Remembering God (mneme Theou)

Word Incarnate has a thought provoking post on the remembrance of God in prayer. It is not an easy read. Expect to leave the post up in another tab/window or bookmark it.

Just in case you’re already confused, that’s Greek for “remembrance of God.” In the practice of prayer in the Byzantine tradition, remembrance of God is really the foundation of all prayer. Often the Jesus Prayer is the principal way to do this, but remembrance of God is more fundamental than any particular form of prayer. It is simply a conscious, attentive being in the presence of God...

“…mneme Theou, remembering God, means something that is more than merely a ’subjective’ recollection. ‘Objectively,’ if one can say that, it means reconnecting oneself to God and His grace. The effort, the process involved, is very like that needed to remember a forgotten fact. It too sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. It succeeds, paradoxically, when we ‘forget ourselves,’ forget our ordinary thoughts, our ordinary motives, our insistent but very personal hopes and fears. Then, when it fully succeeds, it connects us not only to something past… but connects us to something, to someone existing now… We must ‘Seek first God’s kingdom,’ and if we do this, He will do everything else that we need. What is involved, to put it another way, is to ‘remember with the heart'...

Complete post here.