Mindfulness: What You Need to Know

There’s more than a little debate over whether or not Christians should practice mindfulness. The questions are many and include:

• Is mindfulness rooted in Buddhism?

• Is mindfulness a New Age practice?

• Isn’t mindfulness a watering down of prayer?

• How do I practice it?

Mindfulness is a polarizing topic. Wherever you stand on it, you’ll be judged. If you are for it, people will say that you’ve caved to New Age practices. If you’re against it, people will call you close-minded. This is why it’s so important to discern its usefulness. I suggest this treatment of mindfulness’ roots by Dr. Greg Bottaro.

If you’re really eager, you might also review these resources which have informed my own views on mindfulness:

-Bobby Angel’s interview Dr. Greg Bottaro

-The Mindful Catholic by Dr. Greg Bottaro

-Women of Grace, “What’s Missing from The Mindful Catholic?”

-Divine Intimacy Radio, “The Mindfulness Myth”

Four Benefits

In my view, mindfulness is helpful on a number of levels. I see four practical benefits:

1. a helpful strategy for everyday life,

2. it is not necessarily prayer but can help you prepare to pray,

3. it can decrease your stress and

4. it ought to be placed within the context of your relationship with God.

Let me give an example of mindfulness that I learned from a religious brother who has since passed away. This occurred about five years ago. It was a rainy weekday and I had parked my car and was walking into church for Mass.  Along came Brother Martin from his residence, on his way also into church. We walked for a minute or two on the sidewalk before entering the church.

I immediately complained about the rain. Why? I’m not sure but I think for me (you too?) rain seems immediately off-putting. It gets your shoes wet, fogs your glasses and makes a general mess of things. Brother Martin just shrugged and said calmly, “It’s just rain.”

I’ll never forget that moment. While I wanted the weather to be something else, he simply accepted it. I’ve never looked at rain the same way since. It’s just rain- neither good nor bad. 

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955)

That’s mindfulness in a nutshell: a posture and response towards the everyday occurrences of life. No need to sit with your legs crossed and your hands tilted upwards. No incense burning in the background. Just an acceptance of how things are and a peacefulness to keep going.

This is not to say that all things are neutral. Hardly. When someone harms you, you have a right to be angry. When evil is committed, you are naturally shaken. When tragedy strikes, you lose your cool.

What mindfulness does, through all of that, is give you a tool to get back to a sense of “God’s still inside of this. God’s still here. God’s still loving me through this. I’ll be ok.”

Now let us address my four observations about mindfulness that I mentioned earlier:

1). Mindfulness is a helpful strategy for everyday life. We live much of our lives fighting things and wishing they were different. Mindfulness helps you to recognize that much of life is actually outside of our control. We do our best, influence what we can and trust in the “slow work of God”. (Tielhard de Chardin)

2). Mindfulness is not necessarily prayer but can help you prepare to pray. As it is an attitude of acceptance, mindfulness isn’t prayer. Still, it can help you to see God at work through everyday events and as such, can predispose you to pray. In other words, it’s very tough to pray peacefully if you are upset or distracted by something. Mindfulness takes the edge off of life’s tough stuff and helps prepare you to pray. 

3). Mindfulness can decrease your stress. If you’re always fighting things, you’re adding to your stress. On the other hand, if you are able to accept things- both small and large- as within God’s mysterious Providence, your stress with go down. This doesn’t take you off the hook from eating well, getting enough rest and exercising but mindfulness can help with stress reduction. I’ve seen this in even small moments. I’m driving in town, someone cuts me off and I can now pause and say, “Ok so he cut me off. Ok... it’s not the end of the world.” That’s mindfulness at work.

4). Mindfulness ought to be placed within the context of your relationship with God. All of the above is true but if all we do is accept things as they come, we can lose sight of the most important context of all- our relationship with God Almighty.

If you’re not sure if you should practice mindfulness, I understand. Some practices, not matter how helpful, are loaded with multiple meanings that keep us at arms’ length. My suggestion would be to try it out, not calling it mindfulness but thinking of it as an attitude of acceptance. 

From Personal Experience

Let me share one final personal story related to mindfulness. My family and I recently went through a horrific trauma. Sparing you the details, I can say with confidence that mindfulness was an essential “tool” in our dealing with emotional pain. Without being able to accept, on a deep level, what was happening, we would not have gotten through a very tough patch. 

