Blog
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[post_date] => 2019-02-26 03:03:47
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<p class="">With the rise of Headspace, Calm, and all of the other mindfulness meditation apps, those of us coming from a Christian background can have a lot of very good questions: are these methods okay to use? Are they bad or evil? Are they Buddhist? Are they in line with Church teaching? I, myself, was an avid Headspace user for 3 years and at the time, I loved it. It helped me to focus and to learn to sit in silence without my mind constantly racing through my to-do list, but I always kept questioning how it fit in with my faith.</p>
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<p class="">The good news, I found, is these are not new questions, and this is not a new problem. To find the answer, it turns out, we have to look no further than Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict. He wrote a <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19891015_meditazione-cristiana_en.html">letter</a> 30 years ago addressing exactly these same questions*. He starts by acknowledging the deep spiritual need that underlies these questions:</p>
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<p class=""><em>“The spiritual restlessness arising from a life subjected to the driving pace of a technologically advanced society … brings a certain number of Christians to seek in these methods of prayer a path to interior peace and psychic balance.”</em></p>
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<p class="">and,</p>
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<p class=""><em>“Without doubt, a Christian needs certain periods of retreat into solitude to be recollected and, in God's presence, rediscover his path.”</em></p>
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<p class="">He also encourages us not to reject these ways ‘out of hand simply because they are not Christian, but that the Church recognizes what is true and holy in the other world religions because they 'reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men.'</p>
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<p class="">All that being said, he raises some serious concerns about these methods of meditation as they relate to the conception of Christian prayer:</p>
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<li><strong>What is the core? </strong>The center and core of all Christian prayer and meditation must always be God and striving to engage in a real living dialogue with Him.</li>
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<li><strong>What are the consequences?</strong> Spending too much time focused on our bodily sensations and experiences (e.g., breathing exercises, body scans) can potentially lead to a number of dicey consequences. One is misinterpreting feelings of calm and relaxation as spiritual consolations and thus ignoring the interconnection with our moral condition. Another is the lack of focus on humility and the potential for an increase of self-centeredness.</li>
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<li><strong>Where is the focus?</strong> Many of the meditation practices common today are associated with an internal focus (e.g., on the breath, body or mind) whereas the aim of Christian prayer is always to “flee from impersonal techniques or from concentrating on oneself.” The future Pope cites <a href="https://hallow.com/saints/augustine-of-hippo/">St. Augustine</a> to help bring home this point:</li>
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<p class=""><em>"On this topic St. Augustine is an excellent teacher: if you want to find God, he says, abandon the exterior world and re-enter into yourself. However, he continues, do not remain in yourself, but go beyond yourself because you are not God: He is deeper and greater than you...."To remain in oneself": this is the real danger.“</em></p>
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<p class="">So where do we go from here? What are we supposed to do with all of these caveats and warnings? Should we use these mindfulness apps to meditate or not? <strong>The great news is that there’s another option: Christian meditation.</strong> It’s a method of meditation that incorporates the calming recollection that we’re all seeking with the beauty of the Christian faith. It lets us find our center, while ensuring that the center that we find always ends up being God.</p>
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<p class="">This is why we built the Hallow app, to try and help us discover and grow in this form of prayer and recollection (we also hit on many other beautiful methods of Catholic contemplative prayer and meditation including the Examen, Lectio Divina on the daily Gospel, and the Rosary). The app leads you through easy-to-follow guided sessions on each of these methods, lets you pick across themes of humility, calm, gratitude, joy etc. or dive into traditional Catholic prayers and content (e.g., Our Father, Stations of the Cross, Saints) to re-discover and meditate on their beauty and depth. The short answer is, if you’re interested in learning more, I recommend you download and try it out! If you’re interested in finding out more about Christian meditation, though, just keep reading.</p>
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<p class="">So what exactly is different about Christian meditation? Well, at the core there are 3 big differences:</p>
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<p class=""><strong>1. Why we do it</strong></p>
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<p class="">The first difference comes down to why we’re doing it in the first place. When I was meditating using the mindfulness apps, I felt like I was trying to exercise my mind into building the ability to be more present and to better myself. There’s nothing inherently wrong or right with that, but Christian meditation and prayer is distinctively different.</p>
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<p class="">The point of Christian prayer and meditation is to grow deeper in a relationship and friendship with God. Sure, through this relationship you are challenged to become a better person and be more mindful, but that is not the primary goal. The primary goal is to sit with and spend time with a friend.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>2. How we do it</strong></p>
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<p class="">The ‘how’ is the second biggest difference. The eastern and secular mindfulness meditation methods I had exposure to were focused largely inward: on your body, your breath, and your mind.</p>
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<p class="">Christian meditation may seem like it starts off somewhat similarly. It often begins with much of the similar deep breathing exercises in order to re-collect and ground ourselves. As Cardinal Ratzinger writes:</p>
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<p class=""><em>“[All of these dangers do] not mean that genuine practices of meditation which come from the Christian East and from the great non-Christian religions, which prove attractive to the man of today who is divided and disoriented, cannot constitute a suitable means of helping the person who prays to come before God with an interior peace, even in the midst of external pressures.”</em></p>
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<p class="">But this is where the similarities stop. The focus of the sessions must always turn from ourselves to something…or rather Someone, who is at the same time both separate from ourselves and deeper within. To humble ourselves with the realization that we’re sitting in the presence of God. And through this new kind of mindfulness, to become closer to, and more like, God.</p>
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<p class="">The last big difference in terms of the ‘how’ is who really is in control. In eastern practices, the more you practice letting your thoughts pass by, the better you get at it. You’re not supposed to try to force anything, but in the end, it’s you who is doing the work to improve. In Christian prayer, this isn’t the case. Our work is simply to put ourselves in the position to let God take over.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>3. What you get out of it</strong></p>
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<p class="">The rewards of mindfulness meditation are often described as finding calm, escaping stress, relieving anxiety, becoming happier etc. But this is essentially the opposite for Christian meditation. While it is calming, peaceful and joyful in many ways, the Christian life isn’t a stress-free one, but rather one of finding meaning and purpose in deep struggles, heavy burdens, and intense suffering. Our aim is not to discover a beach and sit watching the waves come and go, but instead to bend down, pick up our cross and give our lives to God. And when we do, we find a friend, our cross becomes lighter, and we find a Love and Peace deeper than anything a beach could offer us.</p>
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<p class=""> This post was originally published on Catholic Gentleman's blog. Check it out <a href="https://www.catholicgentleman.net/2019/02/is-it-okay-to-meditate-as-a-catholic/">here</a>. </p>
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<p class=""><em>*All quotes in this article are from this letter: LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON SOME ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION* October 15, 1989</em></p>
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[post_title] => Is it Okay to Meditate as a Catholic?
[post_excerpt] => Comparing Christian meditation to other forms
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Is it Okay to Meditate as a Catholic?
