by Rowland Croucher

The following comprises one - of four - chapters in my book 'Recent Trends Among Evangelicals'. The other chapters: 'Recent Trends Among Evangelicals', 'Towards an Evangelical Theology of Social Justice', and 'Evangelicalism Towards the 21st Century'.

A small group of students was talking in an English University's senior common room. One wanted to be a skilled surgeon, another a famous diplomat, another a representative sportsman, and still another prime minister of Britain. One chap was quietly listening to his friends' dreams, and when asked his ambition he said, "Well, this may sound strange after all that, but the only thing I want to be is a saint."

Graham Greene says of one of his characters in The Power and the Glory: "He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted - to be a saint".

What Is A Saint?

In the New Testament all Christians are "saints". One of them - at Philippi - was a goaler. Some at Corinth had been thieves, adulterers and drunkards. Others - at Colossae, for example - had been dominated by lustful and greedy passions. But, says Paul, "you have been purified from sin - you have been dedicated to God". (1)

Jesus taught, however, that some are "greater" in the kingdom than others. (2) The rich young ruler was invited to "enter life", and later in the conversation, "to be perfect". (3) Paul, in his writings, seems to distinguish between those who have "received the Spirit" and those who are "filled with the Spirit".

Very early in the church's history Christian "heroes" and "heroines" - martyrs and confessors - were widely admired, and came to be called "saints". Their tombs were often turned into altars. Over the centuries a complicated process of canonization developed.

W.E. Sangster, perhaps the greatest evangelicl Protestant student of "Christian sanctity" in modern times, wrote: "One of the saddest consequences of church disunion is the ignorance in one communion of the saints in another. Not only does it lead good men to say "There are no saints but ours" but it robs all of the inspiration of all....Truth is many-faceted: God has his servants in all branches of his church: as we draw nearer the cross we draw nearer to one another. The things which divide the saints are small in comparison which the things which unite them." (4)

What do these special saints have in common? They seem to remind you of Jesus. They see Jesus in every human being (asserting, quite simply, that if all are created in the image of God, and as Jesus Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God, then there's something of Jesus in everyone). They also act as "Christs to others" (as Luther put it). They produce the fruits of the Spirit of Jesus in their personalities: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. As they live nearer the light of God, the darker the shadows of sinfulness become. So they are not sinless - far from it, they would tell you - though they may be blameless. They pray as much for their enemies as their friends ("he who loves not his neighbour hates God" said John of the Cross). They delight in doing humbler tasks for others, unseen often, but known to God. They have a cavalier disregard for status, wealth or power. They keep the "great commandment" loving God and others - better than the rest of us. God is their 'absolute absolute': they believe that those who have God and everything else have no more than those who have God only; and those who have everything else and not God have nothing.

For these saints, all of life is 'sacramental'. God is everywhere, in everything. Knowing God, loving God, obeying God, is all that matters. They have thus acquired a deep inner serenity and strength. Their lives are truly "centred".

A saint, said Sangster, answers the question the world most wants to know: we can be changed!

The Desert In The City

But here's the rub: can one be this sort of person when times are troubled or life is frantically busy? Perhaps church history has failed us here. Before the Reformation saints seemed to be largely world-forsaking, living mostly in monasteries or deserts. But since then, as John Baillie has written, "The main development of Reformation thought estimates very lightly the acquisition of holiness during this present life." (5) We are not so much saved, it is said, from sinning as saved in sinning.

Both tendencies are unfortunate. In our own day very few books are written tohelp "nine-to-five saints". There's Michel Quoist's books of prayers, Carlo Carretto's The Desert in the City, Sheila Cassidy's Prayer for Pilgrims, and some others by Henri Nouwen, but not many more.

Some Meanings

Perhaps at this point we should define some terms.

"SPIRITUALITY" - the term originated in the 17th century - is all about the life of God's Spirit within us. The Eastern Orthodox prefer to call it "mystical theology" which they define as "loving knowledge" or "wisdom or knowledge that is found through love" (William Johnston). The aim of Christian Spirituality is to bring head and heart together.

