BIBLICAL MEDITATION

'Meditation is a middle sort of duty betweeen the word and prayer, and hath respect to both.'

Thomas Manton in Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God, p.131.

WRITING IS ACTUALLY READING

'The writer David Lodge once noted that 90 percent of what we call writing is actually reading. It's going back over your work so you can change and improve it.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.167.

SCRIPTURE & PRAYER ARE INSEPERABLE

'Scripture and prayer are not two separate entities. My pastoral work was to fuse them into a single act: scriptureprayer or prayerscripture. It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and us speaking to him (prayter) that the Holy Spirit uses to form the life of Christ in us.' 

Eugene H Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.196. 

THE BENEFITS OF WRITING

'We are still not entirely aware of what writing, good writing, can do for individuals and for the collective. We have at our hands' reach a skill that is also a spiritual discipline. Writing is a meditation; writing is as close as some of us can come to prayer; writing is a way of being, righteously, in the world. And this is something that everyone ought to know.' 

Mark Edmundson, Why Write? p.xix. 

THINKING BY WRITING

'How do I know what I think until I see what I say...'
EM Forster in Mark Edmundson, Why Write? A Master Class on the Art of Writing and Why it Matters, p.xvii. 

THE BEST PLACE TO MEDITATE

'Coasts provide the ultimate sites for meditation.'
Ronald Blythe, The Time by the Sea, p.239. 

MEDITATION & IDENTITY

'The whole central idea of meditation is simply to pay attention to God and find your real self in him.'

Henri JM Nouwen, Love, Henri, p.38.

PRAYER

'...the struggle of the human condition: we cannot be still. Even if the body can be still, the mind keeps racing like a runaway train. Our bodies may be at the place of prayer, but our minds are not usually where our bodies are, but instead are at a shopping mall; on a beach in Majorca; reliving an argument; fearing the future; regretting the past; any place but right here in the simplicity of the present moment.' 

Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land, p.49. 

MEDITATION

'To meditate is to open the mind to a single thought until it fills the mind so completely that there is no room left for anything else.'

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, p.57.