Contemplation 6 – From singular to plural

A contemplative prayer group operates in the same way as other kinds of prayer group, except, of course, that there are no words. The group meets to observe a period of silent waiting on God which typically lasts about 30 minutes. Someone may lead into silence and lead out at the end with a suitable short reading, and also keep track of time as it passes.

It’s important for a group to meet regularly – weekly, fortnightly, monthly. But it’s not important that everyone attends every meeting. It’s in the nature of silence that no one has to contribute in a particular way. You can be there or not: the silence continues anyway.

Typically a group will meet in person in someone’s house or in a church. That was how it worked for almost everyone before lockdown, and how it still works for most people now. One of the benefits of lockdown was the discovery that group contemplative prayer is also possible online, for example on Zoom. There is something about the gallery of people’s faces, their conversation, their reaction to what others say, which is close-up and personal. And amazingly, it works just as well as being in the same room. It’s also easier for people to commit to being there if they don’t have to leave their own homes.

Numerous Christian writers have set out the benefits of praying contemplatively in a group. It is somehow more powerful, more supportive, more encouraging. This is Stephen Cottrell in Praying Through Life (Church House Publishing, 1998):

I think it is very helpful to be silent in the company of other people. There is no reason for silent prayer to be solitary prayer. The support of another person in the silence is hugely beneficial. It makes it easier to sit still and to relax into the silence. It allows us to stick with the silence when we would prefer to be busy doing something else. Silent prayer with another person or in a group creates an invisible bond. I still remember with a thankful heart different people with whom I have prayed regularly. And what I remember most is the silence we enjoyed together. In that silence we lifted one another up and helped one another to pray. I still find silence very difficult when I am on my own. I get fidgety, my mind soon starts buzzing with all sorts of other things. When I am with someone else I am able to rest in the silence. I am made more aware of the presence of Jesus, sitting at my side, enabling me to pray.

And here is David Cole, in The Art of Peace: Life Lessons from Christian Mystics (BRF, 2021) on the energy generated by collective silence:

As well as this, we need to understand the benefit of communal silence. There is a difference between sitting in silence alone and sitting in silence together – like the difference you can feel between being in a house alone and being in a house when someone else is there. Even if they are in a different room or on a different floor, one can feel the difference. The energy created in collective silence is different from that created when one is in silence alone, and so it actually affects us differently … The aim is to be still in your own space and own mind, but also to benefit from the collective energy of others around you.

This chimes in with my own experience. I have been a member of in-person contemplative prayer groups at various times in the past. I am currently a member of a national online contemplative prayer group which meets weekly on Monday evenings. In 2023 we met every Monday except Christmas Day. And even taking Christmas Day off was something we had to think about. This kind of experience generates its own momentum. The love, support and friendship offered by this group has been one of the most positive experiences of my life after recovering from illness a few years ago.

Group contemplative prayer reminds us that we are not alone but part of a wider community. In prayer we generate a community of spirit. This is John O’Donohue in Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Hunger to Belong (Bantam Books, 2000):

It seems that in a soul sense we cannot be fully ourselves without others. In order to be, we need to be with. There is something incomplete in purely individual presence. Belonging together with others completes something in us. It also suggests that behind all our differences and distances from each other, we are all participating in a larger drama of spirit. The life and death of each of us does indeed affect the rest of us. Not only do we long for the belonging of community but at a deeper level we are already a community of spirit.

And this is Joan Chittister in The Monastic Heart (Hodder & Stoughton, 2022):

It is exactly the community to which you belong – and the way you belong to it – that will determine what, in the end, becomes of your life. What the community as community believes and does and develops will mould what you really become.

A community’s gift to the world is the sign that peace among strangers is possible. It is proof that the people who are not like you are exactly like you. Community reminds you that the human race cannot possibly thrive unless and until we open our arms to one another.

Contemplative prayer is not only our own spiritual journey but is also a kind of intercession in which we take up the needs of the world and offer them silently to God in our heart. This too can be done alone or in a group, but either way, it strengthens our sense of being part of a community. Here is Alexander Ryrie in Wonderful Exchange (Canterbury Press, 2003):

While our prayers for others are normally expressed in thoughts and words, the essence of intercession lies deeper and is related to the prayer of silence. Borrowing a phrase from the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey, we may describe intercession as ‘being with God with others on our heart.’ Having others on our heart means feeling for them, caring about them, having a continuing concern for them, not in a superficial way, but deeply within ourselves, in our heart. It means in some small measure taking their woes upon ourselves, in mind and imagination bearing a little of what is happening to them.

…To pray in this way is to keep a kind of vigil, to ‘keep watch with Christ’ in [the] face of the world’s troubles, to take part in a perpetual silent vigil being observed by people who stand together before God for the sake of the world. When we engage in this silent intercession we are not alone, but are linked with thousands of others who are doing the same. Even at times when we are not consciously praying we can know ourselves to be part of this worldwide community.

And this sense of community goes wider than our own family, friends, social circle. In prayer – in silent intercession – we are linked with the rest of humanity, and not only humanity here and now, but humanity past and future. Here is Alexander Ryrie again:

The way of silent prayer has been called the loneliest journey in the world, because it is undertaken in the secret part of ourselves which no other person can enter; but it is also a journey in which we are accompanied by countless others. In the depths of ourselves we know that others journey with us, entering their own solitude where they too are alone with God. If they cannot fully share our subjective experience, they are at least alongside us, our companions in the way of silence. What is more, the prayer of silence links us with the rest of humanity in another way. Each of us is not only a unique person but also another human being like all the others around us … At a deep level we are not only individuals but also one with all humanity.

Some groups come together spontaneously, but as in prayer, so as in the rest of life, most groups need to be convened and encouraged. There are several organisations which provide a structure and which support people who meet together in this way. The next two posts will deal with the contemplative world that I inhabit (the Julian Meetings) and with other organisations I know in different worlds.

Tags: Contemplative prayer