Comparing Christian meditation to other forms
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[post_date] => 2019-02-06 15:43:40
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<p class=""><em>Finding True Peace In the Age of Technology Overload</em></p>
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<p class="">Here is a truly shocking statistic: according to <a href="https://read.nxtbook.com/ncea/momentum/2018_fall/going_going_gone_the_dynamics.html">the latest research</a>, 74% of young adults between the ages of 10 and 20 who were raised in the Church no longer identify as Catholic. What’s even more shocking is that the median age of disaffiliation has been declining significantly and just recently reached 13.</p>
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<p class="">A large part of the problem is the near constant bombardment of texts, snaps, and tweets that today’s young people are surrounded with. Incredibly, <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/millennials-engage-with-their-smartphones-more-than-they-do-actual-humans-2016-06-21">nearly 4 in 10 millennials report</a> actually interacting more with their smartphones than with their loved ones. It’s no wonder they have trouble connecting with a deep search for beauty and truth when they have become so addicted to their phones that they refuse to sleep more than a few feet away from them.</p>
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<p class="">But it isn’t just the millennials and Gen Z’ers; thanks to our societal addiction to technology, the average office worker now checks their email inbox 30 times every hour and the average smartphone user picks up their device over 210 times a day, causing our collective human attention span to have <a href="https://www.wyzowl.com/human-attention-span/">decreased by more than 30%</a> since 2000 (to less than that of a goldfish).</p>
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<p class="">So, what do we do? Collectively admit that enough is enough; that it’s time to roll back the clock on technological innovation; throw out our smart phones; and disconnect our wifi routers? Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s an outcome we can bank on solving the problem.</p>
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<p class="">The good news is that there has been a push to fight back against the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-be-yourself/201803/how-technology-makes-us-anxious">increasing levels of anxiety and depression</a> that come with technological dependency. One particularly popular solution, the practice of “mindfulness”, has become quite the buzzword in places like Silicon Valley. According to <a href="https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness/">mindful.org</a>, “Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.” <em>Sounds great! Sign me up!</em> There’s just one problem…</p>
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<p class="">Increasingly, more and more young people have pursued this idea of “mindfulness” outside of the traditions of the Church through secular pseudo-spiritual practices, replacing Mass with yoga and meditation classes. As a result, there has been a large movement of people leaving the institutional church for the self-ascribed <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/">"Spiritual But Not Religious" life</a>.</p>
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<p class="">But do those looking for a mindful or spiritual experience really need to look outside of the Church?</p>
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<p class="">Of course not!</p>
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<p class="">As it turns out, there is 2,000 years of Church tradition filled with a rich history of contemplative religious practices. From the early desert mothers and fathers, to the Benedictines and Franciscans, to the Ignatians and beyond, contemplative approaches to prayer have been a core foundation of the church militant’s effort to know and love God from the beginning. Practices like Lectio Divina, the Rosary, and the Examen are often as core to the lives of Saints as is the holy sacrifice of the Mass.</p>
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<p class="">It seems that the challenge facing us is not that the Church has nothing to offer those seeking a mindful or mystic experience, it’s just that we haven’t done the best job letting people know that they exist.</p>
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<p class="">So how do we get people to believe that the stodgy old Catholic church has even more to offer the mediation crowd than any yogi they might find?</p>
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<p class="">As they say in business school, let your data do the talking.</p>
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<p class="">Even at the level of physical health, the benefits of prayer are overwhelmingly clear. According to <a href="https://renewingallthings.com/spiritual-health/how-prayer-changes-the-brain-and-body/">research done by Dr. Caroline Leaf</a>, “It has been found that 12 minutes of daily focused prayer over an 8 week period can change the brain to such an extent that it can be measured on a brain scan. This type of prayer increases activity in brain areas associated with social interaction, compassion, and sensitivity to others. It also increases frontal lobe activity as focus and intentionality increase.”</p>
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<p class="">Moreover, there have been initial indications that prayer can be effective in helping to treat addiction, particularly in alcoholics. In a <a href="https://nyulangone.org/press-releases/brain-images-reveal-first-physical-evidence-that-prayers-reduce-cravings-in-alcoholics-anonymous-members">recent study published in the <em>American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse</em></a>, “Previous investigations by other researchers of the role of prayer on drinking behavior found that alcohol abusers who reported a spiritual awakening drank less after treatment for alcoholism. Research participants assigned to engage in prayer—unrelated to drinking—every day for four weeks drank about half as much as those who were not.”</p>
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<p class="">One specific area where the Catholic approach to mindfulness has been gaining institutional momentum is in Catholic schools. Sponsored in part by the Institute for Pastoral Initiatives, a group of researchers incorporated Christian mediation (a specific form of <a href="https://hallow.com/blog/contemplative-prayer-imaginative-prayer/">Catholic contemplative prayer</a>) into the morning routines of both faculty and classes of students in Catholic schools. “[A selected sample of teachers] indicated that initially there was reluctance, or bumps along the way, but all had similarly positive conclusions. Their students not only enjoyed the practice, but have grown as a result.” One specific reaction from Emily, an 11 year-old: “What I like about Christian Meditation is that you get time to stop and take time to be with Jesus.”</p>
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<p class="">In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “Today, schools of prayer and prayer groups exist; it is obvious people want them. Many seek meditation elsewhere, because they think that they will not be able to find a spiritual dimension in Christianity. We must show them once again, not only that this spiritual dimension exists, but that it is the source of all things.”</p>
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<p class="">Not only is that the truth, it is also the answer to the deepest longing we all have in our souls. No matter how great the filter, no Snapchat story or Instagram post can fill that void. Only by inviting God into the silence of our hearts and accepting his loving embrace can we find true peace.</p>
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<p class="">He is there waiting.</p>
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<p class="">“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28)”</p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-more-helpful-prayers"><strong>More Helpful Prayers</strong></h2>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-the-rosary/">How to Pray the Rosary</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/2022/09/02/prayers-for-hope/">Prayers for Hope</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/prayers-for-strength/">Prayers for Strength</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/prayers-for-anxiety/">Prayers for Anxiety</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray/-our-father/">Our Father Prayer</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-the-hail-mary/">Hail Mary Prayer</a></li>
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[post_title] => Overwhelmed? Have Trouble Disconnecting? Try Prayer.
[post_excerpt] => Find peace in God.
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Overwhelmed? Have Trouble Disconnecting? Try Prayer.
Find peace in God.
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[post_date] => 2019-01-29 01:46:20
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<p class="">This post is about a revelation. It’s about tying together all the little pieces of my life that brought me to the moment that I decided to join Hallow. The journey to clarity was one of prayer, as I discuss in a <a href="https://www.hallow.com/blog/how-prayer-led-me-to-quit-my-job-and-move-across-the-country">previous post</a>. The following paragraphs describe the unlikely and sometimes unexpected steps that built this road to Hallow. Were it not for each of these pieces coming together, I find it extremely unlikely that I would've joined Hallow full-time. </p>
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<p class="">The story begins with a conversation on a beach. Apart from a brief introduction on campus during our senior year, I did not know Alex (Hallow’s co-founder) at all while we attended Notre Dame together. We met only because we both joined the Chicago office of the same consulting company. And even then, we never worked together and only met because we found ourselves on the same beach at the same time of night during a company retreat. Somehow the conversation turned to God and faith and how to keep up a strong faith life during a hectic job with a largely secular employee base. So, we continued to talk on a regular basis about precisely this. And over the course of 3 years at the company, we never worked together and never even worked in the same city, yet became great friends. Had I not met Alex on that beach, or had faith not come up in our conversation, we may have never gotten to know each other the way we did, and Alex’s conception of Hallow might have taken the form of a journal entry, rather than a phone call to a friend.</p>
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<p class="">Fast forward two years. For the third year at McKinsey, you can choose to do one of many “third-year rotations”, including anything from externships at technology companies, to living abroad for a year, to an internal rotation with the company. I had my mind set on one in particular: an externship with The Gates Foundation. It would have me performing very meaningful social justice work in a cool position at an impactful and inspiring organization. I thought I had the necessary skills, passion, and intention to be a valuable asset to their work. I had very favorable performance reviews and had spoken to prior externs and I felt good about my chances. Instead, I got my second choice – working in the Fast Growth Tech practice at McKinsey (now called Fuel). During my rotation with Fuel, I spent the year serving tech startups on go-to-market and growth strategy. The projects on which I landed could not have been more pertinent to the work that I do at Hallow today. Perhaps even more importantly, if it weren’t for this rotation, I certainly would not have moved to San Francisco to begin with, and I have a hard time believing I would have left Chicago for a new business venture later if I hadn’t already been there.</p>
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<p class="">Then, shortly after hearing about my third-year rotation, I applied to business school. I fell in love with Stanford’s program, and, once again, thought that I was doing it for the right reasons and that this was the path on which I belonged. I was going to use Stanford’s Social Entrepreneurship resources to build up my skills to have an impact in the social justice world. I fit in well with the culture, and I was even already living in San Francisco. I applied and I got an interview, and I thought it went well. I didn’t get in. I had no idea why. But if I had, there is not a doubt in my mind I would have accepted an offer; had I done that, I know that I would not have been able to dedicate myself to Hallow.</p>
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<p class="">In my other <a href="https://www.hallow.com/blog/how-prayer-led-me-to-quit-my-job-and-move-across-the-country">post</a>, I mention that at this point in my life I so nearly moved back to Chicago that I applied for two full-year leases with my old roommates. We had the income levels and the credit scores we needed to get the places, and I had never been rejected for a rental application in my life. We didn’t get it. If we had, I would’ve been locked into a lease in a different city. In that instance, I am uncertain I would have pursued Hallow. Even if I did, then I certainly wouldn’t have been able to dedicate myself to it to the same extent as I have.</p>
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<p class="">Now, when I applied to live in Chicago, I obviously told my roommates in San Francisco that I was leaving. Even though I was leaving, they decided to re-sign our 3-bedroom place and decided they would search for a replacement on their own. However, by the time I changed my mind and decided to stay in SF (less than 3 weeks before my planned last day in the city), they hadn’t yet committed my room to anyone. If someone had taken my room, I am not sure I would have stayed – I was lucky enough to be living in a place with very low rent and moving would likely mean paying 50-100% more each month, which is tough to justify with a new absence of income.</p>
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<p class="">Of course, I did not understand the eventual implications of any of these things as they happened. In fact, I was severely disappointed when most of them happened. I had really wished I had gotten the call that said I was going to the Gates Foundation. I was severely disappointed when I found out that I didn’t get into Stanford. I was praying that the place in Chicago would accept our application to live there. And these weren’t long shots for me either. I was confident going into each of these situations that the result would be the opposite of what ultimately occurred. It’s not easy to overcome these initial reactions, and I didn’t put the pieces together on my own. It was through my days of prayer in discernment that I realized how all of this had come together to put me in the perfect position to pursue the project about which I was so excited. If I hadn’t met Alex, or if I had gotten my first choice for rotation, or if I had gotten into Stanford, or I had been accepted for a lease in Chicago – any of these seemingly extremely likely events would have almost certainly prohibited me from joining Hallow full-time.</p>
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<p class="">Now you may read all of this and be happy to chalk it all up to coincidence, or just making the best of the cards I was dealt. And I cannot stop you if you do. But to me, I see a guiding hand behind it all. Some divine nudges here and there. And I choose to call it a recognition of His will. It wasn’t me thinking long and hard about it, slowly coming to convince myself, but rather the realizations came flying in all together at once. <strong>It was almost as if someone decided to sit me down and say, “Sorry for how all those things turned out, but step back and look at everything I lined up for you. Don’t just throw all that away to take the less scary path.”</strong></p>
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<p class="">I must clarify, I do not think that following this path means everything will work out perfectly, that Hallow will be a booming success, or that it'll be where I spend the rest of the life. It simply means that I believe it is the right thing to do at this time, in this place of my life. Maybe it's all just to learn a few lessons before everything fails and I move elsewhere, or maybe it's the beginning of something bigger - only time will tell.</p>
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<p class="">In prayers of petition, I used to explicitly ask for specific outcomes. Now, whenever I pray, “Lord, please let X happen” or “help me to do Y”, I’ll always add: “I mean, I guess unless You think there’s something better for me like all those other times.” This is the heart of Hallow’s Letting Go ‘Praylist’. Jesus probably said it better with “Not my will, but Yours”, but I prefer my version; it sounds more like me.</p>
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[post_title] => Coincidence or God?
