Lent with Anthony Bloom: Reading #5

On Reading Scripture

This year’s daily Lent postings for my subscribers will taken from a short anthology of writings on prayer taken from the corpus of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Without a paid subscription, only the first portion of the post will be available.

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DISCIPLINED MEDITATION

On many occasions we can do a lot of thinking; there are plenty of situations in our daily life in which we have nothing to do except wait, and if we are disciplined—and this is part of our spiritual training—we will be able to concentrate quickly and fix our attention at once on the subject of our toughts, of our meditation. We must learn to do it by compelling our thoughts to attached themselves to one focus and to drop everything else.

In the beginning, extraneous thoughts will intrude, but if we push them away constantly, time after time, in the end they will leave us in peace. It is only when by training, by exercise, by habit, we have become able to concentrate profoundly and quickly, that we can continue though life in a state of collectedness**, in spite of what we are doing.

** “Collectedness” is also called, in Anglican spirituality, “habitual recollection.”