Relating Christian disciplines to research on meditation

A year or so back, I flagged up briefly the possiblitiy that we could relate results of research into meditation with Christian spiritual disciplines (see Research on Meditation: -changes in brain's emotional processing: for my original posting).

my question is whether (as I suspect) practising prayer related to these meditative practices. For example, how about looking into the effects of self-examination and confession? I'm pretty sure that these have made a difference to my neural 'wiring' over the years in ways that might well show up in the amygdala. Or what about intercessory prayer related to matters of compassion? Come to that what about lectio divina /traditional evangelical Quiet Time?

I'm feeling that I'd like to spin that out a bit more. Obviously, the research has tended to accumulate around something that has caught the imagination -meditation. But my intuition -related to my experience- is that Christian disciplines can do the same sort of things albeit sometimes starting in a different place. I would say that since it's all dealing with human psychology and physiology, we would expect to find similarities and the use of common human capacities albeit accessed in different ways or for diferent (to varying degrees) purposes. This also means that there can be cross-overs, borrowings and adaptations between different spiritualities which would in effect be reframings.

So, what of the ways that we might see Christian disciplines producing similar 'goods' to those being investigated through meditation? The synopsis of research can be found here.
In that synopsis we note words like 'continued practice' and 'develop psychological distance'. We also note 'increase empathy' and 'eliminate attachments ... and aversions' and 'skill set for reducing biases'.

The key definitions of the disciplines being studied are these:

mindful attention meditation -- the most commonly studied form that focuses on developing attention and awareness of breathing, thoughts and emotions -- and compassion meditation, a less-studied form that includes methods designed to develop loving kindness and compassion for oneself and for others.

And I see three things there: one is developing (training) attention through sensory focus; another is awareness of thoughts and emotions; the third is strengthening empathic identification.

I'm inclined to take those in reverse order.
First strengthening empathic identification. This is important because in empathy we find motivation to help, to expend effort for others' good. We should notice, in passing, that empathy need not be a good thing: we can develop empathy with those engaged in cruelty or lustful acts, for example, where such empathy draws us into evil. However, we are focussing on the capacity for empathy to enable us to understand the hurts, hopes and fears of others and drive us to make things better. Now it seems to me that this is what we're being invited into where Jesus calls us to love neighbours as ourselves or to do to others as we'd have them do to us. Compassion meditation as I've experienced it gets us to start with ourselves and those emotionally close to us, to feel our bonds of compassion, love and benevolence towards them and to bring others imaginatively into the compass of our feeling -or perhaps to expand the compass of our feeling out to wider bounds.

Loving others as we love ourselves is inviting a similar exercise: to become aware of our desire and drive to work for our own well-being and to extend that to others. For Christians this exercise tends not to be a set-piece meditation so much as an ad hoc reflection. In a situation we become aware that other-love is required and we reflect on how we might recognise love being shown if we were in the other's position. This kind of imagination is bolstered by the disciplines of scriptural reflection where passages encourage us to consider what neighbour-love might be and by petitionary and intercessory prayer where we consider what might be for the good of others and begin to desire it for them. It can happen in reverse, so to speak, when we reflect on what we may ourselves need, we can become aware of others who have similar needs. All of these I have experienced and the disciplines of reading scripture -especially the gospels- and praying have helped cultivate, it seems to me, a growing tendency and ability to empathise as more and more connections are made between the imperatives of scripture and the awareness of human life and my own needs for nurturance and compassion.

Secondly awareness of thoughts and emotions. My thoughts go to confession of sin and the self-reflection that is require if it is taken seriously as part of cultivating a lifestyle of repentance. Whether one confesses sin in the hearing of another person or simply to God, to do it properly one has to unpick what it is that is being recognised as sin, and what it is that is simply circumstances or unblameworthy; what belongs to others or simply the tide of events. It is also necessary to consider it in the frame of what is required to prevent it happening again. All of those considerations mean looking honestly at what took place and discerning our motivations, perceptions and reflexes and with that discernment to ask and accept forgiveness then moving on to consideration of how to use our self-understanding to approach (or even avoid) such occasions in the future. The more we do this (and Christian spiritual traditions all promote various patterns and aids for self-examination) the more we become aware of how our minds are working in the flow of life: the reflection begins to inform our self-awareness 'live'.

