“Mixing business with prayer”-a challenge for a 21st Century monastic

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.
  – Brother Lawrence

The mind has a tremendous natural capacity to dwell on things, and in repeating the Jesus prayer- “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner”- we are channeling this capacity to train the mind. It is the same capacity, only we are giving it a different focus.

There is a story in the Hasidic tradition of Judaism in which a man asks his zaddik or spiritual teacher, “Do you mean we should remember the Lord even in the give-and-take of business?” “Yes, of course,” the rabbi replies. “If we can remember business matters in the hour of prayer, shouldn’t we be able to remember God in the transactions of our business?”

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In the course of transformation, those of us who make our living in day to day business, are especially challenged. The life of an entrepreneur is fraught with the concerns of the “making of a living”—deposits, invoices, projects, proposals, marketing, accounting, sales and, yes, rejection, and delays. ( I find that my gratefulness to God is so much more challenged when I am experiencing cash flow issues. Could this be an indicator of my attachment to mammon? Ugh. Probably so.)

It is in this context that the life of a “new 21st Century monastic” must be experienced, and in the experience, worked upon. This is done and carried out, only by the strength of Christ the Lord. The times of intense silence and “standing up in the heart” that can only be experienced through that inner intersection with the timeless eternal, give fuel and the mystical ability to live in present, in the essential self. This is where the ‘contemplative prayer practice’ spreads over to the ‘contemplative life practice’.

The word ‘practice’ is important, because it takes daily “work”, an act of the grace of Christ applied to our inner self, motivating the desire to practice.

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