“Flee, Be Silent, Pray” by Ed Cyzewski

If you’ve read any of the books by writer and editor Ed Cyzewski, you know that (1) he has often wrestled with his faith; (2) over a period of some years, he moved from a Catholic faith to an evangelical one, including a seminary degree; (3) he found his evangelical faith and church to be legalistic and as much focused on “doing” as the Catholic church had emphasized works; and (4) he has wrestled, and continues to wrestle, with his faith through writing and through prayer.

But the prayer he uses isn’t what many evangelicals (or Catholics, for that matter) are familiar with. It’s the contemplative prayer of the church fathers and the desert fathers. This is prayer that is a spiritual exercise and engagement. It is prayer that is part of a process that’s been used by Christians for more than 15 centuries.

Something old is new again.

Flee, Be Silent, Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace with God through Contemplative Prayer is Cyzewski’s description and explanation of how he is deepening his faith.

The title is taken from a saying by Abba Arsenius (350-445 A.D.), also known as Arsenius the Great. He was a tutor for the Roman imperial family until he became an anchorite in the Egyptian desert, and he is particularly known for his writing on contemplative prayer. What Abba Arsenius said was this: “Flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the sources of sinlessness.”

Cyzewski walks through each of those steps, telling his own story of how he discovered and utilized contemplative prayer. One particular tool he found useful is what is called the “examen,” a process developed by St. Ignatius for prayer that both focuses and deepens.

Contemplative prayer is something that all Christians, regardless of denomination, should understand and consider.

Ed Cyzewski

Cyzewski struggles with his evangelical experience. His experience as an evangelical has not been my own experience; perhaps it’s because I haven’t had any experience with legalistic churches. It’s this experience that has contributed to the “anxious” part of the book’s title. But the differences in evangelical experiences doesn’t detract from the central message that contemplative prayer can be a good spiritual practice.

Cyzewski is a writer, blogger, freelancer, and book editor. He is also the author of numerous books on faith, writing, and related topics, including Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity (2012); Pray, Write, Grow (2015); The Contemplative Writer (2016); and Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life (2016).

Flee, Be Silent, Pray provides a solid overview to an ancient Christian practice that is being rediscovered. And it tells a very personal story at the same time. 

Related:

My review of Creating Space.

My review of Write Without Crushing Your Soul.

My review of Pray, Write, Grow.

My review of First Draft Father.

Top photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Ed Cyzewski’s “Write Without Crushing Your Soul”

I was 10 when I starting “writing” in the recognizable sense. My father has assembled a bound, unruled paperback book of empty pages, and I began to write a mystery story. In pencil. I don’t remember how far I was able to get in the story, or what happened to the book. But I do remember is had something to do with a secret passage underground entered through a grandfather clock.

Writing stuck. But it only stuck in a professional sense in the summer before my sophomore year in college, when I decided to major in journalism. From then one, my life revolved around words – student newspaper, newspaper copy editor, editor of a company publication, speechwriter, issues manager, novels, non-fiction book, social media.

Words. Writing. Articles. Freelancing. Corporate communications. Speeches (lots of speeches). I’ve been on the freelance and contract sides, and I’ve been on the corporate side. I’ve struggled, as most writers do, with the dreaded marketing. There have been times when I’ve faced having to compromise my faith in the work I’ve done. I’ve said no, every time.

Writing can be a struggle, a punishing kind of business to be in.

Ed Cyzewski knows. He’s a writer. He’s written for himself and others, for companies and organizations, for web sites and for magazines. He’s been there, and done that. And he knows that writing can be a real struggle. It’s never not a struggle. He knows the realities of trying to making financial ends meet, and there’s no work at hand. Or how a flood of work can suddenly evaporate.

He’s distilled that knowledge, and while it applies to all writers, he’s focused that knowledge in what I can only call a gift: Write Without Crushing Your Soul: Sustainable Publishing and Freelancing.