"SPIRITUAL FORMATION" is the process whereby the Spirit of God applies the Word of God to the mind and heart of the child of God, so that his or her whole life is continually being formed into the likeness of Christ.

Traditionally, there have been three branches of knowledge about God (or "theology"): dogmatic or systematic theology (concerned with truth about God), moral theology (godly, obedient behaviour), and spiritual theology (devotion to God). In seminaries in North America and elsewhere there has been a remarkable - and gratifying - resurgence of interest in spiritual disciplines.

We know that the subject "How to Pray" was in John the Baptist's curriculum for his disciples: but most of our clergy have not been taught it - the "theology of prayer" or exegesis of biblical texts on prayer, but not how to pray. Fortunately, that's beginning to change.

Isn't "CREATIVE" SPIRITUALITY taking it a little too far? No. There is not just one way to pray - there's a hundred. Christian Spirituality, further, describes our relationship with a creative God, as we learn to share the joy of his aliveness. So we are not just concerned with the "interior life", the "journey inwards". Our love should extend to the whole of creation, and permeate all our moments and our days. Evelyn Underhill talks about our forming "part of the creative apparatus of God" as he loves the world through us. (6) For Gutierrez, Spirituality means "following Christ", implying, he says, (a) an obedient acceptance of the call to follow him and (b) a creativity which this new way will demand. (7)

Footnotes & further reading:

1. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Colossians 3:5-7.

2. Matthew 5:19.

3. Matthew 19:17,21.

4. W.E. Sangster, The Pure in Heart, Epworth, 1955,90-91.

5. John Baillie, Invitation to Pilgrimage, 71, quoted in Sangster, ibid., 84.

6. Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life, Harper & Row, 1976, 85-85.

7. Gerard Hanlon, "A Spirituality for Our Times?" in Clergy Review, June 1984, 200.

(2) Prayer - Ancient And Modern

I remember the first book on prayer I ever read - "The Kneeling Christian". The evocative way it began is still fresh after thirty years. "God wondered," said the ancient prophet. Imagine that! Why would God wonder about anything? "God wondered that there was no intercessor...."

The book was an urgent summons to what used to be called "prevailing prayer". "Little prayer, little power: more prayer, more power" much prayer, much power" it thundered.

But I have to confess that The Kneeling Christian failed to motivate me to pray more effectively. Further it increased my guilt about my general prayerlessness.

The next book was Derek Prime's "A Christian's Guide to Prayer". It was more realistic, confessing that for most of us prayer is hard work. Encouraging - but it also didn't help me to pray better.

Two events changed all that. The first was a turning-point in my life when I cried out to God de profundis, out of the depths. That's another story.

The other - reading some of the ancient and modern mystics and masters of prayer.

Here, in summary, is what seems to be essence of their wisdom.

Pray as you can, not as you can't.

There is no "instant" holiness. Prayer is hard work. It is the work of a lifetime - the longest journey is the journey inward - but we begin afresh every morning.

You are unique, so your relationship with God will be unique, and therefore your prayer will be unique.

Ask yourself: "What is my desire?" (Mark 11:24). What do you want? Do you want God to take possession of you? Prayer is, essentially, the soul's sincere desire....

Prayer is an acknowledgement of our willingness to be changed, our readiness to be surprised. Our desires govern the effectiveness of our prayer, and (fortunately) alter as we pray.

Jesus taught two parables about prayer, about a sleepy neighbour and an unjust judge (Luke 11:5-13; 18:1-8). The main point he made was about the importance of earnest desire in prayer. We ought always to pray, and never to faint, or give up. Someone has said that when we faint we fall back on nothing, but when we pray we fall forward on God.

And yet even if your desire is only tentative and flickering, our Lord never "snuffs out the smouldering wick" (Matthew 12:20).

We are what we pray. "The true self grows", Teilhard de Chardin found, "in inverse proportion to the growth of egoism". (1)

It might be helpful, in an hour or a day of reflection, to write down what you are really after in your life.

Prayer is a gift from God. Like love, it is a gift experienced every day, fresh from one who loves us. Prayer is not a bag of spiritual techniques.

