treat our college students. I'm alarmed by the way we treat our neighbors. I'm alarmed by the harsh words that are said against one another, the callous way we talk about the other person, whoever that may be for you, whoever that may be for me, the way in which we dismiss the humanity of humans.

I think we need the silence to reconnect with God, to remember that praying is also an act of repentance, of changing our mind, of turning again with sorrow back to the way of God, knowing that we need the way of God. We don't need more people thinking they have the right opinion or insisting that someone agree with us. What we need is more opportunity for us to stop.

to listen and to receive the power of God that is in and around us, that we may have different hearts. I don't know about you, but there have been times when I've been so certain that I needed to do X, Y, or Z, and then when I pray, I realize, no, I don't need to do any of those things. In fact, what I'm called to do in this moment is something I would never have thought of in my own.

mind and my own brilliance wouldn't have come up with the right thing. It's only when I stop and pray, when I center myself in the ever-present eternal nature of God's love, that I truly find my purpose in life. It is not an act of passivity. To be prayerful, to be in contemplative prayer is a rebellious act of resistance

Bishop DeDe (09:33.42)
that empowers us beyond our measure and our own being. We need that silence. And I know we need it because often when we need something, we're like little children who say, I need this. no, I don't. I'm not tired. I'm not tired. And then we fall asleep in the back seat. We're going through our life where we don't need to pray more, we need to do more, we don't need to pray. We need to pray more. We need to stop. We need to listen.

And we need the power of contemplative prayer, of silence, of connecting with God at the deepest level to hold our terror and our joy, to hold our anger and our fear before God's care and keeping that we may receive and be part of God's healing, redemptive grace that calls us to eternal love. It's what we need most in this time. And then,

Having received this power, we act. So I've talked a lot in this time, Adam, so I welcome reflections or questions or things that come to your mind.

Adam Eichelberger (10:43.865)
Well, the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear you talking about this bishop is I hear so much in what you just said about like the constant dialogue within the church amongst Christians about things like faith versus works and how like it tends to be that like Christians, if you're not familiar with this, there's a lot of people who think that it should like our faith in Jesus should be totally driven by

Bishop DeDe (11:00.15)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (11:11.673)
the work that we do, the good work that we do, and that that is the basis of our faith. And then there's so many that say that you can't earn salvation or your faith shouldn't be based in works. And it's this big, this big muck that we get ourselves into. And it makes me think about how these things inform one another. You you talked, you were just sharing and I hear that so much. It resonates with me so much, the need to

Bishop DeDe (11:13.6)
Right. Right.

Bishop DeDe (11:20.459)
No.

Bishop DeDe (11:25.718)
Right. Right.

Bishop DeDe (11:34.423)
Right.

Adam Eichelberger (11:41.145)
First, take the need for action to prayer and really listen to what it is that God is asking me to do. Then go out and act and do what it is God is asking me to do. But then also be reflective on the thing that you just did, that these things should be cyclical and informing one another. Yeah, and we don't get to divorce them from one another. Absolutely.

Bishop DeDe (11:44.759)
Right.

Bishop DeDe (11:57.998)
Exactly.

Bishop DeDe (12:04.573)
they're intrinsically linked. That's right.

Adam Eichelberger (12:08.759)
The question I have for you, and we've asked this in certain ways, but this is a little bit different, because we've talked about prayer on the podcast before, and this aspect of prayer, this contemplative prayer is absolutely, it's different than the ways that we've talked about prayer before. But what would you say, like, sorry, let me rephrase my question. I'm gonna go back. Why do you think it could be so difficult for us to receive

what it is God is trying to tell us, even though we may be longing for it.

Bishop DeDe (12:44.46)
Wow, that is such a good question. So listener, throw that, that question's out to you too. So as you're listening to this podcast, why is it that we fight God when what we need is what God's calling us to, is how I'm maybe rephrasing that correctly. To think about why we're fighting. mean, I think the first word that comes to my mind is fear. We're afraid.

And when we're afraid, fight, flight or freeze, or more when we're afraid, we become more motivated by power. That whole thing about we become the monster we're fighting. Someone yells, we yell back. Someone yells louder, we yell even louder. And we ratchet up and up and up, knowing that what we actually need is to stop, is to cease and to listen and to change our mind.

Pride, know, theologians would talk about the sin of pride is at the heart of all of this. Excuse me. And then someone else might talk about the social anxiety is too wretched up too high. We're too busy to stop and pray. But I think at the heart of it is throughout scripture we see people talking about this very issue.

Bishop DeDe (14:14.08)
All through scripture, all through scripture people are called by God, Moses being called by God, have prophets being called by, Jonah running away. I I think sometimes we're all a little bit Jonah. God calls us and we're like, I'm going there. You know, I'm running away, I'm running away. And then we get swallowed by whatever the whale is in our life and we think, why am I doing this? You know, I need to stop. And habit.

Adam Eichelberger (14:32.569)
hehe

Bishop DeDe (14:42.646)
You know, there's a lot of reasons we run from God. I think fundamentally, I think we have such an ingrained sense of a desire for power, corrupts, absolute... Goodness, gonna have a lot to edit. Sorry. You know, I think it, I'll stop. I'll wait till we're nice and settled.

