Mark E. Thibodeaux - Armchair Mystic: How Contemplative Prayer Can Lead You Closer to God

ARMCHAIR MYSTIC

Armchair Mystic

How Contemplative Prayer

Will Bring You Closer to God

MARK E. THIBODEAUX, SJ

franciscan

media

Cincinnati, Ohio

Nihil Obstat:

Rev. Lawrence Landini, O.F.M.

Rev. John Armstrong, S.J.

Rev. David L. Zink

Imprimi Potest:

Rev. Fred Link, O.F.M.

Provincial

Rev. James P. Bradley, S.J.

Provincial

Imprimatur:

Most Rev. Carl K. Moeddel, V.G.

Archdiocese of Cincinnati

March 15, 2001

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture citations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and used by permission.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

From New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, copyright 1961 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

From I Believe in the Sun by Carey Landry, copyright 1973, 1975, 1978, by Carey Landry and North American Liturgy Resources.

Reprinted by permission of Oregon Catholic Press.

Cover and book design by Mark Sullivan

ISBN 978-1-63253-288-6

Copyright 2001, 2019 Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ. All rights reserved.

Published by Franciscan Media

28 W. Liberty St.

Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.FranciscanMedia.org

To Mom and Dad,

who first taught me how to pray

index of exercises

Exercise A

Becoming Aware of My Body

Exercise B

The Mantra

Exercise C

Chanting

Exercise D

Reflecting on the Lords Prayer

Exercise E

When Im Upset

Exercise F

Linking the Many Mes

Exercise G

Linking My Prayer to Others

Exercise H

Making a Joyful Noise

Exercise I

The Rosary as Mantra

Exercise J

Drawing God and Me

Exercise K

Meeting a Younger Me

Exercise L

The J.O.Y. Meditation

Exercise M

Where Am I in the Story?

Exercise N

Where Is the Story in My Life?

Exercise O

The Chair

Exercise P

Rerun of the Day

Exercise Q

Deathbed

Exercise R

Offering Up Pesky Distractions

Exercise S

The Savoys Porch

Exercise T

Worthy People Distractions

Exercise U

Worthy Future Distractions

Exercise V

At the Side of a Sleeping Friend

preface to the new edition

They say you never get over your first love....

I began writing Armchair Mystic around 1999, which is to say that this work is now twenty years old. My first-born child is all grown up! Tens of thousands of people have read it, and it has been one of the blessings of my life to accompany them through the fits and starts, the ebbs and flows of their contemplative prayer lives. I have been delighted and enriched by the conversations that have flowed from it.

In a way, one could say that Armchair Mystic began even earlier. In the early 1990s, as a seminarian teaching theology to sophomores at Jesuit College Preparatory in Dallas, it struck me that while the school did a great job of teaching about God, it did little to teach our students how to be with Godhow to pray and be in a relationship with God. So, with the blessing of my administrators, I added a new dimension to my theology class. From time to time, after calling roll, I would read out the names of half the class and say the words that every adolescent boy loves to hear, Gentlemen, you are free to go. I would then take the other half into our small chapel to learn about and to practice contemplative prayer. The next day, I would do the same with the other half.

There were good days and bad days. I remember one particularly discouraging period wherein one of my would-be monks loudly passed gas and my other young monks could not regain composure for the rest of the period. I remember looking to the tabernacle and sarcastically saying to Jesus in my mind, You know, if you cared to stop in and visit every now and then, I would really appreciate it.

Another struggle I had was finding good reading materials that were basic enough for teenagers to understand but not so simplistic as to bore them or insult their intelligence. I never found just the right book, so I resorted to writing handouts, using explanations, stories, and metaphors from my own experience of contemplative prayer. I had no notion these handouts would later become the foundation of a book.

After a few years of teaching, I moved on to the final phase of my pre-ordination formation: theology graduate school. I took a wonderful class called Reading about Contemplative Prayer. I enjoyed it so much that I pitched an idea to my professors for an independent study that I called, Writing about Contemplative Prayer. I would write a bit about one topic or another in contemplative prayer. I would then copy and distribute my writing to a diverse group of readers and would subsequently interview them about their experience after trying out what the written piece had instructed. I would then return to the work and reshape it based on what I had learned from my experimenters in the field.

I smile when I recall some of the memories of bumbling through the writing of this first book:

The book was originally six long, ponderous chapters. My readers said, Its good, but each chapter is a bit heavya bit too much to chew on in one sitting. Thats when I had the epiphany of breaking it up into lots of smaller chapters. The problem was that it required shattering the chapters into small bits. How could I then put it back together again? I remember writing on scraps of paper torn out of my legal pad, the thesis statement of each potential chapter and laying them out on the floor of my bedroom. Until I got the arrangement just right, I sat there moving these pieces around in one order and then another as though I were arranging Scrabble tiles, searching for the elusive seven-letter word.

After spending weeks writing in my bedroom in Dallas, I began climbing the walls. So, using vacation money my superior had given me, I drove to Oklahoma City and checked into a Motel 6 for three or four days. I stopped looking at the clock and let the writing dictate when I would eat, sleep or write. My days became surreal, sometimes writing in the dead of night, sometimes sleeping deeply at midday. This crazed schedule worked brilliantly: I did some of my best writing in that cheap motel room.

Much later, months past my writing deadlines, I spent several days and nights alone in a snow-covered cabin in Massachusetts, putting the very last touches on the manuscript. On my last evening, I was sure that it was finally finished whenjust before turning off my laptop and going to bed, I noticed a hole in one chapter whereby some yet undiscovered story should go. A while later, I knew just the right story: the one in which I sit on my dads lap, homesick for our previous home, found at the beginning of Chapter Five. You would think Id be happy about conjuring up this story, but I was furious! I knew that adding even a short and simple story would mean weeks of more of tweaking, editing and revising. And I was sick of writing and ready to be done with it all! I went to bed that night angry and convinced that I could leave the story out. But the manuscript, like a cranky child wanting to be fed, kept crying out to me. Now that the story was planted in my brain, I would get no peace until I wrote it. So, the next morning I rolled my sleeves back up and got to work again. Reading that story today makes me proud and happy that I did not finish the manuscript until the manuscript itself would tell me when it was finally ready.