Paul says God gives us the Holy Spirit to help us (Romans 8:26-27). "The Spirit prays in me, for me, through me, and with me." (2) Prayer is not just what I do, but what God wants to do through me.

So prayer is not merely seeking God. Rather, it is allowing him to find us. "it is not I who have looked for him. It is he who looked for me first." (3)

The main aim of prayer: to know God, through love. Knowing God - or anyone else - is much more than knowing about him. In her beautiful book "Poustinia" Catherine de Hueck Doherty talks about "folding the wings of the intellect and opening the door of the heart" in God's presence.

This is "affective knowledge", a knowing that leads to loving and responds to our being loved.

There are three kinds of prayer: spoken (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, intercession), contemplative ("thinking of God with love" as Charles de Foucauld expressed it), and meditative (reflecting on Scripture or life's events in God's presence. Bonhoeffer advocated half an hour's silent meditation on Scripture every morning. This was not "Bible study" as such, but the discipline of being "under the Word".)

As our prayer deepens, many of the saints tell us, we find ourselves needing fewer words.

Find a quiet, regular place and time each day for prayer. If possible guarantee that you will be unhurried and uninterrupted.

For many it's difficult to find silence in our noisy world, or solitude in our crowded cities. But you must keep trying. Turn a corner of your house into a chapel. Pull off the road under some trees. Walk along a deserted beach. Put in a telephone answering machine.

If you love, you will find time to love. You must stop what you're doing for a while - every day if possible. Research has shown you'll get more done in the rest of the time anyway!

Your "quiet time" may sometimes be short - but a short time with a friend is better than no time at all.

Your quest, as Carlo Carretto suggests, is to make your own desert. Remember, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy.

Prayer is also living and working. All of our life, our thoughts, our words, our actions, our motives, are lived in the presence of our God. Pere de Caussade talked inspiringly of "the sacrament of the present moment".

Sometimes, however, our work negates our prayer. Remember how Isaiah expressed the Lord's message: "When you lift your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Though you offer countless prayers, I will not listen. There is blood on your hands..... pursue justice and champion the oppressed." (Isaiah 1:15-17)

He or she who is not listening to the heart-cry of another, is not listening to God either - and God is not listening to them.

Prayer is not an escape from reality. In prayer we "love the world" as God does - the world of people. And there's only one way to love - to leave ourselves and go to others.

Often this will be "hard love", for we live in a world of beauty and of cruelty. As the twentieth-century mystic Joseph Mary Plumbett says it, "I saw his blood on the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes."

Contemplation, Thomas Merton used to say, is no pain-killer. But such contemplative prayer purifies action from arrogance. "Action is the stream and contemplation is the spring". (4)

Prayer is phony and escapist unless it includes such sentiments as this, from a prayer of Francis of Assisi: "Lord, make me to do some work of peace for Thee."

So be encouraged! Prayer is hard - but so is everything else in this life that is worthwhile. There is no short cut to true spirituality.

But prayer is essentially a simple process - even a child-like one. We come empty-handed to our heavenly Father, humble, and poor. And, over time, we gradually discover that God inhabits more and more the centre of our lives, "more intimate to us than we are to ourselves". (5)

Footnotes & further reading:

1. Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, Fontana, 1970, 111.

2. Robert Faricy, Praying, Villa Books, 1979, 20.

3. Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972, 27.

4. Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, Hollis & Carter, 1955, 61.

5. Augustine, Confessions III, 6.

(3) Spiritual Direction: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

Twelve years ago Mark Link sent a letter to a number of students in the high school where he taught. He invited them to attend the eucharistic liturgy once a week (in addition to Sunday) give 10 minutes of each day to meditation; and meet with a spiritual director every week (or 2 weeks) to help them with their spiritual growth, particularly with their prayer.

The response, he says, exceeded expectation. The book on prayer he wrote for those students is still one of the best around (YOU: Prayer for Beginners and Those Who Have Forgotten How, Argus, 1976).

Just last week I met a pastor-friend in a shop at Katoomba, N.S.W. Asked what his goal was for the coming year, his response was immediate: "To find a spiritual director".