Adam Eichelberger (15:04.761)
Don't worry about it, it's all good.

Bishop DeDe (15:12.43)
Just sec.

Adam Eichelberger (15:13.294)
All good.

Bishop DeDe (15:16.59)
Ahem.

Bishop DeDe (15:20.513)
Okay.

We operate so much in our life out of habit from a sense of power. Nobody's gonna, you're not gonna, you're not the boss of me, you're not gonna tell me what to do, I'm going, I just need to figure this out, I don't wanna listen. We lack humility, we're afraid of curiosity, we're trying to survive. And so those drives to survive, I think, create a juxtaposition with what Jesus is actually calling us to, which.

It's interesting that really Jesus invites us to die with him. you know, we lately people have been talking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but that is one of the things that Jesus is inviting us to die and to die to that need to be self-sufficient. I had a monk one time asked me what broke so that you found God. That we're so busy with our self-sufficiency and that covering that something has to kind of crack in order to let the light in.

You know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about this, CS Lewis talked about this, know, Moltmann, you you can go on and on with great minds, but this is a fundamental aspect of our humanity that when we are, listen to God the most often is when we have found the limit of what we can do. We wait until we're in crisis to say, okay, let's make a deal with God. And.

And I think if we can practice humility, practice curiosity, practice a willingness to pray every day for, you know, and with contemplative prayer, I encourage you, start off with five minutes of just sitting in silence, clearing your mind and thinking about God. Then go to 10 minutes and 30 and work your way to a time that seems the right amount of time for you to pray.

Bishop DeDe (17:16.27)
to have a word or a phrase that when your mind wanders to say, okay, back to Jesus, and then you go back to that time. To cultivate a prayer life is a discipline, it's part of our piety, but it also is a path to our own healing and redemption and empowerment. How can we know what we really want if we never stop and listen? How can we know what God's calling us to if we never stop and listen?

in a society that values noise over silence. I mean, how many of us listeners are driving in our cars and constantly listening to something, music or news or even this podcast, that we're constantly listening to something to fill our head or else we'll hear what we're afraid of. Because it may be that what we're afraid of is our need to say, I'm messing up, I'm wrong, I need help.

And those are moments of transformation to be in relationship with ourself and with God in an honest, willing way to receive.

Adam Eichelberger (18:30.105)
And one of the things that I've had to work on as I've tried, and again, this is a work that I'm doing that all of us should be doing listeners is in an attempt or a desire to deepen my prayer life, the pursuit of mindfulness within my prayer life. And for so long in my faith life, that was kind of vilified that it was almost one of these things that kind of gets put up there by

Bishop DeDe (18:37.779)
Thank

Bishop DeDe (18:49.815)
Right.

Adam Eichelberger (18:59.041)
certain faith circles that like this is a bad practice. It's like how some Christians think that yoga is bad or whatever. And so this idea of mindfulness adopting, for lack of a better term, a mantra when I'm participating in contemplative prayer to kind of be reflective on a phrase. And that has been so beneficial for me to do that, to be able to focus in on like, okay, if I'm trying to ask Jesus what it is you want from me.

Bishop DeDe (19:06.677)
huh.

Bishop DeDe (19:16.077)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (19:21.666)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (19:26.712)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (19:27.017)
just being mindful of my breath and as I breathe in Jesus and then as I breathe out, what is your will? You know, just practicing like that and then also being mindful of when I lose my breath or when I'm not making that prayer and then starting over, those things are really beneficial. And I think that that's what part of this call to contemplative prayer is evaluating what our prayer looks like and how we can grow with it. And you spoke to something a second ago, Bishop, that I kind of want us to dive a little bit deeper into, which is what is the role

What do you think is the role of vulnerability in how we listen to God? And as a second parter, like a two parter, how can we practice vulnerability with courage?

Bishop DeDe (20:09.87)
Well, great questions and listener, if you didn't hear vulnerability and Brené Brown, those are almost like that's been her bread and butter and she's done so much research and so I definitely point you to her books where she talks about the power of vulnerability. You know, we are vulnerable. We're vulnerable to heat and cold. We're vulnerable to lightning. We're vulnerable to death, all kinds of ways to

food that's gone bad to animals on and on, to our own anger and our own neuroses. We're vulnerable beings. And one of the things that seems to happen with us humans is we try to cover over our vulnerability, try to get enough money that we're separate or we try to get enough power that we can dominate over people or we just, you know, insist that we will not ever put ourselves in a vulnerable position.