Chapter titles are deceptively simple: “Writing Sustainably;” “Dealing with Adversity;” “Writing That Serves God and Money?;” “Saving Your Soul from Book Publishing;” “Healthy Publicity Practices for Authors;” “The Comparison Trap;” “Maintaining a Sustainable Writing Life;” and “Priorities for Sustainable Writing.” I say “deceptively” simple, because each chapter is packed with practical experience – and practical wisdom. And extremely helpful advice. I’ve been writing professionally for more than 40 years, and I found myself making notes as I read, seeing things I hadn’t considered before, and most of all enjoying the words of a writer who loves what he does – but knows there is always the danger of too much of a good thing.

Ed Cyzewski

The word “sustainable” shows up repeatedly, and for good reasons. Like the need to care for your family, and the need to keep from draining yourself, and the danger of becoming so consumed with “platform,” search engine optimization, and the number of newsletter subscribers that you forget why you’re doing this work in the first place.

Cyzewski has written several works in the area of faith, writing and publishing, including Pray, Write, Grow; First Draft Father;  Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus; Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting God in Everyday Life; A Christian Survival Guide; The Good News of Revelation (co-author with Larry Helyer); Unfollowers: Unlikely Lessons on Faith from Those Who Doubted Jesus; Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity; Divided We Unite; Why We Run from God’s Love; and A Path to Publishing: What I Learned from Publishing a Nonfiction Book. He blogs at Ed Cyzewski: Freelance Writer. 

If you’re a writer, or considering writing as a career, or even do part-time writing work, read Write Without Crushing Your Soul. It speaks to who we are, from someone who is one of us. And he’s a good man to share this with us.

Related:

My review of First Draft Father.

My review of Pray, Write, Grow.

Top photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Ed Cyzewski’s “Pray, Write, Grow”

Prayer and writing may spring from the same spiritual impulse. They are certainly related, both being “leaps in the dark” – prayer may be met with ongoing silence and writing can be met with – ongoing silence, too. Both are certainly acts of faith, and say as much about ourselves as believers and writers as they do to God or the readers we are directing ourselves to.

Ed Cyzewski’s Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together recognizes the relationship of prayer and writing for those of us who are Christians and writers. What he has created here is a kind of expanded devotional for writers, a work deliberately designed to stop us in our frenzied lives of cramming writing (and prayer) into every spare moment, of which there are few.

The book is divided into seven chapters: “Creating Space to Pray and Write;” “Learning to be Present;” “Do You Want to be Made Well;” “Breaking Through with Self-Awareness;” “Discernment Through Prayer and Writing;” “We Pray and Write by Faith;” and “Getting Started,” quick resource guides for both prayer and writing.  

Ed Cyzewski

It is a simple work. What strikes me even more than its simplicity is its gentleness. Cyzewski is gentle with his readers, which suggests we should be gentle with ourselves. It is not a daily Bible study, but rather a discussion we need to have with ourselves if we intend to grow in both our prayer time and our writing.

Cyzewski has written several works in the area of faith, including Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus; Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting God in Everyday Life; A Christian Survival Guide; The Good News of Revelation (co-author with Larry Helyer); Unfollowers: Unlikely Lessons on Faith from Those Who Doubted Jesus; Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity; Divided We Unite; Why We Run from God’s Love; and A Path to Publishing: What I Learned from Publishing a Nonfiction Book. He blogs at Ed Cyzewski: Freelance Writer. 

Pray, Write, Grow is full of helpful counsel for Christian writers. And Cyzewski has the order exactly right: first we pray, then we write, and then we grow. And we grow in both.

Top photograph by Claudia Wehrli via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads: Four on Kindle

One nice thing about combining a long stretch of holidays and vacation days is the opportunity to catch up on some reading. Here are four short works that I’ve read recently on Kindle.

The Battle for Christmas Castle, by Eldon Eric Johnson. This is something of a morality tale for children, but the basic message is also aimed at adults. What Christmas rules your heart – the Christmas of materialism or the Christmas of the King? Johnson tells his story through the eyes of a little girl named Emma and a talking dog named Shu-Shu, along with a few talking horses, mice and a chipmunk who overcomes a bad self-image to become something of a hero. And applying his own lesson, Johnson is giving all the proceeds of this book to a special cause, which you can read about at Emily Wierenga’s blog.