In the words of William Barry, spiritual direction is "that form of pastoral care which offers direct help to another person to enable that person to relate personally to him or her, to respond to God personally, and to live the consequences of that someone else. Lots of emotion is dumped on you which doesn't belong to you.

Essentially the spiritual director discerns what Ignatius called the "movement of spirits", whether good or evil, in the other. "Consolation" is a life-giving movement towards God, though it won't always be pain- or struggle-free. "Desolation", on the other hand, might even be pleasurable, but leads away from God, into chaos, confusion and turmoil.

So the key gift a spiritual director will possess will be that of "discernment of spirits". He or she will be one who can "read the signs of the times and the writing on the walls of souls" (Leech). The spiritual director will be a person of above-average faith, hope and love; of experience (spiritual, theological, psychological, and (in the life of prayer), and of learning (steeped in Scripture and the wisdom of the spiritual masters).

Contemplation And Conversion

Spiritual directors try to encourage a contemplative attitude in those who seek direction. True contemplation causes us to forget our surroundings, and the passage of time. It is an experience of transcendence, of self-forgetfulness, of absorption in the contemplated object. It involves us in wonder, gratitude, and joy. Because the Lord is invisible, he is sometimes hard to "apprehend"; Because of his "otherness" he is hard to listen to. So true contemplation goes beyond words, into the realm of the imagination. Much verbal prayer can be self-absorbing. True contemplation is "lost in wonder, love and praise" with something or someone other than the self as the object. Reflection rather than analysis is the primary mode of contemplation.

Agnes Sanford says (in The Healing Gifts of the Spirit) to people who say "I can't find God" that they should do some simple things they like to do, that will put them in the way of God "so that he can find you". Above all, scripture and nature can be means for this to happen. One of the richest experiences of my life resulted from my director's suggesting I imagine I am Peter in the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Try it!

An important corollary of spiritual direction is an attitude open to "conversions". Whereas most of us believe we are truly converted to the Lord only once, there is a sense in which we are experiencing transitions, movements, conversions, all our lives if we are growing people. Henri Nouwen (Reaching Out) writes for example about moving from loneliness to solitude, hostility to hospitality, illusion to prayer. Connolly talks about moving from disappointment to receptivity. And there is a constant movement in a Christian from sinfulness to forgiveness.

John of the Cross teaches us how to cope with the "dark night", when we feel we have nothing to hang on to. How can we know this experience is from God? He says there are three signs: an inability to pray the way I used to; a sense of going backwards; but also a genuine desire for God. Although such an experience is painful, God is there, he says. (That's why we need a discerning spiritual director in times like these: otherwise we might be tempted to wallow in despair.)

How Can I Find A Spiritual Director?

First, do some reading in the area. Perhaps start with Mark Link's You and/or Breakaway, then Barry & Connolly's The Practice of Spiritual Direction, then one of the three Anglican authors - Kenneth Leech (Soul Friend), Tilden Edwards (Spiritual Friend) or Morton Kelsey (Companions on the Inner Way).

Ask yourself: do I know someone who fits the characteristics outlined by these authors? Ask God for guidance, of course. Sometimes, if a more mature person can't be found, you can try mutual direction with a caring Christian friend. Attend courses and retreats. Ask your local Anglican or Catholic priest for contacts: their traditions have not excluded this discipline, as most have.

Richard Foster suggests that while spiritual direction can become formalised, it need not be. "If we have the humility to believe that we can learn from our brothers and sisters and the understanding that some have gone further into the divine Centre than others, we can see the necessity of spiritual direction. As Virgil Vogt has said 'If you cannot listen to your brother, you cannot listen to the Holy Spirit'." (3)

Footnotes:

1. William A. Barry, "Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Counselling", Pastoral Psychology, 26 (1), 1977, 6.

2. Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, quoted in Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, H & S, 1980,160.

