on prayer | 21

 from Ordet, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955

just this side of anger, and on the other side of sadness

Somewhere near San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome on one of the most recent happiest days of my life – I was traveling alone, so this is the only picture I have of myself from that day of wandering.

I am particularly grateful today for mentors and friends who speak so clearly into my life, just when I need it. If you saw me weeping yesterday, it was probably because I just received this:

Prayer for Jessina

Father, I pray for Your child, as if she were my child: but I dare to ask - that if I am actually addressing her - through You - that You are the One doing the talking. Or at least getting a Word in.

And so I ask this:
That You not set her faithfulness against her hopes.
That - in Your very gentle way - You are unsparing in Your claim - on her - 

on all the things You’ve given her; to attend to.
That’s a hard prayer. And You are not a hard master.
She knows - better than I - what those things are.
So may she find, in her circumstances, en famille, in the Circle of her loves - and Yours: 

may she find support: not that support that shuts down, that “pacifies," that places her at the bottom of a deep, dark pool: but the support that stirs up, like the salt spray, the tang and the splash of her deepest yearnings.

Those desires are there for a purpose: not just to anchor her: but to set her free.

It is has been a strange new season of life these past few months – I hate using the word 'season,' and always have, as it seems to indicate some sense of 'this is what was meant to be,' or waiting circumstances out rather than taking active steps or problem-solving – but I can't think of a more fitting word right now. I feel like I am coming into myself, that for so long I talked up a big game – told myself that I was strong and intelligent and beautiful, etc. – without actually believing it. 

I think we all do that in our own way, hoping that if we say it enough maybe we'll inch towards believing it. It seems like in any career you have to be able talk bigger about yourself in order to get anywhere. It is that sense of talking 'bigger,' but more than that, not only taking up space but feeling like it is your space, that you belong there – that is what I am trying to get at. 

That I belong here – I know it more now than I ever have before.

There is a new expression on your face: more determined, but not (yet?) hard. I pray you can stay there, just this side of anger, and on the other side of sadness: and right in the middle of strength: real strength.

on prayer | 20

"Such a deepening of vision will eventually also involve at some point a profound sense of the mind's darkening, and of a disconcerting reorientation of the senses - these being inescapable fallouts from the commitment to prayer that sustains such a view of the theological enterprise. The willingness to endure a form of naked dispossession before God; the willingness to surrender control (not to any human power, but solely to God's power); the willingness to accept the arid vacancy of simple waiting on God in prayer; the willingness at the same time to accept disconcerting bombardments from the realm of the 'unconscious;' all these are ascetical tests of contemplation without which no epistemic or spiritual deepening can start to occur. What distinguishes this position, then, from an array of other 'post-foundationalist' options that currently present themselves in theology is the commitment to the discipline of particular graced bodily practices which, over the long haul, afford certain distinctive ways of knowing."

(Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self)

on prayer | 19

One of the greatest gifts of this past year has been the continued prayers and encouragement I have received from Father Martin. This is one of the prayers he sent my way: words that have taught me, and continue to teach me, how to pray.

Father of all; I pray for my sister that she may not feel alone.

Yes: she must feel alone, and learn to love that aloneness before she can love at all: but I pray that she knows she is loved in that aloneness, that all-one-ness, in which You are the Lover: and the Beloved. And may her ache for that oneness never go away: until You bid it leave.

May she keep her sweetness through all this: her sense that there is a rightness to things; and a roundedness, and a resounding sense of the rightness of her place in Being.

And may she not lose her edge; that slight bit of tartness that sharpens our savour for more, that purifies with its astringency the puff and the pretense of so many of the rest of us.

May her purity and her passion continue to be a beacon to those of us who need it always but always manage to let it go astray.

And may - for our sake, and Yours - and hers - she find, day after day, the strength to live with it: to live with herself : in You.

With thanks for my sister: in Christ

Amen.

(Father Martin Johnson)

on prayer | 18

"As for myself, I have found faith not to be a comfort but a provocation to a life I never seem to live up to, an eruption of joy that evaporates the instant I recognize it as such, an agony of absence that assaults me like a psychic wound. As for my children, I would like them to be free of whatever particular kink there is in me that turns every spiritual impulse into anguish. Failing that, I would like them to be free to make of their anguish a means of peace, for themselves or others (or both), with art or action (or both). Failing that—and I suppose, ultimately, here in the ceaseless machinery of implacable matter, there is only failure—I would like them to be able to pray, keeping in mind the fact that, as St. Anthony of the Desert said, a true prayer is one that you do not understand."

(Christian Wiman, "I Will Love You in the Summertime")
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on prayer | 17

"Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all whom you have made.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your immeasurable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,
that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to your service,
and by walking before you
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen."

(The General Thanksgiving, Daily Morning Prayer: Rite Two, BCP)

on prayer | 16

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"She said, 'The best things that happen I'd never had thought to pray for. In a million years. The worst things just come like the weather. You do what you can.'

He said, 'Family is a prayer. Wife is a prayer. Marriage is a prayer.'

'Baptism is a prayer.'

'No,' he said, 'Baptism is what I'd call a fact.'

'Because you can't just wash it off.'

He laughed. 'Nope. Not with all the water in the West Nishnabotna.'"