 

Picturing Christmas: A Novella, by Jason Wright and Adrien Fuss. Jason Wright has written a number of popular Christmas stories, including The Christmas Box. In Picturing Christmas, Aubrey Porter, an only child, has just graduated from college and aims to make a career in photography in New York City. What she can’t deal with is her parents’ recent divorce. Her parents are also having a difficult time dealing with it. New York becomes a kind of getaway, with its glamour, Darwinian business practices, and street crime. She meets Jole Muller, a young and successful entrepreneur who has sought New York for his own kind of getaway. Picturing Christmas is a love story but it’s one with a strong dash of realism.

Vermont November: Poems, by Jonathan Neske. With all the controversy swirling in the publishing world over e-books versus traditional publishing, one positive thing about electronic publishing is the ability to create a poetry chapbook. This is a small collection of poems, written by Neske as he stayed a friend’s cabin in Vermont. The poems reflect much of the season and the natural world he experiences – the winter, the wind, what he sees on a given day, simple working tasks like chopping wood, and the snow thaw. The collection even includes a short, short ghost story. The poems are beautiful.

Why We Run from God’s Love, by Ed Cyzewski. This is actually more of an e-article than an e-book, and bit it thought-provoking and the subject will be familiar to many Christians (including me). Cyzewski found himself struggling to pray, and much of it had to do with how much he was running and the busyness that fills up a life. “the problem with loving Jesus, at least for me,” he writes, “is that I can’t see him.” He needs to touch the Lord, because he feels the gap between himself and God.

Photograph by Kajoch Adras via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads: Inspired and Creating

For this edition of Saturday Good Reads, I’m turning to the tumultuous world of e-books, and specifically to two e-books recently published e-books. One is about writing poetry, and the other is about creativity. Both are good reads.

Inspired

“From the earliest of times,” says L.L. Barkat, “people have used poetry as a way to remember, to heal, to hope, to love. Poetry’s various methods are suited to produce a memorable, emotional experience of language and, indeed, of life itself, as a poem can sing its music and ideas into our very centers.”

In Inspired: 8 Ways To Write Poetry You Love, Barkat writes about poetry – what it is, why you should consider it, and why you should consider memorizing it. And why you should write it. In fact, she makes it rather easy to begin. She describes five kinds of poems (there are others) – the catalog poem, the sonnet, the resolution poem, the sestina and the villanelle – gives examples of each, and then provides writing prompts and links to more information and discussion.

Barkat goes on to suggest you tweet your poem to @tspoetry (the Twitter account for TweetSpeak Poetry) and post your poem on the TweetSpeak Facebook page.

She’s the author of six books, including a poetry collection, InsideOut: Poems. (And I have to say even her non-fiction works read like poetry. You can visit her author page on Amazon for the complete list of her works.

Creating

“This is a call, an invitation, a challenge, and a shove to let your creative gifts come to life and to sustain them,” writes Ed Cyzewski. “I don’t use the word ‘gifts’ lightly. We have been given creativity for a reason. We nurture it because creativity has been woven into the fabric of our world. Whether you believe that’s by divine design or by random chance, the place of creativity in our world is unmistakable.”

In Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity, Cyzewski makes his case – and a compelling one – for creativity, that it’s not only for kids and a few artistic types. His definition of creativity is broad enough to include cooking, painting, drawing, sculpture, pottery, dancing, writing, sports, knitting/sewing/crocheting, woodworking, gardening and drama, and he says that list is only a small sample.

He goes on to explain how to access your creativity, what can choke it off, why creativity is not a self-centered enterprise, and how to avoid “playing it safe.” It’s a clarion call to “go ye therefore and create.”

Cyzewski is the author of seven books; you can see the complete list at his author page on Amazon. He blogs at In a Mirror Dimly.