3. Ibid., 161.

(4) Prayer: Relating To God

Prayer is friendship with God, "keeping company with God, as Clement of Alexandria put it. Friendship - with any other person - involves giving oneself to the other, perhaps the most risky of all human endeavours. Friendship with someone unseen has its very special risks. Perhaps we've sometimes echoed Job's complaint, "What is the good of praying to him?" (Job 21:15). Or we project into our relationship with God the hassles we experience in human relationships. (For example, it is not uncommon for people who've had bad experiences with their fathers to find difficulty in relating to God as Father). But the real 'crunch' is in another direction. "God is not taken in by our polite little speeches".(1) While some people are genuinely afraid of the dark, all of us are rather afraid of the light. As the archbishop says in T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, "Human kind cannot bear very much reality". (2) So the first thing to bear in mind is that God relates to us as we are, not as we'd like to imagine we are. He is not fooled by our pretences. However, we hasten to add that this quality is precisely what makes prayer so enriching. Not only can we enjoy an amazing communion between earth and heaven; not only is prayer listening or speaking or perhaps crying or pleading or laughing with Another; that Other knows us, loves us (in spite of our pretences), and desires the best for us - only, always, the best. So, in our wiser moments, we know that the highest goal in our lives ought to be to "know him" (Phil. 3:10). The puropse of prayer is, as John Donne put it, "to get as near God as you can". (3) But how we pray depends on who we think God is. Why not spend a few moments - right now - writing down the kind of God you generally pray to? What is he like? What do you expect to happen when you pray? How did you come to get this/these ideas about God? Is your God, to whom you pray, the same God Jesus told us about? Again: how we view him will determine how we pray. What have the great pray-ers believed about the God they pray to? If you'll pardon the alliteration, they have majored on three attributes.

God Is Good

He is "for us". When we call on him in the day of trouble, he will care for us (Ps. 50:15). As we read the biblical drama we find that he either delivers us from trouble, or in trouble. He is always there for us. He will never leave us or forsake us.

However, we do not treat God as a lawyer or doctor, only going to him when we've got a problem. He is our father, and like little children we ought to learn to enjoy our father's company in all the events of our lives.

He should become everything to us, and everything we do should be done for his glory. We should want him to accomplish in our lives "all things according to the counsel of his will" (Eph. 1:11). When we really believe God is good it is easier to pray "not my will but yours...."

You are in a boat, approaching the shore, and you throw the anchor-rope onto the shore. It grips the sand and you pull in the boat until it touches the shore. What have you done? Not moved the shore to the boat, but you have moved the boat to the shore. It is like that with prayer, and our moving into God's will for us.

God Is The Supreme Gift-giver

There are thirty texts in the New Testament describing prayer as asking. Our Father delights to give gifts to us. Prayer itself is a gift. True prayer is motivated by God, not by us. Our attitude is to be receptive, submissive, a channel through whom God can answer. True worshippers, Jesus said, relate to the Father "in spirit and in truth", "for the Father seeks such to worship him" (John 4:23-24). Christian thought calls it "prevenient grace" (Grace - God's giving freely out of his love forus; prevenient - from the Latin "to go before"). There's the same idea in Paul: we "work out your salvation ... for God is at work in us" (Phil. 2:13-14). So prayer is our endeavour to be more responsive to God's reaching out to us. His gift of prayer enables us to surrender to his Holy Spirit, centring down and becoming calm, so that we are at peace as he prays in us (Romans 8:26). We "let go and let God". So when we pray we give God an opportunity to guide us, to use us as his instruments to pray through us.

GOD IS GREAT

All of the Christian saints affirm, with so many of the Psalmists, "Great is the Lord". He is the sovereign ruler of the universe. All power and authority belong to him. He is not a passive spectator.

He is great in his "being", beyond our comprehension or definition (any definition claiming to be adequate would be an idol of the mind).

He is great in wisdom. He is the one unto whom "all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden".

So our prayer always begins with worship. Some of the great hymns can help us: "Great God of wonders..."; "Jesus thou joy of loving hearts...".

"Our most fundamental need, duty, honour and happiness", says Frederick von Huegel, "is not petition, nor even contrition, nor even again thanksgiving... but adoration". (4)

As one person lay dying of cancer he wrote: "All too often our faith is earth-bound and we find it hard to believe that God can do anything that our minds cannot explain. It is only as we spend time worshipping God, concentrating on the nature of his person, especially his greatness and his love, that our faith begins to rise". (5)

So adoration and worship are therapeutic!

