The Contemplative Prayer

The contemplative prayer
February 28, 2006

In his lecture at the Gillbott Church, the Director Paik, a staff member from the Agape Christian Healing Center, has addressed that the Center seeks the healing process in search for “true self” via “contemplative prayer”.

After an hour-long lecture, there was a session of question-and-answer, in which I inquired about the glossolalia that the evangelical churches strongly advocate their membership in their prayer meetings.
Frankly speaking, I was at the loss when Mr. Paik replied that the glossolalia is one of the forms of contemplative prayers, contrary to his introductory paper that the contemplative prayer is not achieved by talking but by observing self, true or false.

It seems bizarre to me that the “speaking in tongue” has anything to do with the word, “contemplation”…I do believe you could not possibly achieve to observe, think, reflect, or consider thoroughly about anything at the same time when you were in a trance state or an episode of religious ecstasy.
I would rather consider the contemplative prayer in relation to the philosophy of silence, Buddhism or Christian monasticism.

It is true that Buddhist chants and Benedictine monk sings in their ritual as Christians sing hallelujah at the service.
But both monks are called “contemplative orders” that engage in the ascetic life in search of nirvana and a state of grace, committing themselves to poverty, celibacy and obedience challenging the secular culture of money, sex, and power.
In our modern time, people are fed up with the excessive consumerism and reflect dissatisfaction toward the mainstream religious practices.

In response to these tendencies, the mega churches have sprang up like the wild flowers in the spiritual desert, where glossolalia plays a major role enticing the like-minded people in the gated spiritual community.
Contrary to this communal fellowship of mega churches, some intellectuals began to show interest in the “contemplative life”, the possibility of individual consciousness apart from the communal whole.

Some says that life is like water: it takes the shape of the vessel into which it is poured; remove the vessel and it is lost.
What we are seeking are vessels into which to pour the chaos of life.
If we could pour the chaos of our life into the vessel of contemplative life, we might shape our future life quite contrary to the contemporary life of money, sex, and power that we have now.

In this perspective, Mr. Paik’s assertion that glossolalia is within the boundary of contemplative prayer is simply a misstatement or a disservice to the contemplative life.

I expect your clarification.

Pepe Sojourner

Paik Sanghoon replied
March 2, 2006

Thank you for your bringing up the question again for a better apprehension of the part of what had been said in the lecture, the relation of contemplation and glossolalia. And I also appreciate your fine understanding of the relation of Christian meditation and Buddhist practice and of great values of monasticism that speak critically to the contemporary world.

First of all, I have to acknowledge that my use of the word “contemplation” in my lecture had to be limited to an aspect of contemplation, that is, the way in which one sees into thing as they are, and this inevitably limited use might cause confusion and bewilderment in you and/or among others attending.

As I then said, the word “contemplation” has been variously used in the Christian tradition depending on the employers of the word. I would like to trace its first form back to the desert fathers that first appeared around 3-4th centuries in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. The way of their meditation is called “prayer of heart,” since their primal focus was on the inner, individual communication with God through their hearts. They tried to introspect with keen awareness of God’s presence and aspired to get in touch with God going beyond human words and language, because they were well aware that God could not be fully grasped with human words and language. This is why they prayed not with their heads but with their hearts, and how their way came to be called “prayer of heart,” which has definitely been considered a way of contemplation.

When I am willing to put “glossolalia” into the category of “contemplation,” I have the desert fathers and their “prayer of heart” in mind. Glossolalia is the phenomenon that comes as one goes beyond one’s words in his or her communication with God, despite the fact that he or she is actually speaking something with his or her lips. In other words, the person in speaking in tongues is praying not with his or her head, but with “heart.” Say, one’s lips are vibrating and yet his or her heart is touching upon God or God’s presence. In this sense, glossolalia can be, I assume, a way of contemplation. And, as such, contemplation belongs not only to the Catholic Church tradition but also to the Protestant tradition where some sort of different types of spirituality are preferred to those of the Catholic tradition. (My idea that glossolalia is part of contemplation is original.)

I hope this will be a help to you.


Pepe replied with the following disputation:
March 3 2006

Emphatically, I would like to dispute against your notion that “speaking in tongues” is within the category of “contemplation” even though I would not argue against the origin or the nature of glossolalia that you mentioned.
In short, an act of “speaking in tongues” is, I think, an antithetical to contemplation per se, and I would rather go further defining “glossolalia” an antonym of contemplative practice.

In the first place, two words, glossolalia and contemplation, are, by nature and by definition, describing utterly opposite means…in their attempted desire to meet a god, the former is demonstrated by an unintelligible words and unrestrained display of ecstatic movement and the latter is almost and always non-active and without words.

As glossolalia is derived from Greek, glossa (tongue) and lalia (to talk), a person engaging in glossolalia relies constantly on foreign, gibberish, meaningless, or unintelligible tongues “in order to aspire to get in touch with god” (to borrow from your words).
On the contrary, the contemplatives employ the form of meditative prayer like a close relationship between two friends who can sit enjoying each other’s company.

It seems utterly bizarre to read that you are eager to incorporate glossolalia into the realm of contemplative life…why?
You may put “speaking in tongues” as one of the components of worship traditions, as contemplative prayer, flagellation, fasting, and other physical pains have been accepted to various religious groups a modus operandi to achieve a goal to meet god.
Would glossolalia become more respectable, honorable, intelligent, scholastic, or civilized methods in search of god, if it were classified a contemplative prayer?

In the secular society, gibberish utterance is referred to self-hypnoticism, schizophrenia, hysteria, or dementia that require the engaging person receiving the clinical treatment if he or she shows psychopathic symptoms. In other words, an extraordinary level of engaging glossolalia may be construed an act of craziness possibly harming others life.
I personally witnessed long time ago that one of my friends had gone in delirium after attending the two-week sessions of Christian revival service, destroying all of his belongings and finally tried to harm his sister with a sharp object, and he was placed into the psychiatric ward permanently.

Imagine two groups, one sitting on a hemp mat dressed in white robes or saffron meditates opening their mind without any preconceptions to the truth, while another jumping and gyrating up and down with no constraint, hollering the gibberish and rolling on the floor along the guidance of a charismatic leader…it’s beyond anyone’s imagination that two are on the same boat.
Yes! They are on the route to meet a god, but their paradigms to achieve their goal are quite different from each other.
Therefore, I think that an attempt to incorporate glossolalia into the category of contemplation is like “spiritual arm-twisting” in order to elevate and exalt “gibberish” up to a pedestal where the contemplatives have been enjoying for centuries.

Paik replied
March 4, 2006

I am with you that speaking-in-tongues may go to the extreme of fanaticism which sometimes results in some sort of destructive, unreasonable behaviors. This is often observed, as you pointed out, in the circles of the excessive charismatic movement. In this case, glossolalia may only be an effort on the part of the person praying made to speak what is inside out. That type of glossolalia cannot be construed as a true communication with God and as such a form of contemplation.

What I have seen, however, is that there are some who are speaking in tongues in a very quite mood. Kneeling down or sitting on the floor they are murmuring or whispering in a small voice. Their voice, then, is only a means through which they reach out toward God. Some of them show very humble characters with profound insights into spiritual things. Hence, what I want to argue is that glossolalia is more variously practiced than some people normally assume, and that it can be, if rightly practiced, a way of contemplation in that it goes beyond human words.