[post_excerpt] => Erich reflects on how God led him to Hallow.
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Coincidence or God?
Erich reflects on how God led him to Hallow.
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[post_date_gmt] => 2019-01-16 01:48:57
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<p class="">Now that the Christmas season officially ended this past Sunday, I realize that the only thing about Christmas I don’t like… well, maybe, the only Christmas <em>song</em> I’m not particularly fond of is… “The Little Drummer Boy.”</p>
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<p class="">With most things, I gravitate towards the dramatic. I like things that carry weight – Christmas songs like “O Holy Night” and “Come, All Ye Faithful.” I also laugh imagining a kid banging a drum while poor Mary and Joseph are trying to soothe their child to sleep. I’d be embarrassed if the best I could offer them was just noise. I’d want to be one of those Wise Men – kings who presented only the greatest stuff to their newborn King. In prayer, too, I want to give God things that are really impressive and holy.</p>
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<p class="">Yet it’s funny… The other day when I was sitting in chapel, the silence gave me a prick of humility. When I pray, I am often that drummer boy. My mind races, knocks on everything, and makes lots of noise.</p>
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<p class="">This is why my mind was racing: Next weekend, a group of guys I live with are travelling to Chicago to play in a basketball tournament. My athletic skills aren’t quite up to snuff. Still, one of my brothers suggested that I come along. (Discerning and making decisions though usually overwhelm me.)</p>
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<p class="">In prayer that evening, I was trying to focus on beautiful lofty things as usual. But I kept getting distracted, weighing out pros and cons of my trivial decision. Frustrated, <strong>I eventually decided to try talking about the distractions themselves and letting God into them.</strong></p>
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<p class="">“<em>Lord, I want to go. Well, kind of. I don’t know. It’d be great for community-building... Nah, I should stay, get ahead on work, right? You brought me here to study, and it’s just basketball… But, still… it’s only one weekend away. Do you think I should go…? Nah, I barely know the guy coordinating the trip. At this point, I bet there isn’t any room left...</em>” (Like I said, <em>lots</em>of <em>noise</em>.)</p>
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<p class="">But God was patient, always listening, silently there with me.</p>
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<p class="">I didn’t know what to do. Inspired with childlike boldness, I looked up and told God frankly –</p>
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<p class=""><strong>“<em>I don’t know whether I’m supposed to go or not … If You want me to stay, I’ll stay. But if You want me to go, You need to make it happen.</em>”</strong></p>
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<p class="">That was it. No second-guessing, no take-backs. <strong>All was in His hands.</strong></p>
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<p class="">For a moment, I was finally able to listen and sit in real silence. Then I got up and headed to dinner. After I finished eating I was about to head out, but one of my brothers came by and struck up conversation. We stayed for another half hour or so. By now, the room had cleared out, save for our table. I was again ready to call it for the night when I looked around and saw the captain of the basketball team walking in. He grabbed a bowl of cereal and joined us at table.</p>
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<p class="">This past Sunday, we closed out Christmas by celebrating Jesus’ Baptism. The Gospel verse that stood out to me most was, <strong><em>This is my Beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased</em></strong> (Lk. 3:22).God the Father looks upon Jesus and announces this to the world: 1) Jesus is God; 2) the Father loves Him; and 3) He’s well pleased with His Son’s existence.</p>
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<p class="">God is neither a magician nor a genie. He doesn’t make everything happen instantly nor does He grant every wish. <strong>In my life there are PLENTY of prayers God either answered differently than hoped for, didn’t answer at all, or hasn’t answered (yet) – all for better reasons than I can see.</strong></p>
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<p class="">But that night, after hearing me out, God answered my prayer. The Father provided for something seemingly insignificant because He loves His child. <strong>Nothing we give Him in sincerity of heart is ridiculous or petty.</strong><br></p>
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<p class="">Next weekend, I’ll be cheering on my brothers loudly and proudly, and I’ll be staying in the 3<sup>rd</sup>allotted guest room. (At our dinner table, the team captain said they just so happened to have one open spot left.)</p>
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<p class="">... I don’t know exactly how the newborn Jesus reacted to the ruckus from the drummer boy. But I trust that as it was the best the boy could give, God <em>listened</em>, and He was well pleased to accept the gift.</p>
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[post_title] => Sometimes, I Make a Lot of Noise in Prayer
[post_excerpt] => Prayer doesn't need to be perfect.
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Sometimes, I Make a Lot of Noise in Prayer
Prayer doesn't need to be perfect.
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[post_date] => 2019-01-15 22:53:59
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<p class="">Yesterday over dinner someone asked me if Hallow had changed my life. I answered “Of course, it has drastically improved my faith life, and I am now praying in a number of ways I had never known before, and am praying more frequently than I ever did.” Clearly unsatisfied, he pushed me, “No, I mean a real, concrete example of what you’ve done differently as a result of your prayers and Hallow.” </p>
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<p class="">Truth is, I simply would not be where I am now if it weren’t for the first ‘Praylist’ I ever tried out. I wouldn’t be living where I’m living, living how I’m living, or doing what I’m doing.</p>
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<p class="">I’ll set the context. It’s 2017, and I just finished my second year in management consulting at McKinsey and was loving it. I was learning an astonishing number of truly pragmatic lessons every day, I had amazing perks, was traveling the world, and was surrounded by intelligent, driven, kind colleagues. I moved to San Francisco from Chicago in July of that year for a one-year rotation with McKinsey to serve startups.</p>
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<p class="">My first ‘Praylist’ (though it wasn’t done through the app) was on the topic of discernment, and I began in July 2018, at the official end of my one-year rotation. In that year, I had started to involve myself more and more in a very exciting side project – the nascent stages of what would become Hallow. The decision before me was essentially this: Do I (1) stay at McKinsey and return to Chicago or (2) quit McKinsey, stay in San Francisco, and join Hallow full-time. I felt that joining Hallow from Chicago was not an option, as I knew if I was going to do it then I needed to dedicate myself fully to the cause, or else I’d always be stuck thinking what would have happened had I gone all-in. So, I mapped out the draws of each side, and I ended up with something like this:</p>
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<p class="has-text-align-center">(1)</p>
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<p class="">My girlfriend is moving to Chicago</p>
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<p class="">I was raised in/around Chicago and lived there for the first two years after college</p>
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<p class="">My parents still live around Chicago</p>
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<p class="">The majority of my high school and college friends live in Chicago</p>
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<p class="">Chicago is way, way more affordable than San Francisco</p>
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<p class="">I think Chicago is the greatest city in the world</p>
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<p class="">My salary at McKinsey recently doubled to something rather competitive for a 25-year-old</p>
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<p class="">I was just told I am weeks away from a promotion to manager</p>
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<p class="">I love McKinsey – the work, the people, the learning, the travel, everything</p>
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<p class="">McKinsey would pay for me to relocate since it was the end of my rotation anyway</p>
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<p class="">There’s Portillo’s in Chicago</p>
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<p class="has-text-align-center">(2)</p>
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<p class="">I love working on Hallow</p>
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<p class="">It could be fun to try something on my own and be my own boss</p>
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<p class="">Looking at these lists, my instinct was (1). I even went and applied to two leases in Chicago with my old roommates. Yet, something wasn’t sitting right. I stayed up every night thinking about whether or not it was the right decision. It was tearing me apart. So, one day, while waiting for my flight to board at LAX, I called Alex (Hallow’s only founder at the time). To his credit, he didn’t really push me one way or the other. He didn’t offer me a position, equity, co-founder status, or any money at all. He had only one push: take this discernment to prayer and see what happens.</p>
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<p class="">Even today I have a long way to go in my prayer life, but back then especially, my prayer life wasn’t what I’d call strong. My immediate reaction was little better than, “Great, like that’ll get me anywhere.” But instead of voicing this to Alex, I asked for tips on prayers of discernment as I know it was a subject he had recently researched (in fact, these prayers would later be built out into what is now Hallow’s “Decision Making” Praylist). First, I tested my reactions to making the decision each way. I imagined I had already chosen option (1) and carried on with my day, meditating on the resulting emotions along the way, looking for confirmation from God, before then switching and imagining I had made the decision for option (2) and doing the same. Next, in Drake-inspired fashion, I considered what God’s plan might be – meaning which direction do I think God would recommend for me to essentially live my best life and be the best version of myself. Lastly, I meditated on what the person whom I respect the most might choose in this situation, and whom God might suggest I consult on the matter. </p>
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<p class="">After each new prayer, I became more and more uncomfortable with moving back to Chicago and staying with McKinsey. Over the course of these few days in prayer, I was hit over the head with all of the things that had lined up in my life perfectly to bring me to that moment. It was crazy. So crazy in fact, I had to write an entire <a href="https://www.hallow.com/blog/coincidence-or-god">other blog post</a> just to capture this revelation and the clarity that it brought me. Thomas Aquinas said that God sometimes talks to us through our own faculties, and it was through recognition of my own that my eyes were finally opened to God’s plan all at once, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of direction. </p>
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<p class="">The last piece for me with which I needed to come to terms was the mission of what I was doing. I was unsure whether or not I was called to bring people into the Church. In all honesty, I myself didn’t feel like a big part of the Church for much of my life or even at that very moment. To this deliberation, one last thought came to me – clarity about what Hallow’s mission truly was. We are hoping to bring people peace, and we are hoping to bring through Christian values which essentially boil down to one thing: love. Peace and love are our mission. And yes, that is something to which I would dedicate my life.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>So I did it. I left a job I loved, right before a promotion, to stay in a city that didn’t feel like home, with no promise of equity or title at Hallow, to pursue a calling</strong>. I realize that could sound silly to some of you. Frankly, prior to this experience I could never relate to “callings” myself either so I don’t blame you, but I’ve found that’s the most accurate description. Has it been easy? Of course not. But that wasn’t ever the promise. It’s hard. I’m living in the most expensive city in the world without an income, and sometimes I feel rather lonely and sometimes I feel rather lost. But, despite those moments, I have yet to doubt that I made the right decision. I wake up every day doing something I love, that I truly believe will help a few people. And hey, even if I spend years on this and Hallow brings peace and love to just one person, then the world is a bit better off, and that’s enough reward for me.</p>
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[post_title] => How Prayer Led Me to Quit My Job and Move Across the Country
[post_excerpt] => Erich tells the story of how he came to work with Hallow.