Finally, some gems from the best book I've read on relating to God in prayer -Simon Tugwell's PRAYER: Living with God:

"What could be greedier", remarks St. Augustine, "than a person for whom God is not enough?"

"Many people want to be good, but not many people want God."

"We are meant to become part of God's schemes, not to make him part of ours."

"In a very real sense, God has nothing to give at all except himself."

"We must accept that God is the kind of God who, if he wants to show himself in our world, must do so in weakness and poverty." (6)

Footnotes:

1. Simon Tugwell, PRAYER: Living with God, Veritas, 1984, 11.

2. Ibid., vii.

3. Sermon 80 in LXXX Sermons. Quoted in Umbach, Herbert H., The Prayers of John Donne, Bookman, 1951, 26.

4. Huegel, Frederick von, Essays and Addresses, J M Dent & Sons, 1939, II, 224.

5. Watson, David, Fear No Evil, H & S , 1984, 59.

6. Tugwell, ibid., 119ff.

(5) Praying With Nature

The well-known Australian Baptist theologian, Principal G.H.Morling used to have a sermon he called "A Robe of Healing". His text was Mark 5:31 - "Who touched Me? - and he made the point that "the woman touched his robe, his vesture....Nature may be thought of as his vesture. The world of nature is a cloak of God. William Carey prayed in the open air. Nature is a garment of the Most High. And we can touch God if we're sensitive."

We Westerners have sometimes been so busy conquering natue that we have become deaf to the voices of the rivers, the trees, the birds, and the flowers which are constantly telling us about our own condition of life, our beauty, and our mortality. For many of the saints, nature is a sacrament pointing to a reality beyond itself. For them bread is more than bread; wine is more than wine; it is God with us. (So wasting food is not just a sin because there are so many hungry in our world. It is a sin because it is an offense against the sacramental reality of all we eat and drink). (1)

Celebration

When God created the heavens and the earth he had to take a day off to celebrate the wonder of his handiwork. He didn't just "make" it all, he "created". He put something of himself into his creation. It was a "caring act" as John Macquarrie reminds us. (2)

Against the ancient gnostics and manicheans, who denied the reality of goodness in nature, Christian tradition has consistently reaffirmed that creation is the outcome of God's loving and creative wisdom, his logos. Certainly, the Fall has resulted in creation's "groaning with travail". Nature is "red in tooth and claw". And yet the glory of the Lord is everywhere too. In our new creation we are invited to "name nature" again. Jesus expected this generation to read at least the signs of the sky and the harvest. (Few of us can do that much).

The sheer immensity of the universe reminds us of our creatureliness. There is music in nature if only we have ears to hear - rustling leaves, babbling brooks, the diapason of the sea. The Bible recognises that this great orchestra praises God (Isaiah 44:23, Job 38:7, Psalm 65:8). Every tree is a beautiful creature. Let us stop and stare at the new moon in the twilight sky, the sparkle of jeweled light from a dragon fly, wandering clouds and fields of daffodils, the glory of the morning sun reflecting the soft light of shining leaves, the majesty of snow-capped ranges, autumn's variegated mantle of yellow, saffron, orange and red....

Let us praise God for 50,000 different shells and 50,000 different butterflies; for the hollow hairs of polar bears that turn their fur into a forest of heating pipes; for 30 million different insect species; for the honey bee whose eyes have 8,500 lenses each, who flies 50,000 miles (= twice around the earth) in its life-time of 42 days to make just a half-teaspoon of honey.

Raincoats In The Shower

Arthur Gordon writes of a memorable Boy Scout leader who used to take them on "silent hikes". He would not let them say a word for he wanted them to concentrate on the things around them - the trees, the plants, the birds, the wild-life, everything. Invariably when they got back, they had not seen a quarter as much as he had nor half enough to satisfy him. "Creation is all around you", he would cry, waving his arms in vast inclusive circles, "but you are keeping it out. Stop wearing a raincoat in the shower".

