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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
PRAYERS OF THE BIBLE
What are these prayers like? They are often very direct and frank
(e.g. 2 Kings 19:15-19, 2 Samual 7:18-29). Sometimes there is a sense
of the awesome majesty and power of God (Isaiah 6:5, Job 42:1-6).
Others are mystical (Ezekiel 1:4-28); many of the Psalms are
lamentations - cries to God "from the depths" to be healed, to be set
free, to be saved.
Some biblical prayers are very brief - even one word ("maranatha", "our
Lord, come", which is the oldest Christian prayer - 1 Corinthians
16:22, cf Revelation 22:20).
The prayers of the Bible often arise out of crisis and conflict,
leading us to faith, hope and confidence in God.
We can use some of these great scriptural passages to recollect the
presence of God in the present (Psalms 138-139; Acts 17:27). We can
pray some of the Psalms as our own cry from the heart to our God (e.g.
Psalm 51, when we have sinned). We can turn exhortations into
supplication ("Help me Lord, as your word instructs, to ..."). Ponder
a text, a phrase, or even a word, "writing it on your heart" (Proverbs
7:3). Learn from the prayers offered by Christ; or from his response
to petitions offered to him; or from his teaching on prayer.
The general impression one gets in studying the Bible's prayers, or
teaching about prayer, is that prayer covers all the events of our
lives, so there are many different ways to pray. Sometimes we are
still, knowing within the depths of our being that he is God. At other
times, we have to work hard at prayer: it "is not a gentle pastime", as
the new Dutch Roman Catholic catechism puts it.
Above all, we learn from Scripture that God is God, that God is the God
of the impossible. He is the God who can make Sarah's barren womb
fruitful and separate the water of the Red Sea.
He is the living God.
He is a God who guides.
He is a God who raises from the dead.
He is the eternal God.
He is a God who wants me in his kingdom for ever.
So "do not be afraid when God calls you, but do not be afraid when he
is silent.
Do not be afraid when he asks you to perform some task, but do not be
afraid when he asks for it back....
What matters is to walk in his presence and to be certain in faith that
it is he who is leading us." (6)
Footnotes:
1. Mark Link, You, Argus, 1976, 39ff, Breakaway, Argus, 1980,98ff.
2. Quoted in Jean Laplace, An Experience of Life in the Spirit, Shand,
1978, 58.
3. Carlo Carretto, The Desert in the City, Collins, 1978, 23.
4. Robert Faricy, Praying, Villa, 1979, 38.
5. Jacques Ellul, Prayer and Modern Man, Seabury, 1979, 108-109.
6. Carretto, op.cit., 58,62.
The most compelling reason for praying with others is Jesus' promise
that "whenever two of you on earth agree about anything you pray for,
it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or
three come together in my Name, I am there with them". (Matthew 18:19,
20).
Jesus took his disciples with him occasionally when he was praying in
solitary places (Luke 9:18,28). We know what Jesus prayed in
Gethsemane probably because part of his prayer was overheard (Mark
14:33).
The apostolic Christians prayed together from the start. The Holy
Spirit was poured out on a group at prayer (Acts 1:14). They
continued to spend a lot of time in prayer together (Acts 2:42). Paul
prayed constantly with his co-missioners (Colossians 1:9; 1
Thessalonians 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:11) and asked others to join him
in disciplined prayer (Romans 15:30). James (5:16) tells us to
"confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you
will be healed."
Praying together is one of the richest experiences Christians can have
with each other. "There is a deep joy in praying together, an added
vitality, a plus difficult to define. It is rather like the difference
between eating your meal alone and sharing in a party feast. Eating
together is not the same as eating in solitude; the something more is
the company, the fellowship. So it is with prayer." (1)
REVIVAL
But prayer with others is not only helpful to us, it is also associated
with all the great spiritual awakenings. For example, the Evangelical
Revival in England in the late 18th century began in a little "Holy
Club" at Oxford. So impressed were the Wesleys with the prayer vell
principle that every Methodist society was organised into small Band
and Class meetings. Similarly the great revival in America in
1857-1858 was empowered and nurtured in prayer meetings. The
longest-lasting revival in Christian history, affecting four-to-five
generations of Koreans, has been noted for its powerful prayer
meetings.