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How Prayer Led Me to Quit My Job and Move Across the Country
Erich tells the story of how he came to work with Hallow.
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[post_date] => 2018-10-24 01:59:42
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<p class="">I have written in a few of our <a href="https://hallow.com/blog/my-journey-from-atheist-to-maybe-a-christian-pt-1/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="posts (opens in a new tab)">posts</a> about the power of a collection of great books and the impact that they have had throughout my faith journey.</p>
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<p class="">I’ve broken these 9 books across 3 phases of my faith journey so far: discovering my faith, diving deeper, and learning to live it out. I am very much still in the midst of each of these steps, so if you have any recommendations please send them my way by commenting below or emailing me at alex@hallow.com.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>Discovery</strong></p>
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<p class="">1.<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://www.paulistpress.com/Products/3-269-0/doing-the-truth-in-love.aspx" target="_blank">Doing The Truth In Love</a> by Michael J. Himes. This book was recommended to me by one of the most intelligent Christians I know as a simple, yet thoughtful way to understand what it is that Christianity really believes. It's short, sweet, and a phenomenal intro to the theology of Christianity. It really helped me to discover that the Christian God was not some old man sitting up in the sky judging all of us, but that at His core is Love.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“What the Christian tradition maintains is the least inadequate expression for God finds its clearest, sharpest, simplest statement in one of the last-written documents of the collection of the early Christian documents which we call the New Testament, the first letter of John. There we read that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8 and 16). But the love which is offered as the least wrong way to think and speak about God is of a very peculiar sort: <em>agape</em>. <em>Agape</em> is a Greek word meaning love which is purely other directed, love which seeks no return, love which does not want anything back. Perhaps so as not to confuse it with the many other meanings which we attach to the word “love” in English, we might translate <em>agape</em> as “pure self-gift”</p></blockquote>
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<p class="">2. The second book is by one of my favorite authors of all time: C.S. Lewis. He argues with beautiful logic and clarity for what we all believe in as Christians. He has many books (even two more on this list), but the one I started with was <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.christianbook.com/mere-christianity-c-s-lewis/9780060652920/pd/2926X" target="_blank">Mere Christianity</a><strong>. </strong>I credit this book with helping to re-introduce me to Jesus.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” </p></blockquote>
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<p class="">3. The last on my list of discovery is the book <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.chesterton.org/lecture-44/" target="_blank">The Everlasting Man</a> by G.K. Chesterton. He does a great job of deciphering between different religious belief systems and helping us to understand the relationship between science and Christianity.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ even if you only mean ‘In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.’ For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<p class=""><strong>Diving deeper</strong></p>
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<p class="">4. Now as we dig deeper we’ll move to one of the classics: Dostoevsky’s<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://medium.com/@brandonmonk/a-way-to-read-the-brothers-karamazov-800d0cf9ac9f" target="_blank">The Brothers Karamazov</a><strong>.</strong> This is beautiful novel about family, spirituality and about God. It's dense, full of meaning, and to be honest with you, I’m not sure I even understand half of what he is trying to say. I’ll just keep re-reading it till I do.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.<br></p></blockquote>
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<p class="">5. Another fantastic book is Francis Chan’s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.chesterton.org/lecture-44/" target="_blank">Crazy Love</a>. It does a phenomenal job of re-introducing us to the radicalness of the Christian faith and dares us to live as our Christian faith calls us to.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.”<br></p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“When it's hard and you are doubtful, give more.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<p class="">6. Time to add another C.S. Lewis to the list! <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/why-you-should-read-cs-lewis-the-great-divorce/5128/" target="_blank">The Great Divorce</a> is a beautifully written visualization of heaven and hell.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<p class=""><strong>Learning to live it out</strong></p>
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<p class="">7. Have you had enough of C.S. Lewis yet? Too bad! This is one of the more difficult books I’ve ever read. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652934" target="_blank">Screwtape Letters</a> is written from the perspective of a demon who is actively trying to win over a man’s soul. Before reading this book, I probably would have described myself as a pretty good guy. Needless to say, after reading this book and Lewis’ perfect articulations of our day to day sins, my perspective of myself quickly changed.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“When He [God] talks of their losing their-selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<p class="">8. And now arguably my favorite book on this list (except for the last): Fr. Gregory Boyle’s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.homeboyindustries.org/fatherg/" target="_blank">Tattoos On The Heart</a> This is the best example of how to live out <a href="http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/">Catholic Social Teaching</a> that I’ve ever read. I honestly cried at every chapter of this book.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Success and failure, ultimately, have little to do with living the gospel. Jesus just stood with the outcasts until they were welcomed or until he was crucified — whichever came first.” <br></p></blockquote>
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<p class="">9. Lastly, the <strong>Bible</strong>. I couldn’t in good conscious put it on a list with any other book. Those books are great, but they are all written by people talking about God. The Bible is something different. After re-discovering my faith, I began to make my way through the New Testament (am now still working through the Old), and it changed my life. I felt power and meaning in words that I was only beginning to understand. It began a conversation with God that I know will continue for the rest of my life. </p>
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<p class="">One of my favorite ways to engage with Scripture is through the ancient prayer method Lectio Divina, a beautiful way of reading scripture slowly and meditatively, letting God speak to you directly through the words. It is one of my favorite prayer methods in Hallow’s guided meditation and prayer app. There are no quotes that would do this justice, but because I couldn’t resist I pulled a few from Hallow’s first introductory Lectio Divina sessions:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)</p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>‘A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But [Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. [Jesus] said to them, ‘Why are you afraid?’’ (Mark 4:37-40)</p></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:14-16)</p></blockquote>
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<p class="">As I said at the beginning: I am still very much at the start of this journey and would love to hear your comments and any book recommendations you have - please comment below!</p>
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[post_title] => The 9 Books That Helped Make Me a Christian
[post_excerpt] => Alex shares some of the books that changed his life.
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The 9 Books That Helped Make Me a Christian
Alex shares some of the books that changed his life.