If only we could get rid of the raincoat and let creation in, we would start hearing and seeing and feeling the richness that is all about us. And we would learn more about God, who, though he can make a quasar with the energy of a billion suns, cares about a baby sparrow that falls out of its nest. Like the psalmist (19:3-5) we might just hear nature's choirs, alternately, day and night, chanting forth the praises of our mighty God. We, too, might encourage the trees to clap their hands and the hills to leap for joy (Isaiah 55:12).

Longfellow believed that if spring came but once a century instead of once a year "there would be wonder and excitement in all hearts to behold this miraculous change." The beauties of nature were not lost on Jesus. Growing up in the undulating Galilean countryside, he saw in the flowers that carpeted the hillsides with blue, red, white and gold, reflections of a Providence that extended beyond plants to persons. Paul found in seeds, buried through winter and bursting into new life in the spring a symbol of the hope that life follows what we call death. Read Psalm 19, or 104, or 148, and learn that the Lord of it all is not secretive or far away but is as close as a flower, or bird, or the breathing of a newborn baby.

Milton has said "what if earth Be but the shadow of heaven?"

and John Donne enthuses that "In heaven, it is always autumn".

However, nature mysticism is a means, not an end. It is meant to draw us beyond nature into a relationship with a loving Creator, Provider and Redeemer ("panentheism" as Baron von Huegal called it - seeing in all created things God's energies - not "pantheism" which identifies creation with God). There is also the danger of nature mysticism being escapist; so rather than "loving" nature, we should do as Jesus instructed and consider it. We might not be poetic, like Keats or Wordsworth, or praise God as St. Francis did (with birds in his hair) for sun and moon, fire and water, wind and weather, flowers and grass. However we can all learn to see more, with newly-opened eyes, in the magnificent world God has given to us.

How?

Only in solitude and silence. Go outside, find a quiet place, alone. Become calm, allowing yourself plenty of time. Relax. Live in the present moment. Be a guest in the world of nature. Respect everything there.

Open all your senses. Be aware of all there is to see. Open yourself to the sounds, especially the soft ones. Touch things, smell and taste them.

Don't be anxious about anything. Don't think about yesterday or tomorrow. Be fully present in the here and now.

Allow each aspect of nature to speak to you. They won't force themselves upon you: that's the beauty and humility of nature. Let natural things be themselves. Don't despise anything for not being something else.

Allow wonder, adoration and praise to rise up within you.

Notice that hardly anything in nature is absolutely symmetrical. God's creation is above, beyond, before, our technology.

"Behold the birds....." Jesus suggested. Have you ever?

Think of Adam, naming God's creatures. This was not just an exercise in domination. Surely it was more a matter of his entering sympathetically into God's creativity.

True contemplation is an experience of transcendence. (3) The person contemplating has no control over the object. One cannot force a sunset to be brilliant. All one can do is hope and look, and be open to surprise and newness.

Sometimes our praise is wordless. Just as we relate to an artist by looking at his work or listening toit, so when the artist is God, we may smile, or sigh, or maybe express delight in words. But such prayer does not need a special language; indeed the prayer is often made before a word is formed.

Michel Quoist has a beautiful "Hymn of Creation". Let his opening and closing lines inspire us:

"We praise you Father, for the sea, the sky and the stars. We praise you for the power of the atom.... We praise you for your Son, through him all things came to be, and not one thing has its being but through him. Through him, you continue to create all things, to make them holy, to give them life, to bless them, and to give them to us. Amen."

Footnotes and Further Reading:

1. Henri J.M. Nouwen, Creative Ministry, Image, 1978, 103-5.

2. John Macquarrie, The Humility of God, S.C.M., 1978, 4.

3. Mark Gibbard, Prayer and Contemplation, Mowbrays, 1975,106ff.

See also Anthony de Mello, Sadhana, Anand, 1983.

(6) The Word And Prayer

A major theme running through these chapters is that a lot of our praying is verbal/vocal, but prayer is more than words. There is also meditative prayer, centred on the mind, which ponders and reflects upon God and his ways.

Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the heart, imagination and will, where the lips and mind are both at rest. It is a simple gazing, looking at the Lord in wordless prayer, seeking to be one with him. It is "communing with your own heart ... and being still" (Ps. 4:4b).