I speak from experience- mindfulness can work. When we seek to see the Lord at work, even when we feel lost and down, we fix our eyes on him and accept what may come. We do our best, work our hardest and seek excellence. Underneath all of that is a profound sense of acceptance in the slow work of God, often unseen and scarcely felt.

Prayer for When You Worry

Worry is both inexpensive and expensive at the same time.

It comes in all shapes and sizes. You can worry about your future or about the next five minutes. It’s extremely elastic and will take up as much space as you give it.

Part of the current explosion of anxiety is connected with worry. The more I spend time on social media, the more I might be vulnerable to worrying about my body image, 401K or where my neighbors are on vacation.  It’s no secret that more social media leads to more worry which expands into a general, persistent sense of anxiety.

“But I’m a worrywart,” you say in your defense. I get it, I really do. If there’s an achilles heal of my own spiritual journey, it’s tied to worrying. I’m what you call a reverse worrier. Instead of worrying about my salvation, my future or my success, I worry in reverse order:

• Am I spending the next morning correctly?

• Am I spending the next hour responsibly?

• Am I spending the next minute properly?

While this can seem at first like scrupulosity, it’s actually different. Scrupulosity is about pride and over-inflating small things. While worrying about the use of a half hour can appear to be scrupulous (and at times it can be), it’s actually different. It’s a sense of anxiety in the event that things are amiss.  In this way, my style of worry isn’t usually about what I’m doing but about what others are doing (or not doing) or how others might perceive what I’m doing.

Anyways, enough about me- how about you? To what degree are you a worrier?

I assume that you worry about some things, right? No one is completely immune from worry. Whether it’s your children, your home or a natural disaster, there is plenty to be concerned with on Planet Earth. 

This is a key distinction- concern vs. worry. Concern is rooted in charity. It’s good to be concerned with the wellbeing of others.

Worry though, this is another thing. Like a weed in your flower bed, worry can grow. It can take over your inner peace if you let it. I suppose this is why Jesus speaks so strongly against worry and in favor of trusting in God:

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:31-34

The Old Testament prophets, Psalms and New Testament epistles are full of passages  countering worry. The throughline is this: worry less, trust God more.

The saints have plenty to say as well regarding worry. St. Francis de Sales has a particularly haunting admonishment, “Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin. God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry.”

Forbids-you-to-worry... those are fighting words in the spiritual life. Francis de Sales dropped the mic on the head of worry. When you put the Scriptures together with the Tradition of the Church, the message is clear- worry should have no place in the life of the disciple.

Ok easier said than done.

Let’s be practical. When you move through your week and something worry-producing pops up, what should you do? 

1. Remember the words of Jesus. “Do not worry...” Let’s not brush off the Lord’s words. He is clear. Do not worry. He’s got this. Whatever “this” is, He’s got this.

2. Put thoughts in their place. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it has to take hold of you. You have a fleeting thought about the size of your retirement funds. Now you can acknowledge the thought and either a). Obsess over it and worry and become more anxious or b). Dismiss the thought as irrelevant to your situation or c). Do something about it.  Thoughts are thoughts. They don’t have to take over your life.

As you go through your week, be mindful of the words of Christ, “What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” Jesus knows what you need and what you want in life. It’s our role to trust Him as He provides for these things.

Prayer for When You Can’t Breathe

I live in a house with other humans plus one adorable dog named Ace. On most nights, all are sleeping peacefully and the house is quiet. Sure, you can hear the growns of the heating system if you really listen. 

Still, things are typically quiet.

Occasionally, one of us is up in the night, breaking that silence with a trip to the bathroom or worse, waking from a nightmare. At other times, you simply can’t sleep due to anxiety.

I was listening to a recent episode of Divine Intimacy with Dan and Stephanie Burke. His new book deals with the reality that many of us face- increased worry in our everyday lives. Why are we so anxious about so many things?

This is when you can’t breath. This is when you wake in the middle of the night.

My wife and I commute an hour to work three times a week on a major interstate. On any given day, you can find yourself in the middle lane. On the right might be a tractor-trailer truck and on the left, a logging rig. You have no place to go and nothing to do except to hope that breathing room presents itself. And, thankfully, it almost always does.

“In order to succeed in prayer, it should be done when we first awaken, when our whole being is calm and recollected. We need to make our meditation before anything else.
”

— Bl. Peter Julian Eymard

As with our anxiety, there’s almost always breathing room on the other side of things. This “other side” might be five minutes later or 55 minutes later. It might show up a week later but it always does show up. 