In his books How to Develop A Praying Church and The Exciting Church
Where People Really Pray Charlie Shedd lists the advantages of praying
with others. In a chapter in the latter book entitled "Where the
People Pray - These Good Things Happen" he lists these "good things":
"They care for each other; lives will be changed; they attract new
members; there will be social concern; they also serve the church;
they reach out to the world; the little negatives stay little;
everyone is able to serve." (2)
Sometimes prayer meetings are large; they are church-wide. These can
be powerful occasions, but only where there is a strong sense of
community. In Western nations such imtimate "belongingness" on a larger
scale is quite rare, so there has been a worldwide movement towards
smaller prayer-groups. This is good. Such "growth groups", "prayer
cells" - call them what you will - should do three things; scripture
reading, meditation and study; sharing of our personal concerns with
one another; then prayer. That is, we listen to God, listen to each
other, then speak to God the things have have arisen in the other two
encounters. The "mix" of Bible, sharing and prayer will vary from
group to group, and from time to time in one group. What is important
is that all three occur in all groups all the time.
IDEAS FOR GROUP PRAYER
Here's a pot-pourri of principles and suggestions for praying with
others:
The best size for the group will depend on what it does. If the
emphasis is on personal sharing or therapy, it ought to be small - say
3 to 6. If the group majors on Bible discussion the optimum size is 8
to 12. If it's a "house church" there may be 30 to 40, but there ought
to be times where "tows or threes" pray together.
Sensitivity ought to be shown towards those who have rarely, if
ever, prayed aloud before. Ease them into it by encouraging written
prayers to be read, sentence prayers to be spoken, or "prayer points"
shared which one or two may bring to God on behalf of the group. With
acceptance and love and encouragement, it ought to be expected that all
will soon be able to pray aloud. The lengthy prayers of the verbose
might have to be "reined in" in the process!
There aren't many books on group prayer, and few resources.
However, some excellent material can be found in John Mallison's
"Learning and Praying" (Vol. 2 in his series on small groups), and
Maxie Dunnam's "The Workbook of Living Prayer". Charles Kemp's
"Prayer-based Growth Groups" (Abingdon) is a good introduction.
MANY APPROACHES
There are many ways to pray together. Charlie Shedd says "Pray in
your own way. There are twelve gates into the holy city and a
thousand different doors to prayer. When we pray we are entering a
vast expanse of truth which leaves room for much experiment and many
approaches."
Being silent in a group is important. After the scripture is read
it is good to encourage silent meditation on the sacred words for a few
minutes - or longer. "For people who live hectic lives, corporate
meditation can be an oasis in a desert." (3) Silent retreats, or quiet
days with others can be healing occasions. (4)
Sometimes the group can devote time to adoration and praise.
Confession can happen in a group by silently writing down our sins,
tearing the paper into small pieces, passing a cup around, then
enacting absolution (either by saying something like "As you have
confessed your sins to God, in the name of Jesus you are forgiven" to
one another in turn; or by the leader on behalf of the group).
Thanksgiving can follow this experience. Bidding prayers can invite
members to verbalise their blessing. (For example: "let us recall
'high moments' from the recent past; let us thank God for someone, a
book we have read, a scripture that has been meaningful to us' etc.).
Specific intercession, selfless prayers for others, ought to be written
down as they are prayed (to check for God's answer). Sometimes it's
enough to mention a name, and no more details (to avoid gossip). Trust
and confidentiality are important here. The group prayer could
conclude with someone bringing a special benediction; or by the group
praying a written-out prayer of dedication.
Try one - or two-word prayers of adoration: "Jesus", "Father",
"maranatha", "Lord you are here", etc. Sometimes write out a litany,
or pray a great hymn of adoration or dedication together. Bidding
prayers can be offered by group members (Let us pray for our pastor and
elders"; "Let us uphold our prime minister and cabinet before God").
Pluriform praying - all praying aloud at the same time - is practised
in many cultures, and over many centuries. It's beautiful once we
overcome our initial embarrassment!
The "laying on of hands" if someone has a special need (or by proxy
for someone else) is an ancient practice being revived in many churches
today. Symbols and liturgies have, from time immemorial, enriched the
church's worship. Those os us from the "Free churches" who are
exploring these riches are finding treasures everywhere! For example,
"a cross, candle, loaf of bread, chalice, jug of water, open Bible,
vacant chair, or a simple drawing of a fish or a dove, and other
traditional symbols can be useful aids if they are varied." (5)
Group prayer, says Frank Akehurst, is an act of fellowship building up
the body of Christ in love; it is a ministry of care and support to
fellow Christians; a participation together in mission beyond local or
regional boundaries; and an expression of life and relationship to
Christ.