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<p class="">This post is a continuation of the discussion that began in an earlier blog <a href="https://hallow.com/blog/my-journey-from-atheist-to-maybe-a-christian-pt-1/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">post</a> about my journey toward becoming a Christian. It picks up where the first left off. </p>
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<p class=""><strong>Jesus</strong></p>
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<p class="">There was something about this guy that always seemed to resonate with me. Every time I’d heard something from the Gospels, it felt like Jesus was saying something pretty dope, but I never really dug in. I had taken the stance that many do: that He was a great moral teacher, but that I didn’t really buy Him being the Son of the Creator of the universe. And that’s when I started reading another phenomenal book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537127675&sr=8-1&keywords=mere+christianity+by+cs+lewis" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis</a>.</p>
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<p class="">Lewis said something that I found tremendously interesting: that if you actually read the Gospels, you find that Jesus said a lot of things that weren’t just moral teachings. In fact, a lot of what He says centers around Him being divine e.g.,<br></p>
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<p class="">Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)</p>
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<p class="">"Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:58)</p>
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<p class="">He said to them, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” (John 8:23)</p>
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<p class="">Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live" (John 11:25)</p>
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<p class="">"I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live" (John 11:25)</p>
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<p class="">Jesus replied, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." (John 6:35)</p>
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<p class="">Could you imagine me saying those things to you today? You’d think I was insane.</p>
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<p class="">What if you stole something from your friend and then came to me, and I said ‘Oh don’t worry, I forgive you for it.’ What a ridiculous statement that would be. How could I possibly forgive you for wrongs against someone else? The only way that would make any sense was if I was the person primarily wronged. If I was in some sense the main counter-party in every wrong. It would only make sense if I was God. This was what Lewis explains when he writes:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”</p></blockquote>
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<p class="">Following this book’s train of thought, another providential piece of content was shepherded my way – the movie <a href="https://thecaseforchristmovie.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The Case For Christ</a>. It’s an amazing portrait of a skeptic’s exploration of the truth behind the resurrection. To make a long story short, it all goes back to trusting what people have said. We trust in almost every piece of history and knowledge we learn (e.g., that Socrates existed) with much less historical evidence and written accounts than we have of Jesus’ resurrection. But what if they only wrote these accounts to trick us? But then we have to ask - for what purpose? Many of these early Christians were tortured and killed for their beliefs. If you’re interested in digging into the historical evidence, the late Pastor Billy Graham does a great job <a href="https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/april-2011/the-resurrection-myth-or-history/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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<p class="">And this brings us all the way back to the beginning of the first post in this series. All of these things together - the thinking about truth, about faith, about God, about Jesus - these all led to the cracking open of the door. I was now at a point where I could see a world in which I might be able to buy that there was some kind of God out there, and that He may or may not have something to do with this guy named Jesus.</p>
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<p class="">The big missing piece to me now was that apparently you’re supposed to be able to have some kind of personal relationship with this guy. To talk to Him. To be friends with Him – here and now. Not in some kind of ethereal philosophical sense, but in the real world today.</p>
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<p class="">This is the journey I’ve been on for the past few years, and I’m only just at the beginning. It’s what we’re focused on here at Hallow: finding ways to discover and build this relationship with God. I invite you to join us by downloading our app and trying out some of our guided prayer and meditation sessions. </p>
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[post_title] => My Journey From Atheist to Maybe a Christian Pt. 2
[post_excerpt] => Alex's story, continued.
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My Journey From Atheist to Maybe a Christian Pt. 2
Alex's story, continued.
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<p class="">As I discussed in our e-book, 3 ways to renew your prayer life, my faith journey has been one of re-discovery. The first step for me in this re-discovery was mostly intellectual: the cracking open of the door to the possibility that this whole Christianity thing might not all be nonsense.<br></p>
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<p class="">I do want to call out, though, that the step after this ‘cracking open of the door’ was to me what has been even more impactful: the exploration and discovery of my prayer life and of a personal relationship with God. I am still very much at the beginning of both of these journeys. The one thing I’ve learned so far is just how much more I still have to learn.<br></p>
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<p class="">For the purposes of this post, though, I’ll take a stab at a very simple view of some of the arguments that helped me when I was first exploring the Christian faith.<br></p>
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<p class="">One other caveat: I am in no way a trained theologian, philosopher or physicist. There are many who have written and articulated this more beautifully and precisely than I will here.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>The Dismantling</strong></p>
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<p class="">The first step in this journey is what I would call the dismantling. Throughout most of high school and college, I was an atheist. I was the kind of person who only believed in what we could prove with science. But a question kept coming up as I started to explore my newfound belief system: ‘If science is my new system of truth how can I be sure, unlike these religions I’ve abandoned, that science is true?’</p>
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<p class="">My view at that point was essentially ‘science may never lead us 100% to the truth, but as we progress it gets us closer and closer – it narrows in on truth or the correct world view.’ But as I started to look at it in depth, this view started to fall apart. Take for instance the evolution of the concept of gravity. During Newton’s time, we thought gravity was some kind of force that moved and flowed around invisibly. Then Einstein said it was really more like we’re all sitting on a trampoline and as we get heavier we bend and warp the trampoline (i.e., space-time). Now in quantum mechanics, we apparently have something called a graviton, which is some kind of massless string? I just kept thinking about how radically different these three world views were. Could I really see any kind of linear evolution? The same is true when you look at almost any other major theory in science, e.g., particle physics, light, time.</p>
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<p class="">Needless to say, I was a bit shaken in my ‘belief’ in science, so I started to dig deeper and take a class on the philosophy of science. One of the readings (by David Hume – a philosopher in the 18th century) started to address this issue head on. He essentially broke down reasoning into two types: <strong>deduction</strong>, which is what we think of as logic and math (e.g., the statement “if all walls are white, and this is a wall, then it must be white”) and <strong>induction</strong> which is the idea that because something happened the same way 100 times previously (and assuming all else equal) we believe it will continue to happen the same way tomorrow and the next day (e.g., gravity, science, evidence).</p>
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<p class="">The problem with both of these is that we can’t prove logically that either one leads us to truth. The only way to prove one of them is by using itself or the other, which is a circular argument (i.e., you can’t prove deduction works with logic or that induction works by pointing to past evidence).</p>
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<p class="">My first reaction to this argument was something like, “Well if I wake up every day and drop my pen to the floor, then every day I collect another data point that the pen will fall to the floor in the future, right? Each time I drop it, I get a little bit closer to knowing for certain that it will drop tomorrow.”</p>
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<p class="">The issue is that the future is unknown, even potentially infinite. Just because I dropped the pen 100 times, or even if all of humanity for the history of the world dropped the pen millions of times, it doesn’t mean that it’s close to even half of all of the pen drops that will ever occur. David Hume’s argument in his work <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">A Treatise of Human Nature</a> can be summarized with the example of the black swan. For years and years the western world thought all swans were white. All they had ever seen were white swans, but then in 1697 the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Australia and the white swan rule (formed by induction) was completely incorrect. As Hume writes, “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.” Bertrand Russell emphasizes the same point in his Problems of Philosophy as he writes:</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td>“Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who usually feeds them. We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>
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<p class="">But, I thought, we have pretty much seen the whole world by now, right? No way something will come up and surprise us or contradict our theories at this point. Except no scientist would ever agree with this - we haven’t even mapped or classified 1% of the observable universe.</p>
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<p class="">The broader theme was that it was starting to seem like nothing, not even science, stood on as solid of ground as I had thought. And I began to realize that it was never meant to. The majority of scientists never claimed it did. They admire science simply for what it is: a simple set of steps (i.e., the scientific method) meant to rigorously study and theorize about a set of observed experiences. It was never meant to stand on its own as a philosophy of life. In fact, when I started to think about it, really every other form of knowledge fell under the same umbrella. Nothing really stood on its own solid ground. In fact, I began to think, what goes to show that anything exists at all? Couldn’t we just be in a dream or a computer simulation (kudos to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBKRuI2zHp0" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Elon Musk</a>)? Is there such thing as reality or truth?<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>Faith</strong></p>
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<p class="">And so it was torn down. Everything I thought I knew was dismantled. And that’s when I started to see an old word in a new light: faith.</p>
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<p class="">I started to see that - regardless of whether I was atheist, agnostic, Buddhist or Christian - there were certain fundamental assumptions that you just had to take a bet on. There was no way to ever really ‘know’ them. Things like, “Is there an objective truth?”, “Is the world real?”, “Does our logic and induction lead us toward understanding?” cannot be proven.</p>
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<p class="">And I started to think that maybe this was what these Christians meant by faith after all: making a bet on an interpretation of the world that you choose to live in.</p>
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<p class="">I started thinking about which questions I would have to take a bet on. Questions of truth, reason, and free will. Questions of hope, beauty and values. And for some reason, one had always stuck out to me more than the rest: the question, “Is there such a thing as love, and does it matter?” The decision between two worlds: (a) one in which love is a series of chemical reactions in our brains that we have no control over or (b) one in which love is somehow something more.</p>
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<p class="">And that’s when I stumbled upon the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Truth-Love-Conversations-Relationships-ebook/dp/B008MOBU7S" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Doing the Truth in Love by Michael J. Himes</a>, and he pushed me to think through something pretty powerful. He pushed me to realize that the God that Christians believe in can most simply and least incorrectly be understood as choice (b). But instead of just saying that there is love, they say He <em>is </em>love. Not only is there something more to love than just chemicals, but it is apparently the most important thing there is or could ever be.</p>
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<p class="">For the first time, I started to get excited. I started to see a glimpse of what the word ‘God’ could actually mean. I started to think about the bet I wanted to make. The bet on which world I wanted to believe in. The bet against the world of chemicals, determinism and machines, and instead for a world of Love.</p>
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<p class="">At this point in time, I was still a million miles away from the God that Christians believed in. I had no idea what this whole thing about the Eucharist was, what baptism was supposed to do, or anything about what this whole three-person / trinity thing was supposed to mean. But it was starting to show some promise, and so I decided to again dig deeper. I realized that the next big question all hinged on this Jesus guy everyone kept talking about. <a href="https://hallow.com/blog/my-journey-from-atheist-to-maybe-a-christian-pt-2/">And so that's where I went to next.</a></p>
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[post_title] => My Journey From Atheist to Maybe a Christian Pt. 1
[post_excerpt] => Alex shares his conversion story.
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My Journey From Atheist to Maybe a Christian Pt. 1
Alex shares his conversion story.
