On The Morning Prayer Discipline
John Michael Talbot

Let your activity flow out of your prayer. Let action flow from contemplation. I always say that my ministry must flow out of my being, and my being must be centered in God through contemplative prayer. If I center my being on my ministry, then I begin to posses my ministry, and I suffocate it.

To do this I recommend taking about 20-30 minutes a day in the morning for prayer. You could do sacred reading, or lectio divina, for a few minutes based on the readings of the day. Then allow yourself to pass over into meditation on the text with the positive use of your imagination. Then allow yourself to pass over effortlessly into passive contemplation. Here you just be with he who IS.

There are no words or feelings or ideas. As a great Saint once said, "I look at Him, and He looks at me." This is the perfect gaze of love for one another.

I have found that just a few good minutes of real contemplation are enough to prepare me for most of the issues that arise in the ministry of a given day. But if I do not take that 20-30 minute period, I cannot get to those few precious minutes of contemplation. After a few days without this I revert back to my old self of self center'dness and ego pretty quickly. Then my ministry begins to suffer and dry up as well.

John Michael Talbot