Onwards, then, to "the more". (6)
Footnotes:
1. Stephen Winward, Teach Yourself to Pray, H & S , 86.
2. Quoted in John Mallison, Learning and Praying, Renewal
Publications, 1976, 133.
3. Michael Wright, New Ways for Christ, Mowbrays, 1975,44.
4. See, eg. Margaret Harvey, Worship and Silence,Grove Books, 1975.
5. Mallison, op.cit., 167.
6. Frank Akehurst, Praying Aloud Together, Grove Books, 1975, 20.
Most os us want to pray more effectively. We know this takes time.
But for most of us it's very hard to find this time. Australia may be
"the Timeless Land" as Eleanor Dark calls it, but only for its
aboriginal, rarely for its white inhabitants. "Banjo" Paterson in his
ballad "Clancy of the Overflow" says:
"For townsfolk have to time to grow, they have no time to waste".
Research tells us that middle-class people are least able to master
their time. (1) Working mothers with children are particularly
harried. Then, for Christians, there are the incessant demands to
attend Church functions. Parents seem to be constantly chauffeuring
their children to school activities, or music lessons, or club outings,
or little athletics. Clergy, who have more "discretionary time" than
any other group, also, paradoxically, suffer more than most other from
shortage of time.
"The heathen in his blindness
bows doen to wood and stone':
the modern Christian worker
is slave to door and phone;
the diary his bible
to guide the daily plan,
dispensing or refusing
the love of God for man....
Our lives are all time-shackles,
programmed and set in place,
and scarcely ever able
to apprehend your grace;
our spirits want the freedom
the risen Christ can give:
a space for timeless praying
a land of spacious praise'. (2)
UNIVERSAL FATIGUE
Our stressful lives have resulted in what Paul Tournier calls
'universal fatigue', which has reached epidemic proportions. Even our
leisure and exercise activities are 'time-intensive'. We play squash
or tennis, or ride an exercise-bike, to 'save time' while getting fit.
Our reading is mostly related to professional demands. We try to do
two or three (or more) things at once. Many of us wake to an alarm,
whether we've had adequate sleep or not. We breathe polluted air, are
exposed to too much artificial noise, worry about economic problems
(Jesus told us not to do that), live in crowded cities, and our kids
can't safely travel in trains or walk the streets in the dark anymore.
Car drivers have more and more information to process in less and less
time, creating more stress and accidents. "Information overload" makes
our decision-making more complex. We move house, change jobs (and
partners) more often. Our meals (particularly breakfast) are
"self-serve". We rarely write long letters to people nowadays. Even
our worship is regulated by the clock.
Most Christians are not reading as much as they feel they should, and
yet are spending more of their lives these days getting 'educated'. We
mostly need a 'reason' for walking or driving. ('Can't I just be in
the woods without any special reason?' Thomas Merton asks). Adults are
not 'playing' enough (or if they do, it's highly competitive - beating
the other person or the golf score).
EXPLOITING TIME
We have done to time what we have done to nature - attempted to
dominate it rather than submit to it. We've followed the Creator's
injunction about subduing the earth and forgotten the other command
about replenishing it. Our "conquest mentality" has led us into the
destructive habit of 'using' natural resources, of 'exploiting' time.
So our 'time management' courses are almost totally preoccupied with a
how-to-get-more-done-in-less-time mentality. The clock has become our
master. And being a slave to clock-time can be the worst tyranny of
our stressful existence..... While we in the West have conquered
material poverty, we have paid an awesome emotional price; 'economic
growth entails a general increase in the scarcity of time. Consumption
gobbles up time alive'. (3) So - another paradox - the more we go on
seeking additional material goods, the less time we actually have to
enjoy them.
WASTING TIME
Recently, in Lae, Papua New Guinea, I bought a book called Prayer for
Pilgrims by Sheila Cassidy. You may remember she was the British doctor
who was tortured and imprisoned by the Chilean authorities in 1975 for
treating a 'freedom fighter'. She has some excellent advice on finding
time for prayer in the midst of our busy-ness.
