“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.

Poetic Voices: Jen Karetnick and E. Kristin Anderson

We find all kinds of things to write poems about, like food, and cheese, and the rock star Prince. At least, we write about food and Prince when we are really writing about something deeper.

Jen Karetnick is a poet and author who has written (and co-authored) books about food, like a recipe book for mangoes, entitled to no surprise, Mango. Food is an important part of our lives, for more than the obvious reasons of sustenance and survival. Food is part of culture, for good and for ill.

In Brie Season: Poems, Karetnick has assembled some 60 poems which are ostensibly about food, but go deeper into the culture that frames what we call food and the human emotions that come into play.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

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.