How does this happen? How do we make our way through anxiety? While prayer is no silver bullet, it surely plays a part. 

When you feel anxious, try to pause and add prayer to your worry. Lord, I’m anxious right now. There it is again. I’ve been here before. I know that you’re with me right now. I know that you sense my anxiety. You’re here and that helps.

If you can make it through this stage (and good news, you can!), you might take things even further into prayer. Lord, why do I feel anxious? Is there one cause of this or several? Can you help me get to the bottom of it? What’s really going on here?

Naturally, there might be several further stages of prayer that can be applied when you have anxiety. It’s not a straight line. Rather, it’s a curvy road and sometimes, unfortunately, your tires may veer.

The key- the Lord is very much present in and through your anxiety. He wants to be there with you, redeeming your worry into trust and confidence in His love. He will provide breathing room and can walk you through whatever is getting you up in the middle of the night.

What’s Your Story When it Comes to Prayer?

You can’t go zero to sixty in a car in less than about five seconds. In case you don’t drive often, five seconds is very fast. Sports car stuff...

The average car? About 10-12 seconds.

Speed takes time to develop. Then, when momentum takes over, the car is moving at a brisk pace and watch out- before you know it, you’re speeding and see the blue lights in your rear-view mirror. Uh oh.

When it comes to prayer, most of this metaphor applies. We need time to build up momentum. Once we get going, thankfully, it’s no turning back and our prayer lives are really humming. As for the police, forget that part.

St. John of the Cross once said that you don’t become spiritually mature until you are at least 40 years old. As someone on the north side of 40, I read this with a smile. The older you are, the more wisdom you can attain.

I go to church all of the time. Several times a week. I hear my pastor and priests and deacons tell the congregation that we should add prayer to our tool belt of resources. I’ve never heard anyone disagree with this.  Makes sense right?

The problem, and it’s a big one, is that most of us don’t actually know how to pray. This is on two levels. On the surface level, everyone knows how to pray. You simply talk to God. No barriers, just communicate. St. Therese of Lisieux described it this way, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” 

If you were comparing prayer to working out, this level is like the ability to go to the gym. Nearly everyone can go to the gym and do some stretches and enjoy some movement.

“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”

— St. Therese of Lisieux

On a deeper level, most of us don’t know how to pray regularly, daily and thus building spiritual momentum with God. This is in some ways, much harder.  Going back to the gym metaphor, this is like going to the gym daily- much harder.

This is the level that most of us struggle with. And back to the title of this post, this is the level that is critical for each of us to evaluate.  If we don’t do this, we might never be able to get to the deeper levels of intimacy with God.

What’s your story when it comes to prayer? 

Have you had one positive experience of praying? Where were you? What did it feel like? What was the after-effect?  When you think of that time of prayer, does it put a smile on your face?

On the flip side, have you had a “bad” experience of prayer? What was that like? Why did that frustrate you? How do you think that that particular experience of prayer has stayed with you?

I’ve been teaching people to pray for years. I find this step in the spiritual journey to be vitally important. Unless we pause and take stock of our prayer with God, we won’t grow closer to God. This is harder than it seems as many of us have had a desert-like journey when it comes to prayer. 

• Many of us feel like we don’t know how to pray.

• Many of us have never felt the presence of God.

• Many of us have never heard the voice of God.

• Many of us have never savored the healing touch of God.

And as a result, we stop praying. 

My message during Advent (and beyond): try prayer again. Try to get alone, away from the noise, and have a heart to heart with God. Try journaling (again) for the first time. Try going into a church and praying before the Blessed Sacrament when no one else is around. If you try, you will. If you don’t try, you won’t.

Then, do it tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Before you know it, you will be having a quality prayer time with the Lord each day. This is where the good stuff happens. This is where God transforms us. This is where we become humble and put God first.

Simple right? I think so. Try it today. I think you’ll be glad you did.

A New Use for Your Rosary

It’s often this time of the year when we are encouraged to take more time for silence. More time to savor the things that matter. More time with the Lord.

But... each of these is easier said than done.

For example, savoring the things that matter. What does that mean? Is that an extra glass of wine or more time spent playing a game with my children? Is it an extra long walk on a Saturday to enjoy nature and the sound of birds?

