Book: Prayer, Finding the Heart's True Home

I'm in the middle of reading Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home by Richard Foster. It's something I've been meaning to read for a long, long time. In fact, I've started reading it three different times and stopped, not because of the quality of the book (though perhaps because it's simply so thought provoking) but because I feel like I need to contemplate for a good long while after each chapter, and so it's easy to let life's distractions get in the way of finishing it.

I was planning to wait til I was finished to do a proper review, but every chapter inspires an "Aha! I should post that quote" feeling and so I thought I'd go ahead and post a few things here that have gotten my mind all a whirl lately. (Of course, the follow on thought to the first Aha is that I want to just sit down and transcribe the whole chapter, which of course just won't do.)

On Simple Prayer:

"We make mistakes - lots of them; we sin; we fall down, often - but each time we get up and begin again. We pray again. We seek to follow God again. And again our insolence and self-indulgence defeat us. Never mind. We confess and begin again...and again...and again. In fact, sometimes Simple Prayer is called the 'Prayer of Beginning Again.'"

On the Prayer of the Forsaken (only chapter 2 and already poking me in my tenderest spots as "forsaken" is perhaps the best word I could think of to describe the prayer journey of infertility.)

"I want you to know that to be faced with the 'withering winds of God's hiddenness' does not mean that God is displeased with you, or that you are insensitive to the work of God's Spirit, or that you have committed some horrendous offense against heaven, or that there is somethign wrong with you, or anything. Darkness is a definite experience of prayer. It is to be expected, even embraced."

and

"Learn that trust precedes faith...When you are unable to put your spiritual life into drive, do not put it into reverse; put it into neutral. Trust is how you put your spiritual life into neutral. Trust is confidence in the character of God. Firmly and deliberately you say, 'I do not understand what God is doing or even where God is, but I know that He is out to do me good.' This is trust. This is how to wait."

On the Prayer of Examen:

"We practice it [the Prayer of Examen] by turning inward. Not outward, not upward, but inward. Anthony Bloom writes, 'Your prayer must be turned inwards, not towards a God of Heaven nor towards a God far off, but towards God who is closer to you than you are aware.'"

On the Prayer of Relinquishment:

"We must not, however, get the notion that all of this comes to us effortlessly. That would not even be desireable. Struggle is an essential feature of the Prayer of Relinquishment. Did you notice that Jesus asked repeatedly for the cup to pass? Make no mistake about it: he could have avoided the cross if he had so chosen. He had a free will and a genuine choice, and he freely chose to submit his will to the will of the Father...Struggle is important because the Prayer of Relinquishment is Christian prayer and not fatalism. We do not resign ourselves to fate. Catherine Marshall writes, 'Resignation is barren of faith in the love of God...Resignation lies down quietly in the dust of a universe from which God seems to have fled, and the door of Hope swings shut.'"

and

"Why does God seemingly require relinquishment before bringing something into being? Part of the answer lies in the fact that frequently we hold on so tightly to the good that we do know that we cannot receive the greater good that we do not know."

On Formation Prayer and the blesedness of winter:

"So often we hide our true condition with the surface virtues of pious activity, but, once the leaves of our frantic pace drop away, the transforming power of a wintry spirituality can have effect. To the outward eye everything looks barren and unsightly. Our many defects, flaws, weaknesses, and imperfections stand out in bold relief. But only the outward virtues have collapsed; the principle of virtue is actually being strengthened. The soul is venturing forth into the interior. Real, solid, enduring virtues begin to develop deep within."

And I could continue on and on, but I'll stop. It'll probably take me a while to finish the book completely - even flipping back through to find the quotes above had me stopping to reread entire chapters. I imagine it's sufficient to say I recommend it highly.