What Contemplative Prayer Does, Then...

...is to use the Word as a door to a particular awareness and perspective, an authentic and real experience of God’s presence in the world itself, which then launches us into action concerning God’s intentions for the world.

A theoretical, abstract, administrative, culturally specific, or perfunctory approach to life does not provide this. When applied to the institutions associated with Christian faith these only build walls - self-enclosures - of social isolation, and which pretty much defines what is commonly called ‘church’ today...self-perpetuating, exclusive religious clubs tied to past eras.

Genuine contemplative prayer, in spite of the solitude involved, by necessity ends in freely loving all people more, and not less, and functions perfectly well when ignoring ties to whatever formal structures in which its practitioners may find themselves. This is due to a certain prohetic awareness that is deeply rooted in fully letting go of the ego. Prophesy has has never had anything to do with foretelling anything other than in simply being a living witness to the essential difference between what it means to relinquish one self in sacificial service to the real and actual presence of God at work in the lives of others, and the spirit of the world that is enamoured with itself and its own accomplishments, and that subjects others to it.