On Boredom and Self-Centeredness

Yesterday, I attended a contemplative prayer workshop. More precisely, I attended a workshop about "the welcoming prayer." As described by Contemplative Outreach, the welcoming prayer:

is a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life. The purpose of the Welcoming Prayer is to deepen our relationship with God through consenting in the ordinary activities of our day. The Welcoming Prayer helps to dismantle the emotional programs of the false-self system and to heal the wounds of a lifetime by addressing them where they are stored — in the body. It contributes to the process of transformation in Christ initiated in Centering Prayer. Practicing the Welcoming Prayer offers the opportunity to make choices free of the false-self system — responding instead of reacting to the present moment.

Basically, it's a three step process designed to make a person stop, reflect, and let go of angst-causing events. First, after experiencing a moment that causes angst, one stops and pays attention to his or her body - what part of the body is being affected? Second, one welcomes God's presence in that moment by saying, "Welcome." And third, one prays, "I let go of the desire for affection/security/control; I let go of the desire to change the situation."

On the one hand, this can be construed as a way of yielding to the status quo, but, as stated in the above quote, the goal is to allow us to respond instead of react. So this is not about accepting, for example, injustice. Instead this prayer stops us from reacting to injustice in a way that perpetuates injustice so that we can respond to injustice in a way that is consistent with and that lives out the Gospel of Jesus.

But this prayer is also useful in more mundane settings. I, for example, tried to pray this prayer in traffic yesterday afternoon and last night. I found it helpful.

That all said, I found this very interesting because "the welcoming prayer" utilizes the categories from the genograms we had to do in grad school - affection/esteem, security/safety, and control/power. In my "Personhood, Ministry, & Discipleship" class, these categories were identified as our "core beliefs" that continually deceive us. I began to think about how this prayer can help us combat these conditioned reactions we have been developing since early childhood. So things that cause me stress - particularly things that challenge my deceitful core beliefs - can be stripped of their power by praying this prayer in those moments of stress.

This, of course, is good in theory. We'll see how it works in practice.

The highlight of the workshop, for me, was when an older woman asked about boredom. She said that this makes sense in moments of stress but asked what about times when she is washing dishes, wishing she was elsewhere. Thinking out loud, the fellow leading the workshop, arrived at the conclusion that boredom is a chance to welcome God, who is in our midst even in boring situations. Moreover, he said that boredom is a result of our desire for affection/sercurity/control - perhaps especially of control. This blew my mind. I continued to think about this throughout the afternoon, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that the speaker was right. Boredom is really the result of our thinking, "If I were in charge right now, things would be much more interesting and exciting." And this bit of self-centered overconfidence is toxic to those around us and also to us ourselves.

And this realization made me think of Always We Begin Again, which says,

Our ultimate goal is this: to forget ourselves.

To be satisfied in life

We must transcend the desire for satisfaction.

We must cast off our own appetites.

We must free ourselves from our own self-centeredness.

...

We must always be prepared to cast aside our own agendas whenever we have the opportunity to be of service to another (pp. 33-34).

This casts some doubt over the virtue of PhD study, no? Heaven help.