Teachings,+spiritual+exercises+to+use+during+worship

Spiritual exercise to use during worship
(Kai Stormwalker) Here are some spiritual exercises that could be practiced as a part of worship:

//Self-examination//. This important exercise is placed first because it may be the means by which the worshipper discovers the obstacles to a deeper communion with God. An obstacle may be a selfish or degrading desire, or merely a mind too busy with routine affairs. As awareness of human limitation progresses, less is seen with human eyes and more with the eyes of God. The inner vision is thereby enlarged to include not only oneself but surrounding worshippers and others through the wider and wider reaches in the world outside.

//Repeating to oneself a passage// from the Bible or some devotional poem or others words and reflecting on their meaning. Here there must be an effort to come into that Spirit out of which the words came, for only in the Light of that Spirit can the words have life and power.

//Reviewing in imagination some event// in one’s own life, in history, or in the life of Christ, with reflection upon its significance.

//Prayer with words that have been learned//. //Prayer with one’s own words and thoughts//, including confession and thanksgiving.

Such prayers are not merely petitions. They are more like communion with friend or lover when inmost desire is exposed in the light of another presence. As prayer gains in power and inwardness it becomes more and more simplified until it culminates in that which overtops all the complexities of thought.

//Prayer without words//, an upsurge of feeling and will toward God. Such prayer cannot remain long in a condition of striving. It should pass over into quiet waiting and obedience. Activity is replaced by expectant passivity in which there may arise a sense of God’s nearness. As that sense increases, one feels one’s own will drawn into harmony with a Greater Will.

Such exercises of self-examination, memory, imagination, and prayer are not to be sharply distinguished from one another because the whole person may very well be present in all of them.

From “Guide to Quaker Practice” by Howard H. Brinton