Please No More Ideologies Please

There is no need for a new apology for Christian contemplation from an institutional point of view. Historically particular, enculturated polemics make up the bulk of that which undergirds the church's defense of what is commonly understood as justifications of its understanding of the life of prayer and solitude and silence and meditation. The institutional, cloistered life of organized prayer is both well documented and quite legitimate in its own right. This places a great deal of emphasis on prayer as petition and intercession and service. It understands prayer in relationship to its effects. In other words, it justifies itself by being action-oriented. Again, this represents a cultural justification of itself. But in concentrating on this single thread it also represents a distortion of a deeper, broader, and more integrated reality that is found in both the real nature of the world itself and of God's interaction with it, in it, and through it.