And of course, one of the great ironies of life is that until we are vulnerable, we don't actually find a true life for existence. That often it is in those places of vulnerability when we're to our core nature that we heal the most or grow the most or learn the most or become our best selves. And so what we fear is being wrong or vulnerable. And yet,

When we allow ourselves to, in safety, be vulnerable with people who are safe, to be seen and authentically heard for who we are in safety is so powerful. It's why love is the greatest power in the world is because love is at the heart of vulnerability. To love another person is to risk sorrow. To love another person is to risk being embarrassed. And yet,

when we love another person and are loved in return, there is no joy or happiness in the world that's greater than that. And so I think our desire to avoid being vulnerable is a huge handicap. It is not a strength, it's a handicap. People who have cordoned themselves off from loving other people are the weakest and the most

Bishop DeDe (22:32.206)
hurt and You know st. Paul talks about this in Corinthians about love and you know a clanging gong But love is patient and kind it is not boastful Those are vulnerable things to be patient Means you're not insisting on getting your way to be kind is to consider the other person and not dominate and demand that it be your way

But I think without vulnerability, we never truly experience life. Go to my air with, unless you've wept, you've never laughed. It is the ultimate power. And we know this from Jesus. mean, God did not send Jesus to us as an adult. I think if we were gonna send an emissary to someone, we would not send a baby. We would send somebody who's got five points in the.

and a notebook or something. But Jesus comes to us as an infant in complete vulnerability, needing to be fed and changed and cared for, and invites us to be vulnerable in return. Now, one thing we want to make sure that we talk about a little bit in this time, and this timestamps this podcast to talk about contemplative prayer.

Adam Eichelberger (23:31.257)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (23:55.382)
I want to tie it a little bit to the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus praying at the garden. We're coming up on Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday. Next week is Holy Week. And so I want to note for everyone, and we may want to pick this up in a future podcast, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is an exemplar of what vulnerability is and what vulnerability brings.

The salvation of God comes out of that vulnerable place in the garden. And what we may want to come back to later listeners is to talk about, you know, the disciples are falling asleep. So his friends are letting him down. He's alone. He's isolated, sweating, you know, blood from the anxiety of it. You know, let this cut past from me. It's a great gift to us to hear that Jesus is not wanting to do the next thing.

We often think that we're supposed to just skip along happily when we feel called, we're just gonna trot on out there and feel great about it. And generally speaking, when we feel, when we're really called is when we were digging in our heels and saying anything but that. I don't wanna do that. And just like Jesus, this is an exemplar of what a call is and an exemplar of what prayer looks like. Seeking God, staying awake, know, praying.

being in a space that's made holy by the praying, and then ultimately saying yes to the next thing. Our contemplative prayer in that vulnerable place as you brought up is much like Jesus is in the garden, where we hold before God our fears, what we don't do and do not wanna do, our abandonment, our loss, our sense of isolation, but always knowing that God is with us.

calling us. And while Jesus, would, know, for those out there worrying about heresy or, you know, something, Jesus being the son of God, we are children of God, and we're called to emulate Jesus in our lives with that vulnerability and that willingness to go where we don't want to go. And I think prayer, by necessity, the vulnerability of prayer predates and must come first.

Adam Eichelberger (26:21.933)
That's great. And so the last thing, the last question I have for you Bishop and kudos to you listeners for constantly keeping me on my toes because when we were planning and discussing what we were going to be doing with the podcast, initially Bishop said, Hey, do we have any listener submitted questions? And we had gotten through our list and I told her no. But then, then today about five minutes before we started recording, checked

Bishop DeDe (26:45.269)
Uh-huh.

Adam Eichelberger (26:51.755)
And not only is there a listener submitted question, we have our first ever repeat listener submitted question. So shout out to Dana. Dana asked a question a couple episodes back and Dana wants to know, Dana, you win the award for the first two time listener submitted question. So Dana wants to know, Bishop, what is your hope for the church?

in the next five years.

Bishop DeDe (27:23.984)
Dana, very good question. You know, I think the next five years are gonna be hard. I think they're gonna be hard because things are hard right now. We're watching what's happening in our world. We're seeing, you know, tariffs and stock markets and college students and arrests and deportations and harsh language bantered back and forth.

My hope for the church is we would be more like Jesus. That in this time, because in Jesus' time, these troubles we're facing right now are no different in many ways. They have different names or are focused on different things, but it's people vying for power and prestige and money and all of it. My prayer for the church is that we will indeed take up the cross and follow Jesus.

that we will be a safe space and a safe haven for the most vulnerable in our midst, that we will lay down our righteous indignation and our fear and our desire to do nothing and pick up instead our dedication to prayer and acting in service, that we will be the body of Christ in action in the world. And so in this time, my hope for the church is that it will be a time of great clarity.

that our ministries flourish because we are not bound by this reality of fighting and degradation of one another. That we will truly be a force for dignity for all persons, safety for all persons, and honor truly the dignity of all. And so my prayer for the church is the same as always, that we live for Jesus.

Bishop DeDe (29:18.784)
So dear friends, thank you for your questions. Keep them coming, keep us on our toes. Let's keep speaking of our faith. And in this time, when we're speaking of our faith, let's begin with prayer. Let's start with the silence and allow God's grace to move in our own hearts and heal and redeem us, that when we go into the world, we will share words from that place of healing and redemption that will heal the world. May you be blessed, may you know.

that you are loved and may you be a blessing and love others. And I look forward to speaking of our faith soon.