When Jean Vianney asked a peasant what he did as he sat alone in church he replied, "I just look at him, and he looks at me".

In our modern preoccupation with achieving "results", working hard, late and long, we have lost the one thing necessary: to sit at Jesus' feet looking at him and listening to him. In the Carmelite tradition such prayer has been given various names: the prayer of recollection (Teresa of Avila), prayer of simplicity (Boussuet), prayer of silence, prayer of loving attention, and prayer of the heart.

Scriptures

The Scriptures, God's Word to us, contain the experiences of people who lived-in-the-Spirit. We read them, first, literally, understanding what they meant in their context. Then we ponder God's word to us through them. Perhaps we simply allow ourselves to "be there" with Christ, listening to him, watching him, letting him console us, heal us, forgive us, strengthen us.

Here's an example. Read Mark 15:33-39, slowly, thoughtfully. Picture the place: the holy city in the background, the hill of Calvary in the foreground with a main road running by.

Imagine you are one of the 20 or 30 Roman soldiers on duty at the execution site.

What do you see? Hundreds of people milling about. Three men hanging awkwardly on crosses. The sky growing darker. Black clouds, occasional flashes of lightening. Vultures hovering overhead, expectantly.

What do you smell? The scent of rain in the air. Sweaty bodies and sweat-soaked clothes. Wine and dried fish hawked by vendors. The smell of blowing dust.

What do you feel? The air growing cooler. Perhaps a few raindrops. Blowing sand, kicked up by passing donkeys, stinging your face and blinding your eyes.

What do you taste? Salt and dust on sun-parched lips. Lukewarm water from a vendor's water-skin.

What do you hear? People cursing, laughing, shouting, some women softly "keening". Claps of thunder. Cries of the birds circling overhead. Jesus' voice: he cries out and the crowd grows still. One of your solder-mates who says with awe: "This man was really the Son of God."

What thoughts go through your mind as you look at Jesus just before he dies - as he looks directly at you? Remain there, gazing at him - and he at you.

End by speaking to him in your own words...(1)

Ignatius responds to this invitation this way: "Imagining Christ on the Cross in front of me, I will ask him why he, the creator, decided to become man; why he came from eternal life into temporal death, thus to die for my sins...." (2)

Head And Heart

Carlo Carretto describes the most important discovery of his life - That prayer takes place in the heart, not in the head. (3) The saints teach us that "knowing Christ through love" is much more important than "knowledge of doctrines about Christ". To know a person differs from knowing about that person. So Christianity is not just a set of truths but a way of life.

Praying contemplatively moves the emphasis from thinking to loving, from the understanding to the heart and will, from conceptualization to simply looking lovingly at the Lord. The basic dynamic: from more activity on the part of the person praying to more receptivity; from dependence on one's own activities in prayer to more dependence on the actions of the Holy Spirit. (4)

However, a caution is need here. Some experiments with biofeedback machines in California found that for a majority of Christians prayer is stressful! That was because they did not practice mental or contemplative prayer. Their prayer was all words, little listening, and so was not relaxing. But we do not pray to "get peace of mind". Peace of mind is certainly a by-product of restul prayer habits, but is not the reason we pray in the first place. Jacques Ellul gives us the clue in a powerful chapter he calls "The Only Reason for Praying" in his Prayer and Modern Man. According to the Bible, he says, the only reason to pray is that God commands us to pray. But along with the command to pray are examples of the substance of prayer: the Psalms, the prayers of Job in his struggle with God. "We should also remember that every bearer of the word of God was a man of prayer: Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon. Each one has bequeathed us both a style of prayer, prayers which can turn directly to our own use, and also a model of the relationship with God, which is unique and yet available to each person. To read the Bible is to read prayers......" (5)

Rowland Croucher.

-- Shalom! Rowland Croucher () John Mark Ministries - resources for pastors/leaders (Bookroom, library, and worldwide F.W.Boreham Trading Post) WEBSITE (1200+ articles 1000+ links 1500+ visitors a day) http://jmm.aaa.net.au

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