Thirdly we consider training attention. I think that this is less emphasised in Christian disciplines as something in itself. However, it does show up a propos of other things. For example, I suspect that the discipline of memorising scripture may actually do this as might also things in the Catholic tradition like adoration of the blessed sacrament. Lectio Divina or a traditional Evangelical 'quiet time' may also fit the bill in that they require giving attention to the passages concerned.

Noting that research indicates that both meditation and participation in religious community seem to confer health benefits, it may be worth considering that some of those benefits may devolve from the spiritual disciplines benig faithfully practised. of course, we should beware of practising them in order to live longer, be happier or healthier. It seems that the benefits come obllquely and not as some kind of gym membership: they have to be pursued sincerely for spiritual growth or it seems that the health benefits don't tend to appear. Nonetheless, it is good to know that in pursuing the things of God, 'all these things' may be added to us as well.
The article at the bottom of this is here.
It actually helps by defining the forms of meditation (emphases mine):

Three main meditative techniques are taught: mindfulness of breathing (i.e., cultivating awareness of one's breathing), mindfulness of mental events (i.e., cultivating awareness of the contents of one's mind, such as thoughts, emotions, etc.), and awareness of awareness (in which awareness itself becomes the focus of meditation). In contrast to mindful-attention practices aimed at improving attentional skills, compassion meditation is a distinct form of contemplative practice aimed at cultivating higher levels of compassion.

An alternative typology vs Gustaf Aulen

Ben Myers reflects interestingly out of his teaching: Faith and Theology: How does Jesus save? An alternative typology (against Gustaf Aul�n):

...alternative typologies of Christian views of salvation. So here's a suggested typology of six themes in patristic literature:
1. Christ the Second Adam. ... Christ replaces Adam as the new life-giving head of the human family. (Main scriptural source: Romans 5.)
2. Christ the Sacrifice. ... explicit mainly in liturgical texts. ... artfully interwoven with a plethora of other Old Testament themes and images. (Main scriptural source: the Pentateuch and the Gospel of John.)
3. Christ the Teacher. ... Christ is the divine pedagogue who, by a slow and patient process, leads human souls up into the presence of divine wisdom. In some accounts this process extends into the afterlife. ... life is a school, and deification is the graduation prize. (Main scriptural source: the four Gospels.)
4. Christ the Brother. The adoption theme is prevalent in early Christian writing. ... Christ is God by nature, and as his brothers and sisters we become gods by grace. ... (Main scriptural source: Romans 8.)
5. Christ the Life-giver. ... The divine Logos had to become incarnate in order to become capable of dying; by entering into death, he absorbs death into the divine life, thus draining away death's power; and by rising again, he transforms corruptible human nature into a glorious incorruptible nature. ... (Main scriptural source: 1 Corinthians 15.)
6. Christ the Healer. ... Very frequently Christ is described as a physician who cures our illness. Often he is also described as medicine. Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of the incarnation as a healing of human nature. Augustine is particularly fond of the healing theme, ... Christ's humility as the medicine that cures us. (Main scriptural source: the four Gospels.)

I'm still considering this, but I think that it could be a helpful way of thinking about the issue, doubly so in view of the way that Ben Myers relates it all back to the Scriptural sources and motifs. He points out that in actual usage these tend to flow together in various combinations.

God Crucified?

Excellent post  about the issue of PSA (penal ubstitutionary atonement) which manages to capture helpfully and briefly the difficulties it has as a telling of how the cross might work. First off a positive telling from Nadia Bolz Weber:

God Crucified? | Storied Theology: … that’s not “God’s little boy, like God is some kind of divine child abuser sending his son (and he only had one!).” Come on, give me a break! “God’s little boy and he only had one, and as this divine child abuser and as this cigar-chomping loan shark demanding a pound of flesh, sending his little boy…” What hogwash, right? That actually is God on the cross, God saying, “I’d rather die than be in the sin-accounting business you’ve put me in.”