Yes, yes and yes.

As my friend Fr. Dennis once told me, “You do what you can.” What he meant was that if we do something in response to a call to action, things will probably be ok. If we do nothing and just wait things out, we will never take action.

In other words, no savoring...

“The Holy Rosary is the storehouse of countless blessings.”

— Blessed Alan de la Roche

How about that whole silence thing? I dig the idea that we ought to take more time for silence during Advent. I actually love silence and as an introvert, nothing warms my heart more than a quiet house and a good book, read in silence. 

Still, I find it difficult. I can only imagine how my poor extroverted friends find silence. It must be terrifying! 

So here’s the cool thing about this post- I’ve finally found a way to activate my brain for silence.  The setting is often my home office where I like to have my morning quiet time. On the ledge by the window is a spot for my coffee and a pair of rosary beads.

After I go through the Angelus, the day’s Mass readings and some spiritual reading, I will do some journal writing in the DayOne app.

Then, and usually only for a few moments, I will take some time to be silent with God. Even as an introvert who loves silence, I find this difficult. A small window is all I have on most days. 

My hand will reach over for my rosary beads and instead of praying the rosary, I’ve found the simple act of holding the beads activates something in my brain.  Holding the rosary beads tells me to be still and to be silent. 

You might try this out if you find silence difficult. A pair of rosary beads in your car (or even a rosary ring in your pocket) could be used to maintain silence during a drive. Or, a pair of rosary beads next to your bed might be used to find silence right before you fall asleep at night.

None of this should take away the act of praying the rosary with the beads. Rather, see this silence-keeping as another use of the beads, complimenting your praying of the rosary.

Silence is difficult and yet as St. Teresa of Calcutta tells us, “God is the friend of silence”. Sometimes we just need a little help to get us there.

Seven Ways to Avoid Distractions at Church

“I almost dropped her,” I told Cary after I had brought our newborn to Mass for the first time after her birth. There I was, devoted father and steady disciple of Christ, carrying my newborn around the periphery of Immaculate Conception Church in Clinton, NJ.

“Never address your words to God while you are thinking of something else.”

— St. Teresa of Avila

Unfortunately, Grace (daughter #1) squirmed - as kids do- and I almost dropped her on the hard (read “very hard”) marble floor. Thankfully I regained control of the situation and tried my best to focus on rest of Mass.

While this story might be extreme, it surfaces an issue that a lot of us have when we go to church- we can’t focus. Maybe it’s the child squirming in your lap, the football game later in the day, the annoying person in front of you who is checking his phone or whatever… there are plenty of distractions to go around.

This might seem normal but the costs are significant. For example:

• if you’re distracted you will likely not hear God’s Word proclaimed

• if you’re distracted your prayers will likely be half-hearted

• if you’re distracted you will be less present to those around you

• if you’re distracted you might have guilt over not being able to focus

“The way in which you can pray most fervently.”

— Bl. Jordan of Saxony

What are your distractions in church? For me, they are often in the space between my two ears. Thoughts creep in. I worry about things. Did I remember this or did I forget that…

So, as I like to do on this blog, I would like to suggest seven simple ways that you can banish distractions from your Sunday worship experience. Ready? Here goes:

1. Arrive 10 minutes early. This will allow you to get a good parking spot and avoid all sense of hurry.

2. Read the Gospel ahead of time. The night before or the morning of- either will do. When the deacon or priest finally proclaims the Gospel, you’ll be more engaged.

3. Sit far from doors or entry places. People walk through doors. Doors creak and squeak. Many people arrive late. You can avoid all of this by sitting closer to the front or just far away from any doorways.

4. Close your eyes. I wouldn’t suggest doing this for the entirety of Mass (injuries will follow) but you can certainly avoid distractions during the readings or even after Holy Communion by closing your eyeballs.

5. Read along with the readings. Pay attention to the words. Look for subtle things that you might have previously missed.

6. Silence your phone. This goes without saying. Even better- leave the darn thing in your car. The world won’t stop, really.

7. Make an act of thanksgiving after Mass is complete. I’ve only recently been doing this and it really works. While everyone else is barging out of church, seemingly in a hurry, you can simply kneel for 60 seconds and thank God. Ask Him to be with you during the day and to be able to offer your day back to Him.

Distractions will come. Life is like that. The key, as is often the case, is to counter the distractions with some simple techniques for staying focused. You can do this.