(If a young doctor working 80-100 hours a week can learn to pray,
anyone can!). She writes: "One of the break-throughs that I have
experienced in the understanding of prayer is the significance of
'wasting' time. One day I was working at a boring job and a friend
came to join me. He loitered about for nearly an hour, perched on the
edge of the table ... and talking occasionally of nothing in
particular. When he had gone I was filled with a special joy because
I realized that he had deliberately wasted an hour with me; it was
not that we were discussing something of importance or that I needed
consoling: it was a pure and unsolicited gift of time. If we think
about it, for busy people time is often the most precious thing they
have to give. Doctors, priests, those who counsel, will always
'spend' time with those in need. They may sit up all night with
someone who is distressed; they may pass long hours in listening to
problems, or in giving advice; but this is all time deliberately
spent. We only deliberately waste time with those we love - it is the
purest sign that we love someone if we choose to spend time idly in
their presence when we could be doing something more 'constructive'.
And so it is with prayer; there is a very real sense in which prayer
is a waste of time ... it is the purest sign of our love for God that
we are prepared to 'waste' our time with him". (4)
We'll come back tothat, but let's now go deeper into understanding this
mysterious entity we call "time".
There are three ways, biblically, of understanding time: chronos,
kairos and aion. Chronos-time is measurable, chronological time.
Kairos-time is "timeliness". The first is time-as-duration, the second
time-as-harmony.
Oscar Cullman, in his book Christ and Time, says aion-time designates
both an exactly defined period of time (this present age), and
eternity; both time-limited and time-unlimited.
Now, to understand different ways of praying we need to relate the
three prayer-forms with these concepts of time. Verbal prayer is
concrete, specific, active. Meditative prayer is more creative. And
contemplative prayer has a timeless quality about it.
Please note that none of these biblical expressions for time is
abstract. Our times (plural) are in God's hands. The Christ-event
was time's mid-point, and the Divine plan for our world and its peoples
is moving forward to its consummation.
"NOW" and "NOT YET"
The Christian, then, views time in different ways. We are "exiles in
time", but we also possess "eternal" life here-and-now. So we must not
only "number our days" to achieve certain goals, but also "gain wisdom
of heart". (Psalm 90:12). We must strive for the fine balance between
"doing", "being" and "becoming".
Perhaps the greatest problem busy people hae in relation to finding
time to pray is the "tyranny of the urgent". Jesus had a lot of
urgent things to do, but he regularly distanced himself from them to do
something more important - spend uninterrupted time alone with his
Father. So he was able to "finish the work God gave him to do". Many
of us rush around doing significant things, but the work God has
ordained for us to do includes much more than achieving tangible goals.
"WASTING TIME WITH GOD"
Every day, if possible, we should aim to do as Psalm 46:10 says (in
Joseph Pieper's translation): "Have leisure and know that I am God".
Once a week or fortnight give extended time to "waiting for the Lord".
Then, perhaps once a year, attend a retreat, to do a spiritual
stock-take.
Finding the delicate balance between the "mystical" and the "mundane"
will only be learned by trial and error, and great discipline. Finding
time for prayer is less a matter of time-organization as an attitude of
mind. Time for prayer has to become a priority rather than occupying
a peripheral position in our lives. Be sure of this: the half-hour or
hour given to prayer at the expense of other things is never wasted.
Such "wasting time with God" enriches and enhances all that we do, and
in a mysterious way makes our work more creative and productive.
INDIVIDUAL PATTERNS
Each of us must find the pattern that is appropriate to our lifestyle.
A mother of small children will pray at different times (e.g. when
feeding the baby, or when the kids are asleep) than a single person.
Teenagers will learn to get to bed early - despite the allures of
television - to find time first thing in the morning. Pastors will
put their telephone answering-machine on while they leave the crowds to
find a solitary place. Nine-to-five workers will slip into a church
sanctuary, or park their car a mile from their work-place, or use the
train journey for their 'quiet times". Travelling salespeople will
find the shade of a tree for a midday hour with the Lord.
Whatever we do the principle is the same: if prayer is our first
priority it will not be impossible to arrange the rest of our lives
accordingly. "We shall never be safe in the market place unless we are
at home in the desert". (5)
God has invited - no, commanded - us to pray. His will for us allows
this special space and time in our schedules. Michel Quoist says,
"Time is a gift of God and he will demand of us an exact accounting of
it. But be at peace; God doesn't give us a job to do without at the
same time giving us the means to accomplish it. We always have time
to do what God wants us to do." (6)
The question is: are his priorities for us our priorities too?