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<p class="">I attended a Catholic college where every dorm had a chapel, the church bells rang out the hours, and it was normal to see priests strolling across campus. Dorm Mass, campus ministry retreats, and deep talks about God were as central to my college experience as dining hall dinners, staying up far too late to write papers, and running across the quad to make it to class on time.</p>
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<p class="">When I left college to pursue my first adult job, I panicked. Suddenly I was living alone, far away from my best friends, in a city I had visited once. Instead of leaning on God, I tried to figure it all out on my own. And I had no idea what to do.</p>
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<p class="">Not everyone had the same college experience I had - some of you might have been at public schools, some of you might have been really involved in your Newman Center or Campus Ministry, some of you might have entered the Church during your time at college, some of you might have not gone to any church service these past four years.</p>
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<p class="">Whatever the case, prayer life after college is a whole new mountain to climb, and it can be both a great adventure and a huge struggle.</p>
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<p class="">Here are four quick pieces of advice I received post-graduation that helped me as I transitioned from college student to working adult:<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>Remember it is going to be different.</strong></p>
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<p class="">I constantly compared my new life to my old college life. I grieved not living with my best friends. I missed nightly Mass. I missed the feeling that I belonged in a place.</p>
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<p class="">A good friend reminded me that it was okay to be freaked out by change. But change is part of life. As you encounter life’s changes during post-grad life, don’t be discouraged if your prayer life changes too. It should! As we mature and encounter new experiences, our prayer life should mature and change along with us.</p>
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<p class="">I might not be going to daily night Mass in a dorm with my friends anymore, but I have gotten to read some amazing books, I’ve gotten to have conversations that have taught me more about God, I’ve gotten to witness God’s love in the people I work with. It’s different, but it’s just as good and challenging.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>Join a church.</strong></p>
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<p class="">I traveled for my first job and would go to whatever church I could make it to each Sunday. I knew I <em>should </em>join a church, but I didn’t really get why.</p>
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<p class="">About a year ago I finally joined a church. I wish I could say that it totally transformed my life, but honestly it didn’t. What it did do was encourage me to start financially giving to the church, to gradually get to know people’s names around me, to notice areas of need that I could fill.</p>
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<p class="">I started to feel like something bigger than myself. Unlike in college, I was surrounded by people of different ages - elderly people, middle-aged people, kids, babies, young families. I could look around and see the vastness of the Church, and see the small role I could play in it.</p>
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<p class="">So take the plunge. Register to be a member. Try to go to the same Mass every week. Get involved, and see what happens.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>Dig into a community.</strong></p>
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<p class="">Community is so, so important. But it’s also hard to find. Two pieces of advice here:</p>
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<p class="">First, keep up with your old friends that encourage you. Becoming long-distance friends is a tough transition, but technology makes it so much easier. Some ideas on how to do this:</p>
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<ul class=""><li>Read a book together (I recommend <em>I Believe in Love</em> by Jean C.J. d’Elbee, or anything by C.S. Lewis) and have a weekly or monthly call about it.</li><li>Make a group text - on Mondays, you ask how you can pray for each other during the week, then on Fridays share how your week went</li><li>Find an app that connects you - I’ll throw in a plug here for Hallow, where you’ll find guided prayer and meditation sessions, and then talk with your friends about how God is working in your life.</li></ul>
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<p class="">Secondly, find a community where you are. As tempting as it is to cling to old friendships, we need to interact with people in person. Join a young adult group, volunteer at a Catholic Worker, push yourself to talk about God with others. And don’t be turned off by someone who isn’t Catholic - one of my best friends is agnostic, two of them are Protestant - and all three have helped me grow closer to God. So invite that coworker you click with to coffee, no matter what their faith background is - you might be surprised by how you can encourage each other in your faith journeys.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>Set aside time each day to pray.</strong></p>
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<p class="">We hear this a lot, that prayer takes discipline. And it really, really does. Just as we take care of our mind and body, we need to take care of our soul.</p>
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<p class="">One simple way that has helped me set aside time is to consider my mornings as coffee dates with a friend. Spending fifteen minutes reading the Gospel, journaling, or just being with God while I sip my coffee sets my whole day on the right track.</p>
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<p class="">Other ways include stopping by a chapel on your lunch break, going to daily Mass, turning off the radio and praying on your commute, praying as you run or go for a walk, or winding down your day with prayer before bed. Check out spiritual books, download an app, start a prayer journal, and seek out a spiritual advisor.</p>
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<p class="">Try a few things out one at a time, and see what works for you. And remember that it might change! I’ve found that some seasons of life I’ve loved morning prayer, other seasons I’ve leaned on daily Mass, and other seasons diving into Scripture through Lectio Divina has nurtured my spirit the most. </p>
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<p class="">Let God lead you in this, and have fun with it, knowing that you are delighting God simply by your desire to spend time with Him.</p>
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<p class="">To close, know that you are not alone. Transitions are incredibly difficult, but God meets us where we are. He wants your life to be full of His joy and peace. But His plans and timing might not look like what you planned. Trust Him, enter into prayer and relationship with Him, and let Him take the lead. I promise you that you will never regret it.</p>
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[post_title] => 4 Ways to Grow in Prayer After College
[post_excerpt] => Tips for navigating post-grad life
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4 Ways to Grow in Prayer After College
Tips for navigating post-grad life
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[post_date] => 2018-10-12 02:09:22
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<p class="">This is a question we get asked a lot, and it’s a question we ourselves wrestled with for a while.</p>
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<p class="">When we first started looking into this, the first thing we started to learn was that there are many, many different types of prayer: group prayer, chant, spiritual reading, reflecting on your day, and much more. And each is unique in its own way. But the one that seems the closest to the Eastern, Buddhist, and Agnostic meditation practices is a type of prayer called Christian meditation. What we came to realize, though, is that this practice is different a number of ways. I’ll talk about 3 of the most important here.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>1. Why we do it</strong></p>
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<p class="">So, the first difference comes down to why we’re doing it in the first place. To be honest, I was a big fan of many aspects of eastern meditation - I meditated largely through eastern and secular methods for 3 years. Those practices were always framed as a ‘self-improvement’ exercise. You spend the time ‘working out’ your mind to try to build the ability to be more present (aka mindful) and to better yourself. Now there is nothing inherently wrong or right with that, but Christian meditation and prayer is distinctively different.</p>
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<p class=""> The point of Christian prayer and meditation is to grow deeper in a relationship - a relationship with God. Sure, through this relationship you become a better person and more mindful, but that is not the primary goal. The primary goal is simply to sit with and spend time with a friend. It’s not to work out and to get stronger yourself, but simply to sit with God. It takes hard work, but it is less like a work out and more like simply spending the time to be with someone who loves you.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>2. How we do it</strong></p>
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<p class="">The ‘how’ is the second biggest difference. The eastern and secular mindfulness meditation methods I had tried were focused largely inward. Focused on your body, your breath and your mind. Whereas Buddhism (caveat: I am by no means an expert in Buddhism) does explicitly teach a focus on selflessness - the practice of mindfulness meditation has been shown in some studies actually to increase self-centeredness. Recent studies conducted out of the University of Mannheim in Germany showed that those who practice eastern yoga and meditation have higher levels of ‘self-enhancement’ (a measure that includes how participants perceive themselves relative to others and slight narcissism) than those who didn’t.</p>
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<p class="">This is where Christian meditation hopes to differentiate. It often begins with much of the similar focus on the body and breath in order to re-collect and ground yourself at the beginning of the session, but the session will always shift to the ultimate goal: to focus on something…or Someone outside of yourself. To humble yourself with the realization that you’re sitting in the presence of God. And through this new kind of mindfulness, to become closer to, and more like, God.</p>
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<p class="">The other big difference I’ll cite in terms of the ‘how’ is who really is in control. In eastern practices, the more you practice letting your thoughts pass by, the better you get at it. They teach you to not force anything, but in the end, it’s you who is doing the work to improve. In Christian prayer, this isn’t the case. You’re not the one doing the work. Our work is simply to put ourselves in the position to let God take over. Simply to open the door to God. He’ll do the rest. Now I say ‘simply’ here, but there is still nothing simple or easy about this. In our world of business and noise, sitting in silence with God can be incredibly challenging. And that is why we’re here – to help. But at the end of the day, we’re not the ones moving the needle - not the ones doing the real work - and in our experience, that realization has been freeing.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>3. What you get out of it</strong></p>
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<p class="">This is the last big difference I’ll talk about today. The goal of mindfulness meditation is often described as finding calm, escaping stress, relieving anxiety, becoming happier etc. It’s different in Christian meditation. While it is calming, peaceful and joyful in many ways to have God playing a bigger role in your life, the Christian life is by no means free from stress and anxiety, suffering or sadness.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>RELATED:</strong> <a href="https://hallow.com/blog/prayers-for-anxiety/">Prayers for Anxiety</a></p>
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<p class="">Jesus had a pretty tough and difficult life. The night before He was tortured to death Luke writes “[Jesus] was in such agony and he prayed so fervently.” and in his distress, even Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me…”</p>
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<p class="">He did not live an easy and stress-free life. He did not spend his time sitting by an ocean watching the waves pass in pure peace and tranquility. It was a life of difficulty and struggle. So, then what is the point of Christian prayer? If I’m not trying to relieve stress or anxiety, what’s the point? Well you may have noticed I left out a pretty critical part of that line above from Luke’s Gospel:</p>
