Permission to Pray Like a Monk and Practice the Way

I love structure. Without it I tend to wander aimlessly, not enjoying anything because I don’t know where to fix my gaze. Schedules, mind-mapping, even diets, give me the guardrails I need to stay on the straight and narrow. Remove them and I’ll end up in one ditch or another.

For this reason, when I picked up Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster in my early 30’s, I felt like someone was finally speaking my language. I needed a spiritual rhythm to live by. The church fellowship I had been attending honored discipline, but more the kind that kept the body trim and didn’t gossip and less the kind that promoted silence and solitude let alone simplicity! I was the odd woman out. Reading Foster led to reading Willard, which all led to me reading the ancient contemplatives, Brother Lawrence, Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis to name a few. Again, my Protestant companions thought it strange and perhaps almost heretical that I would read the works of monks and desert fathers and mothers.

Recently, I found two modern day contemplatives who continue to carry on the work so desperately needed of those who have marched on before. Tyler Staton and John Mark Comer. Tyler wrote a book called Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. It was haunting and beautiful and was written with the same compelling cadence with which he speaks. Sometimes the words sound lyrical like the poetic prose of spoken word. Not only were the words honest and important, they were artfully crafted. And most importantly it called me to prayer…drew me in deeper…made following monks less weird for a tongue-talking Protestant like myself.

And John Mark Comer? He is bringing the world the very curriculum that Dallas Willard longed to write. The curriculum of practices. He does it in beautifully designed books that care for the look and feel of the book as much as the life changing words. He writes about deep things in a simple way that anyone can understand. Lately, he’s been up to moving away from pastoring and into leading a non-profit dedicated to teaching the believer how to follow our Rabbi Jesus in Practicing the Way.

To this aging middle-aged woman it feels like the move of God that I’ve longed for my entire 57-year life has launched, and like Anna and Simeon I’ve had the chance to see it budding before I close my eyes for the last time. And that is a gift.