C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

This afternoon, I came home from work, sat down to do some loving-kindness meditation, then decided to open up the book “Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life” by the modern day Zen master Ezra Bayda. Since I had just finished some loving-kindness meditation, I thought I would turn to the chapter entitled—simply enough—“Loving Kindness” and see what Bayda had to say. I was glad I did. As a Christian, the chapter touched me when Bayda discussed prayer, and so I thought I would share with you some of what he had to say: “We can also access and touch loving-kindness directly. The “Way of the Pilgrim” is the story of a simple pilgrim who walked across nineteenth-century Russia. He carried only dried bread and two books—the Bible, and an early Orthodox Christian text, the Philokalia—to sustain his body and his practice. With a genuine homesickness for God, his only aim was to learn to pray without ceasing. “Although we’re unlikely to ever be pilgrims in ...