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<p class="">“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me… still, not my will but yours be done.”</p>
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<p class="">It is this last part that we strive for in our Christian meditation and our broader prayer lives. To somehow be willing to wake up each day, listen for God in our lives, and to say, “not my will but yours be done.”</p>
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<p class="">The beauty of this is that it does end up leading largely to a life that is fuller with His joy and peace. A life in which we surrender our stresses and anxieties to God. After all, this is still the God who, as the psalmist writes, “makes me lie down in green pastures” and “leads me besides still waters.” The key in prayer is the seeking of peace, calm and tranquility is not the end-all be-all. It’s not what we put first. We instead put God first. Put first not just mindfulness, but a mindfulness of His presence in our lives. We pray for the courage and grace to grow closer to Him…to follow Him. Not to ask Him for the things that we want, but instead for what He wants. To drink from the cup that He asks us to drink. To trust that He is leading us just a little bit closer to where we are supposed to be, just a little bit closer to Love, just a little bit closer to Heaven.</p>
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<p class="">Everyone nowadays seems like they want to change the world. And frankly, we’re no different. We desperately think the world needs to change. Needs to become a radically different and more loving place. The only difference is that through prayer we stop trying to change the world, and start trying to let Him change it through us. Start trying to let Him make our world holy through us - to let Him hallow our lives.</p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-more-blogs-from-hallow"><strong>More Blogs From Hallow</strong></h2>
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<ul class="wp-block-list"><!-- wp:list-item -->
<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-the-rosary/">How to Pray the Rosary</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-the-hail-mary/">Hail Mary Prayer</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray/-54-day-novena/">How to Pray 54 Day Novena</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-st-jude-novena/">How to Pray St. Jude Novena</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-night-prayer/">Night Prayer</a></li>
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<p class=""></p>
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[post_title] => What's the Difference Between 'Mindfulness Meditation' and Christian Meditation
[post_excerpt] => Alex breaks down three major differences
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https://hallow.com/2019/09/23/how-to-pray-the-rosary/
https://hallow.com/2021/07/16/prayers-for-anxiety/
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What’s the Difference Between ‘Mindfulness Meditation’ and Christian Meditation
Alex breaks down three major differences
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[post_date] => 2018-10-10 03:15:59
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<p class=""><strong><a href="https://hallow.com/blog/my-journey-from-atheist-to-maybe-a-christian-pt-1/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">My story</a> </strong>is not unique in today’s world. I was raised Catholic through high school. I was baptized, confirmed, and went to Mass pretty much every Sunday, but I never really believed in it all. I was largely just going through the motions. <br></p>
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<p class="">As you might expect, I quickly fell away from my faith. Up through the end of college I would have called myself agnostic, though in retrospect I was atheist. I thought: with everything we know in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, who could believe anymore in a God that sat up in the clouds and cared about whether we were nice or not? Weren’t all of these religions just different myths created to explain what science had yet to discover? Weren’t they all just legends to help us cope with death? I was not the kind of person to fall prey to the kind of naive thinking. I was the kind of person who believed what was supported by fact and evidence, by logic and reason. <br></p>
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<p class="">It was a relatively dark and empty time in my life. There was nothing terribly depressing or evil, I just carried a vague feeling of emptiness and anxiety. I found myself being mean to people I loved, caught in feelings of jealousy, anxiety, lust, and insecurity. I struggled to have any real motivation or purpose. <br></p>
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<p class="">Then things began to change. I started to meet friends who had rational arguments for their faith, friends who didn’t just believe in someone up in the sky, but who had a philosophy and theology based on logic and reason and experience that guided their lives. I started to read, not books of advanced theology, but simple books trying to articulate the Christian faith at its core. Aspects from these discussions and books resonated within me: arguments about free will, about faith, about love. I started to think that maybe this whole Christianity thing wasn’t all just a fairy-tale after all. <br></p>
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<p class="">But something still didn’t click with me. Apparently, you’re supposed to be able to talk to this God. You’re supposed to be able to be friends with Him. And that’s something I had never experienced and, honestly, wasn’t sure I could. I tried praying, but for me, my only exposure to prayer were the ones I memorized as a child. I had never explored any new ways to pray, and though I knew that these memorized prayers were supposed to be deep and powerful, I just could not get past the feeling that I was talking to a wall.<br></p>
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<p class="">It was then that I entered the professional world - a world full of emails, reviews, deadlines, stress and busyness. A world with very little silence or time to pause. <br></p>
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<p class="">I kept trying to grow in my faith, but I felt like I was stagnating, so I decided to try mindfulness meditation. The only type of meditation I was aware of was from eastern traditions, and so I tried some of the popular guided apps.<br></p>
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<p class="">I loved them. They were a great way to learn mindfulness meditation without needing to travel across the world. For the first time I found what felt like a sense of peace and calm. The only issue was that it felt like I was trying to force-fit my Christian faith into an agnostic or Buddhist box. I had no idea whether this was in line with what the Church taught, or if I was somehow going against my faith by practicing these methods of meditation. Plus, I could not get over the feeling that I was focusing too much on myself during these sessions. I kept feeling the pull of my mind to focus outward, to focus on my faith and on others.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>And that’s when I really started to think that there’s got to be something more</strong>. There’s got to be a way to build a deep and living relationship with God within the Christian context. After all, there are monks who spend their entire lives in seclusion, religious brothers and sisters who describe their life and work as “prayer without ceasing.” There are people my age who are choosing to dedicate themselves entirely to God alone.<br></p>
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<p class="">St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest writers in Christian history, received a revelation from God so powerful that he left his culminating five-volume work unfinished simply saying: “All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”<br></p>
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<p class="">And I began to think, what if this kind of relationship is possible for me? What if there really is a God out there that cared about what I did with my life? Someone who is constantly trying to communicate with me? What if I could wake up each morning and instead of trying to figure out what I wanted to do, ask God what He wanted me to do? What if I could somehow start to hear Him, to recognize what He’s saying?<br></p>
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<p class="">What if I could spend the entire day in conversation with God? Constantly growing with Him, exploring and understanding my faith, and actually be excited to go to church?<br></p>
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<p class="">Constantly with Him. Sharing in His joy and peace. Bringing all of my shortcomings and worries, stresses and relationships to Him. Letting Him carry them for me. Letting Him into my day-to-day mundane routines, into my hopes and dreams. Letting Him guide my purpose in life. <br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>What if I could somehow find this peace, joy and relationship with God, without having to go off to live in the mountains somewhere?</strong><br></p>
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<p class="">That’s the question that started the work we’ve been doing at Hallow.<br></p>
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<p class="">Our goal is to discover how to find this relationship through our faith, how to share in the peace and joy God brings into the real world, every day. <br></p>
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<p class="">We spent the first few months digging in and researching all the different ways to pray and meditate offered in the Christian tradition. We talked to countless priests, religious brothers and sisters, faith leaders from different denominations and lay people inspired by their faith to try and learn the methods to finding and growing in peace with God. And we started testing and trying the different things we were learning in our own prayer lives. <br></p>
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<p class="">And what we found was more than we ever could have expected. We found a world deep with history, experience, and teaching going back thousands of years.<br></p>
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<p class="">A world where seminarians and religious brothers and sisters spend an entire year learning different methods of prayer that I, a supposed Catholic my entire life, had never even heard of.<br></p>
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<p class="">A world that offered an entire new collection of interesting and deeply spiritual ways to pray.<br></p>
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<p class="">We couldn’t wait to continue to learn and share them.<br></p>
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<p class="">This is the idea behind Hallow: provide a simple, easy-to-use mobile app that helps us foster a relationship with God and the peace of prayer through guided prayer and meditation.<br></p>
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<p class="">Hallow is a simple way to create a daily, personal retreat each morning for you in your home. The idea isn’t to invent new ways to pray, but rather to bring to the world the enormously rich pool of contemplative prayer methods that already exist within the Christian faith today.<br></p>
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<p class="">This is what we’re building. And so far we’ve been blessed beyond our wildest dreams. By the grace of God, after the first year we became the #1 Catholic App on the App Stores, and have just crossed 10 million prayers completed through the app.<br></p>
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<p class="">But more importantly, we're discovering that it is possible to build this kind of relationship with God in our day-to-day, and that this simple app is able to act as a means for the Holy Spirit to work through.<br></p>
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<p class="">Here are some of the things people have been saying about it:<br></p>
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<p class=""><em>"I’ve felt closer to God than I ever have before"</em></p>
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<p class=""><em>"By far the best app on my phone."</em></p>
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<p class=""><em>"Hallow has been a miracle in my life and has made returning to the faith so much easier"</em></p>
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<p class="">"<em>I hate quoting a old, over used cliche, but I've been very lost. And I think for the first time in a while I maybe found."</em></p>
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<p class=""><em><em>"I wouldn’t have decided to follow the Catholic Faith if it wasn’t for your app and the countless hours using it.</em></em>"</p>
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<p class=""><em><em>"<em>A huge gift for Christians of all stripes craving a more meaningful prayer practice.</em></em></em>"</p>
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<p class="">"<em><em><em>This app has been an answer for my weary soul. Tears pour as I try to impress on you how deeply i am impacted by the guidance into simply being with God. This is where my soul is finding peace for the very first time.</em></em></em>"</p>
