Jordan Stones Blog

Mandi on Mindfulness Part 2: Paying Attention and Mindfulness – A Pep-Talk Have you tried any mindfulness or contemplative prayer practices yet?   If so I would love for you to comment in the blog stream below.   I am hoping the following will be a pep-talk to further your thirst for this practice in your life. I would love to know both your positive experience, and your frustrating experiences. We know the desert fathers practiced silence and solitude in the un-institutionalized desert communities of pure devotion and removed from religion.   Religion becomes toxic when it becomes hollow “form without power”, or structure without Spirit. Religion was growing less intimate and authentic as Rome integrated and infiltrated the Christian faith into government. But, what in the world did they do out there that would cultivate such deep soul-stirring testimony, writings, and tradition? You have to be a special sort of person to read their works direct...

Usually “buzz word” trends make me roll my eyes.   But I drank the Kool Aid before it was even a thing…and fell forever in love and define myself by what we now hear called ‘mindfulness’.   It’s because it is what I stumbled upon 20 some years ago when I started doing yoga to save my body and realized it totally cleared my attention to swipe clear a sight-line between the Lord and I. But the truth is…this is one of the most ancient of ancient practices that people have used for thousands of years to hone their focus on what serves them best. We see this in church fathers and mothers, many from the contemplative stream like Thomas Merton, St. Teresa of Availa, and more recently Henry Nouwen and others in his tribe…but the tradition goes back even further: “As the Christian church moved from bottom to top, protected and pampered by the Roman Empire, people like Anthony of the Desert, John Cassian, Evagrius Ponticus, and the early monks went off to the deserts of Egypt, P...