(Marilynne Robinson, Lila)
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on prayer | 15

"The fourth and last of our 'Christian essentials' is prayer, and in particular the need for us all to grow in prayer. Growing in prayer is not simply acquiring a set of special spiritual skills that operate in one bit of your life. It is about growing into what St. Paul calls 'the measure of the full stature of Christ' (Ephesians 4:13). It is growing into the kind of humanity that Christ shows us. Growing in prayer, in other words, is growing in Christian humanity."

(Rowan Williams, Being Christian)
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bright monday

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This is a good and beautiful prayer to carry into the fifty days of Easter:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal Light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

[Steffen Thomas, Spring Supper]
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on prayer | 14

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"Our times are in your hands:
But we count our times for us;
   we count our days and fill them with us;
   we count our weeks and fill them with our busyness;
   we count our years and fill them with our fears.
And then caught up short with your claim:
    Our times are in your hands.
Take our times, times of love and times of weariness.
Take them all, bless them and break them,
   give them to us again,
   slow paced and eager,
   fixed in your readiness for neighbor.
Occupy our calendars,
Flood us with daily kairoi,
    in the name of your fleshed kairos. Amen."

Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann
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on prayer | 13

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Sarah Coakley on triadic prayer and Romans 8:14-17 and 26-27:

"What is being described in Paul is one experience of an activity of prayer that is nonetheless ineluctably, though obscurely, triadic. It is one experience of God, but God as simultaneously (i) doing the praying in me, (ii) receiving that prayer, and (iii) in that exchange, consented to in me, inviting me into the Christian life of redeemed sonship. Or, to put it another way: the 'Father' (so-called here) is both source and ultimate object of divine longing in us; the "Spirit' is that irreducibly - thought obscurely - distinct enabler and incorporator of that longing in creation, into whose life I, as pray-er, am caught up . . . As John of the Cross puts it in a lovely passage in The Spiritual Canticle (39.3.4), not coincidentally quoting Romans 8: 'the Holy Spirit raises the soul most sublimely with that His divine breath of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father.'

The Spirit, on this view, note, is no redundant third, no hypostatized afterthought, no cooing 'feminine' adjunct to an established male household. Rather, experientially speaking, the Spirit is primary, just as Pentecost is primary for the church; and leaving noncluttered space for the Spirit is the absolute precondition for the unimpeded flowing of this divine exchange in us, the 'breathing of the divine breath,' as John of the Cross puts it."
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on prayer | 12

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"The purpose of theology is to safeguard against misunderstandings that frustrate a Christian life of prayer."

(Maximus the Confessor)

yes&yes&yes.
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on prayer | 11

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"The habit of prayer, as I see it, would mean a continual anxiety with regard to prayer, a fight, a struggle. It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man. Your face - you don't mind if I tell you? - looks worn by prayer . . . "

(Georges Bernanos, A Diary of a Country Priest)
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on prayer | 10

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On Prayer

"You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same."

(Czeslaw Milosz)
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on prayer | 9

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Psalm: First Forgive the Silence

First forgive the silence
   That answers prayer,
Then forgive the prayer
   That stains the silence.

Excuse the absence
   That feels like presence,
Then excuse the feeling
   That insists on presence.

Pardon the delay
   Of revelation,
Then ask pardon for revealing
   Your impatience.

Forgive God
    For being only a word,
Then ask God to forgive
   The betrayal of language.

(Mark Jarman, Five Psalms)
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on prayer | 8

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"Many traditions that are enfolded within Christianity plot a sort of progression to prayer, but I’m fairly resistant to the idea of progress as prayer because I have a strong sense that every time I try to pray I know I’m incompetent. At the same time, however, anyone who is seriously committed to prayer on a daily basis will know that things do start to happen: one is being transformed, one’s whole life is being drawn like a magnetized set of iron filings in a unified direction so the bits of one’s self that one thought were completely unconnected suddenly become vibrantly connected. The greatest writers on prayer in the Christian tradition tell us that once you seriously embark on this journey, it’s like giving your life away: 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' (Heb. 10:31 NRSV). And we could say that there are stages of progression in this journey, but it’s never for us to say where we are."

(Sarah Coakley)
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on prayer | 7

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"And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

(Luke 18:1-8)

. . . they ought always to pray and not lose heart.
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on prayer | 6

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"What my mother had just taught me, of course, was the first two basic principles of prayer: It requires a disciplined routine and it is an art best practiced by a composed mind and spirit: for that, I came to understand, was what the magazine and manicure kit and Bible were all about . . . she was an accomplished traveler in those lands [of prayer]. [However,] her greatest gift to me was not some principle or other characterizing prayer, but the implicit suggestion that those lands were there to be entered into . . .  "

(Phyllis Tickle, The Shaping of a Life: A Spiritual Landscape)

Those lands are there to be entered into . . . always and everywhere. This I need to remember.
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on prayer | 5

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"Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, the prayers of childish 'Gimmes,' of 'Help mes,' of 'I want . . . ' Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it. Unless I ask God for something, I do not know whether or not it is something for which I ought to ask, and I cannot add, 'But if this is not your will for me, than your will is what I want, not mine.' The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God has something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way."

[Madeline L'Engle, Walking on Water]
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on prayer | 4

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[A little collection of quotes & things on prayer.]

"The very question 'Does prayer work?' puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset. 'Work,' as if it were magic, or a time machine--something that functions automatically. Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows himself to us. That he answers prayers is a corollary--not necessarily the most important one--from that revelation. What he does is learned from what he is."

(C.S. Lewis, The Efficacy of Prayer)
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