 But the then post goes on to re-assert why there is a problem:

The problem I keep coming back to is that everywhere and always in scripture, the son who dies is precisely the son who is not the father, and is nowhere the God who, as Godself, is dying to save us.

 And that is precisely the thing that is so difficult to try to explain in evangelism. Something like the doctrine of Communicatio Idiomatum is part of the response to the issue then raised:

Is the need for it to be God as such who dies so profound that we simply have to abandon the suffering Human One of the Synoptic Gospels, or the obedient Second Adam of Paul? Or do we simply need to return to the question of why Jesus died to shore up a better answer of why this man, man I say!, goes the way of the cross?

But then that's no easier to tell at a popular level. Whatever else is said, it points to the difficulty of using PSA in popular preaching; it actually needs quite a sophisticated Trinitarian theological explanation to sustain it in the face of the increasingly likely follow-up questions.

I actually think that the kind of approach I try to sketch out in my posts on the Cross as an Eikon of forgiveness helps to handle these issue more helpfully in terms of giving a frame to say why God should be implicated intimately in the Cross, dying and so forth, and by having something which connects incarnation and the Cross very closely helps to deal with the issue of the Persons in a more wholistic light by seeing it as a Trinitarian action rather than some how as a fragmentedly Personal action.

The Library of Babel

What an intriguing short story. From the pen of Jorge Luis Borges. Story might be the wrong word: more an almost science-fictioney thought experiment or comment-scene which touches on and invites the reader to think about infinity and knowledge and probabilities. All very contemporary somehow. I found that it really helped me somehow to grasp inifinity -or near infinity- at more of a gut level than normally I manage and as such just to feel the edge of the intellectual vertigo of contemplating it. Kind of the literary equivalent of lying at night on the ground and looking at the stars.
The Library of Babel

Nominitive undeterminism on the high street

Yesterday sitting in the Sundered Land shopping mall with a chai latte, I found myself musing on something my eye fell upon nearby. Just across from where we were sitting a clothes shop, "Bank" by name. I took to musing further -there are a number of shops whose names imply different sorts of products to what is actually being sold.
Currys don't sell Indian food.
Superdry certainly don't do duvets -or any kind of dry cleaning.
River Island have nothing to do with real estate.
Clarks aren't an agency for deploying clerical workers or clergy.
Boots might sell you a cream to ease a blister but not the footwear that rubbed it sore.
Waterstones on the whole don't sell rocks, polished or otherwise.
PC World seems not to be into security or crime detection -nor is it doing consultancy on protected characteristics in the workplace.
Caffe Nero do more than black coffees, I notice.
The Works seems a misnomer in whatever dimension you might understand the term: who'd have thought they'd sell you stationery or books but so little else?
I was surprised not to get a drink and a sit down in a plush leather armchair but rather clothes at the Officers Club (surprised too that they let me in).
Top Man is not an escort agency and Top Shop is usually found on the ground floor.

On the other hand Schuh is rightly named. And Brighthouse seem to live up to the name -though rumours say the effects of their hire-purchase agreements my be less than brightening.

The Litigation Master and the Monkey King by Ken Liu

This is a really fascinating and enjoyable -if a little challenging- read and I would like to commend it to you:
The Litigation Master and the Monkey King by Ken Liu | Lightspeed Magazine. I enjoyed the implicit examination of truth and regime and propaganda and the idea that there might be a long-game in such matters.I also enjoyed the glimpse into Chinese civilisation and the linguistic dimensions.
The background from the author's notes:

For more than 250 years, An Account of Ten Days at Yangzhou was suppressed in China by the Manchu emperors, and the Yangzhou Massacre, along with numerous other atrocities during the Manchu Conquest, was forgotten. It was only until the decade before the Revolution of 1911 that copies of the book were brought back from Japan and republished in China. The text played a small, but important, role in the fall of the Qing and the end of Imperial rule in China. I translated the excerpts used in this story.