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<p class=""><em><em><em><em>"I don’t rate apps...but this app by far is not only the best prayer app, but it also is the fruit of a wholly dedicated team of people who want to help people pray. This is a work of passion and it shows. By far the best Christian app, and by my estimation, best app on the App Store.</em></em></em></em>"</p>
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<p class=""><strong>You might say, “Well that all sounds great, but how can I start? What can I do now?” </strong><br></p>
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<p class="">Well, the first thing I'd say is just to download the app! It will walk you through step by step how to get started and personalize your experience for you. You can find it on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Just type in Hallow, like Hallowed be Thy Name :) But if you're interested in reading more about a couple of the initial techniques that we put on the app, read on!<br></p>
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<p class="">One huge lesson we have learned in our research is that there are many different types of prayer. There are the traditional spoken prayers. There’s singing, chant, and Taizé meditation. There are group prayers and the Liturgy of the Hours. We've since added all of these types of prayer to the app! But the types of meditations that make up most of the content on the app can be categorized into Christian Meditation, the Examen, and Lectio Divina.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>1. Christian Meditation – Finding peace in silence</strong><br></p>
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<p class="">This type of prayer is simple. With all the busyness, distraction and noise in our lives today it feels like there is no way just to sit and be still. Christian meditation is one way we can.<br></p>
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<p class="">Essentially, we find a quiet place to sit and try to focus our mind on something holy. This might be a phrase such as “Come, Holy Spirit,” the Rosary, or an image of God leading you beside a stream.<br></p>
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<p class="">It’s a practice that’s very similar to the mindfulness meditation, but the difference is that we use this simple focus on the breath only to collect ourselves and then turn our minds to God. The best part of Christian meditation is that we are not the ones doing the work. The goal is to put ourselves in a position to let God takeover, to set our minds on Him and let Him lead us.<strong> </strong><br></p>
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<p class="">So, but how do you actually do it? First, try to find a time and place to pray. It can be anywhere: a floor, a chair, a couch, a bench. It just needs to be a place of calm and quiet where you can consistently return. You can have your legs straight or crossed, your hands clasped together or palms up. Essentially to begin you just want to be in a position that is comfortable (you shouldn’t be in pain), but alert (you don’t want to fall asleep). <br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Start with some deep breaths: in through the nose and out through the mouth. Gently close your eyes.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Turn your mind to the intent of this session: we’re doing this to grow closer with God. </em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>In our first introduction session we encourage you to imagine yourself sitting on a bench next to God. Don’t try to force any thoughts, just simply rest with Him for a few minutes.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Then gently open your eyes. Try not to move or check your phone right away. Just sit and take note of how you feel.</em><br></p>
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<p class="">Most likely the first time you try this, you’ll realize what many do when starting this journey – our minds often race from one thing to the next. Silence is often uncomfortable.<br></p>
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<p class="">The great news, though, is that God is here to help. He’s already reaching out, always knocking at the door of our hearts…we just have to let Him in. By committing to spend even a few minutes in prayer each day, you’ll have already taken that most important step towards opening your mind and heart to conversation with God. The most important part for us is just to show up and try.<br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>2. The Jesuit Examen – Reflecting on your day</strong><br></p>
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<p class="">Okay, so now you’ve begun to practice sitting in silence with God. What we’ve found as a good next step is learning to see God and listen to God throughout your day. One of the best ways we’ve found to build this practice is through the Examen. <br></p>
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<p class="">The Examen is a technique developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, a man born in Spain who served as a soldier before becoming a priest, theologian, founder of the Jesuit order, and renowned spiritual director. Even though he lived in the 15th and 16th centuries, his <a href="https://hallow.com/blog/ignatian-spirituality-and-the-spiritual-exercises/">spiritual exercises</a> are still widely practiced today. <br></p>
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<p class="">The Examen is typically practiced at night as a way to review your whole day.<br></p>
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<p class=""><em>You begin in the same way you did before with Christian meditation. Find a comfortable and alert position, take some deep breaths, and acknowledge the intent of the prayer: that we’re doing this to grow closer with God.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Simply start then to walk through your day as if you’re replaying a movie in your mind: all the scenes and details, sights, sounds, tastes, smells, interactions with other people, and any challenges or joys. Notice occasions that really stand out – for good or for bad – and embrace the ordinary, mundane moments as well.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>As you go through the day in your mind simply ask yourself, “Where was God in these moments?” Ask the Holy Spirit for help - help to show you where God was present and to guide us to the moments He wants to bring our attention to.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>After you’ve reviewed the day, reflect on it as a whole. Call to mind the moments for which you were most grateful, savor them, and thank God. </em></p>
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<p class=""><em>Turn your mind to the moments you weren’t at your best, times when you felt stress or anxiety, when you might’ve done wrong against someone or failed to do good for another person. Talk to God about these times and humbly ask for His forgiveness. </em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Then, start to think about tomorrow. What are you excited for? What are you nervous about? Visualize yourself walking through the day with God and ask for His help.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Gently open your eyes. Thank God for the time together.</em><br></p>
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<p class="">We’ve found that this is an easy and effective way at the end of the day to help you build the practice of mindfulness and better recognizing God’s presence throughout the day.</p>
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<p class=""><strong>3. Lectio Divina – A conversation with God</strong><br></p>
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<p class="">Last, but certainly not least, is Lectio Divina - the first method of prayer we cover that directly incorporates the Bible. Lectio Divina means “divine reading” in Latin and is a way of reading the Bible in which we gradually let go of our own agendas and open ourselves to what God is trying to say to us.<br></p>
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<p class="">This prayer method works well at any point in the day; and, like the other methods, is best done in a consistent and quiet place. As always, we start with some deep breaths.<br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Then you turn to a passage from the Gospels and begin to read it very slowly. It doesn’t matter which passage you pick, but it might help to start with passages you’re already familiar with. If you’re unsure, feel free to google the daily reading for Mass that day. Within the app, these passages are assembled into different themes and read to you.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Typically, you only want to focus on a short passage, usually only a handful of verses</em><em>. </em><em>Read these verses as slowly and meditatively</em><em> </em><em>as you can and notice if a word, phrase or image stands out to you.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>It may take reading the passage over again 2 to 3 times before a word or phrase calls out to you, but once you’ve found it, sit with it. Hold it in your mind.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>Then after a few minutes, begin to talk with God. Listen to what He’s trying to say to you through these words and then respond. Finally, as in the previous methods, spend some time at the end simply resting with God in His presence.</em><br></p>
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<p class=""><em>At the end of these prayers, we close with the prayer that Jesus taught us, the Our Father, and the sign of the cross. As you did before with the Gospels, try to pick a word from the Our Father to carry with you throughout the day.</em><br></p>
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<p class="">In fact, the word that first stuck out to me during my first attempt at Lectio Divina was the name of the app – the word hallow from the Our Father. <br></p>
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<p class=""><strong>How do I actually get started?</strong><br></p>
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<p class="">This is a lot to digest - and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Plus, it all sounds great on paper, but as we all know, it’s so much harder to actually take the time every day to commit to spending time in prayer.<br></p>
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<p class="">This is the reason why we’re so excited about Hallow. We think it gives an easy and accessible way to learn and practice the three methods outlined here, plus so many more – such as meditations on the Daily Gospel, Rosary or Divine Mercy Chaplet, themed content on joy, humility, love, letting go, or calm, targeted challenges to rediscover traditional prayers like the Our Father, the Stations of the Cross, the Psalms, and the Saints, and Sleep Bible Stories and prayers to help us rest at night with God.<br></p>
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<p class="">We believe Hallow can help you as it’s helped all of us on the team to build a habit of prayer through daily prayer reminders and a journal to help you keep track of your journey. There is a free version of the app available and an optional upgrade to Hallow Plus that starts with a 2-week free trial and then is either $8.99 per month or $59.99 per year (20% less than the leading meditation apps). For every one subscription purchased, one will be given away for free to those who can’t afford it, but are looking to grow in their faith lives (e.g., candidates in adult Christian formation programs, those who can’t afford it).<br></p>
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<p class="">I have personally started praying with all three throughout my week – rotating between Lectio and Meditation each morning with the Examen or Night Prayer at night. The routine has dramatically changed and deepened my relationship with God. I have felt happier, more at peace, more joyful, more thankful and I have started to discover a real friendship with God. I get to wake up each day and enter into a conversation with God. We joke, we laugh; He pushes me, He helps me. When I get a tough email, need to have a difficult conversation, or disappoint myself, I have someone to lean on. And when things go well, and I’m reminded of my blessings, I get to share in the gratitude with God. I am still very much a sinner and am only just beginning my relationship with God, but my hope is that we can all embark on this wonderful adventure with Him together.<br></p>
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<p class="">All of us here at Hallow just want to say thank you. We appreciate you taking the time to read our story. Feel free to share this blog or the app with your friends and family or reach out to us if you have any questions at all. Know that we’re praying for you and your journey in faith and are blessed to get to be a part of it with you.<br></p>
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<p class="">Peace be with you,<br></p>
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<p class="">Alex (Co-founder and CEO of Hallow) and the Hallow team</p>
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[post_title] => The Hallow Story
[post_excerpt] => Curious about how Hallow came about? Click here for our story!
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The Hallow Story
Curious about how Hallow came about? Click here for our story!