from THE BOUNDARY
I wonder if you remember me telling you about Angel, the kind lady who rescued me from the Demon Sciatica in Swan Street. Well, after she’d sat me down, somehow we started to talk about prayer. She said something to the effect that I should pray for divine’s assistance. I answered that I didn’t really like asking God for things for myself, that I didn’t want to conceive God as a sort of superior walking stick. But then, backtracking, I told Angel how years ago, from the depths of despair, I’d looked up at the night sky and cried out “God help me”. I told her that just a few days later something did happen. Yes, in the words of Carlo Carretto, God is the God of the impossible.
I didn’t tell Angel the sequel; how, a few nights later I’d been praying in bed, giving thanks for my deliverance. I was holding a very special cross I’d bought from Buckfast Abbey in Devon. Suddenly, the cross began to shed what seemed like tears, tears of joy. Candidly, it scared me a bit. I got out of bed and put on the light, and saw the moisture I could feel on the cross. I told my parish priest friend about it all. He told me that I must ever treasure the moment, as God’s own tears of joy with my tears of gratitude. He also said it would probably never happen again. And it hasn’t, though the cross remains under my pillow and I hold it for a moment to my lips every night.
What was the lesson of that for me? Well, I suppose that we mustn’t be afraid to ask for things where the depth of our relationship with God, as his beloveds and He as the author of our lives, is real enough for us to know that only He can intervene, save and sanctify in some way albeit through human agencies. It’s a case, I think, of taking the beautiful words of Psalm 63 to our hearts: “Oh God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee in a dry and thirsty land ... thy loving kindness is better than life…” That in itself is a prayer for oneness, for God is “my God”, the one with whom I am so closely embraced that His ‘breath’ almost becomes my own.
I’m talking, of course, about personal or private prayer, not the institutional sort predicated on the spoken or understood command ‘Bow your head in prayer’ which, for me, is apt to trivialise this most personal and private moment with the One who is “my God”. Doubtless the ‘head down’ look encapsulates an idea about God which caricatures both Him and us which may even trivialise us both – but I’ll return to that. It may be that once we “seek” Him in corporate prayer rooted, ultimately, in the idea “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church” or any doctrinal definitions, we inevitably lose something of the intimacy of our soul longings, the soul that “seeks” and “thirsts”, and our God consciousness. Maybe it’s impossible to speak to God “face to face as a man speaks to his friend” in corporate prayer.
St. Paul says we must “pray without ceasing” and that “in everything give thanks”. This means more, surely, than just praying the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ and for things we want. I suspect that we pray without ceasing when we don’t even realise we’re praying, when our minds inexorably fasten on Jesus, on his love, what he means to us, how he would act in whatever situation we find ourselves in so that our thoughts of him, though in no coherent way, occur and re-occur spontaneously and incessantly. More: it’s when our very lives become a prayer, when instinctively we say in every act “Thank you Lord”, or “Help me to understand”, or “Give me strength Lord”, or “Help me to do what you would want Lord”, or “I love you Lord”, or even “Look at the moon, it’s so wonderful” as if we’re talking to Jesus and not really to ourselves alone.
My own prayer life has changed over the years and I invite you to consider yours. In my case, for years I combined formal and informal prayers last thing: the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria, the Hail Mary, and last the third Collect from Evening Prayer – “Lighten our darkness we beseech thee O Lord…” – these with petitions and blessings for family, the afflicted, myself and so on. As an Ordinand, super serious, I’d say both Morning and Evening prayer as well, but that didn’t last, thank goodness. Now, I do use prayer books sometimes for morning , evening and night prayers but of a special sort. They’re prayers of praise, love, and oneness with all creation – and you won’t hear a syllable about being sorry!
I’ve come to believe that what and how we pray is ultimately a reflection of who we are and what we believe. In that sense, there are no hard and fast rules for prayer, save the blessing of sincerity and love. Without those, our prayers are dry bones, the stuff of waste lands and museums. God forbid!
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Markers from the boundary: “Don’t interrogate heaven… Concentrate on loving.” (Carlo Carretto).