It should likewise be emphasized that cultivating a
contemplative practice, such as using a prayer word, the breath, sitting in
stillness, is not to reduce prayer to a technique. Techniques imply certain
control and focus on the determined outcome. Contemplative practice is a skill,
a discipline that facilitates a process that is out of one’s control, but it
does not have the capacity to determine an outcome. A gardener for example,
does not actually grow plants. The gardener practices finely honed skills, such
as cultivating soil, watering, feeding, weeding, pruning. But there’s nothing
the gardener can do to make the plants grow. However, if the gardener does not
do what a gardener is supposed to do, the plants are not as likely to flourish.
In fact they might not grow at all. In the same way a sailor exercises
considerable skill in sailing a boat. But nothing the sailor does can produce
the wind that moves the boat. Yet without the sailing skills that harness the
wind, the boat will move aimlessly. Gardening and sailing involves skills of
receptivity. The skills are necessary but by themselves insufficient. And so it
is with contemplative practice and the spiritual life generally.
— Martin Laird, Into
the Silent Land
