David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2012, p. 153.
Acting in gentleness shifts you out of the struggle to find God. Gentleness is necessary for the deepening of centering prayer. Your actions become more and more subtle in centering prayer as contemplation awakens in you. Actually, the sense that you have to achieve something, find some deeper depth, or go somewhere to discover God, other than where you are now, is an illusion. Let contemplation come effortlessly to you, as a continual gift out of the gifting nature of God. Contemplation is effortless in the same way that the falling of snow is effortless. It is effortless in the same way a light breeze blowing on your neck is effortless. It is effortless in the same way that the petals of a flower open into the sunlight. In receptive effortlessness, there is nowhere to go, nothing to deepen, not even any need to be gentle. The depth of contemplation is just being, effortlessly, in God.
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Gentleness is so foreign to our way of being with ourselves that we often can’t believe that God wants such a thing for us. We think we can do everything, save everything, through our own efforts, but when we let go of our own struggle, the subtle path of gentleness receives us. When we are able to be gentle with ourselves, this gentleness ripens into effortlessness and a new way of simply being in God.
Effortless as falling asleep, which I sometimes do in contemplative praying, and gently God/ess bids me good dreams.
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