Footnotes:
1. I am indebted to Robert Banks' The Tyranny of Time, Lancer, 1983
for many insights on this subject.
2. Owen Dowling, ibid., 37.
3. S.B. Linden, ibid., 124.
4. Sheila Cassidy, Prayer for Pilgrims, Fount, 1980,40-41.
5. Cardinal Basil Hume, Searching for God, quoted in S. Cassidy's
Prayer for Pilgrims, 86.
6. M. Quoist, The Christian Response, Gill & Son, 1965,75.
When a young person is hopelessly in love, thoughts of the beloved are
in one's mind almost constantly. Sometimes these thoughts are
translated into "interior dialogue" with the loved one. We conduct
loving conversations with him or her between doing other things.
This is something like what Brother Lawrence called "practising the
presence of God".
Brother Lawrence (1611-1691) cheerfully worked and quietly prayed in
his kitchen. "The time of business," he said, "does not with me differ
from time of prayer". His aim: to "seek God only, and nothing else,
not even his gifts." "We ought to act with God in the greatest
simplicity, speaking to him frankly and plainly, and imploring his
assistance in our affairs, just as they happen." Indeed, Brother
Lawrence claimed he was more united to God in his outward employment
than when he left them for devotion and retirement.
One of his secrets: "We ought not to be weary of doing little things
for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the
love with which it is performed."
THE GAME WITH MINUTES
Frank Laubach - a modern mystic - advocated calling the Lord to mind
"at least one second of each minute". Impossible, you ask? No, he
says. It is no harder to learn this new habit than to learn to
touch-type.
"Practising the presence of God is not on trial. It has already been
proven by countless thousands of people. Indeed, the spiritual giants
of all ages have known it. Catholics and Protestants find this
practising the presence of God at the heart of their faith.
Conservatives and liberals agree that here is a reality they need."
Start with one particular hour each day, he suggests. Write down, on a
score-card, how many minutes you thought of God. Imagine Christ
nearby, in a definite location. Some like St. Paul, imagine him
within; many, like St. Patrick, feel him all around us, above, below,
before, behind, as though we walked in his kindly halo. Others imagine
him in a chair or walking beside them. Some have gazed so long at a
favourite picture of him "until it floats before our memories whenever
we glance at his unseen presence, and we almost see him."
Laubach says we should train ourselves to "see double", as Christ does
- we see each other person as he or she is, and as Christ longs to make
them. When the telephone rings, you say to yourself, "Someone very
precious to God will now speak to me".
Then, while doing other things, hum a devotional song or prayer to
yourself. When in conversation keep whispering inside: "Lord, put
your thoughts in my mind. Tell me what to say."
In our social interactions we consciously become "Christ to others" as
Luther put it. We imagine the other is Jesus. We cannot keep God
unless we give him to others, as Laubach says.
When reading anything, read it to Christ. (Kagawa says scientific
books are letters from God telling how he runs his universe).
Some of our prayers will of course be direct conversations with God.
"When evil thoughts of any kind come, we say, 'Lord, these thoughts are
not fit to discuss with you. Think your thoughts in my mind'. The
result is an instantaneous purification."
FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS
Laubach has lots of other ideas. Try to get hold of his little booklet
"The Game with Minutes" to explore them further. These habits help us
develop what Thomas a Kempis called a "familiar friendship with Jesus".
There are many other ways to practise the presence of God. Some have a
habit of writing down a Scripture and/or a prayer from their devotional
time in the morning, and putting it where it can be seen constantly
through the day. Others are keenly aware of the presence of God in
nature: no bird or animal or butterfly crosses their vision without a
reminder of the beauty and simplicity of the Creator's handiwork in all
he has made. Still others punctuate their day with periods of
meditation and silence, enabling them to "centre down" to get in touch
with God within them. Some of the simple stillness exercises in
Anthony de Mello's "Sadhana: A Way to God" are helpful here.
For Dom Helder Camara the newspaper headlines are a springboard to
prayer. Sheila Cassidy sings praises to the Lord as she drives. As a
doctor, she says she strives to do her work for Christ. Indeed,
"Christ's is the face I look for in the unconscious motor-syclist
rushed in off the motorway, his the help I invoke as I struggle to set
up the blood transfusion, and it is he whom I thank when a brief
flicker of an eyelid shows that consciousness is not far away..."
(Prayer for Pilgrims", 93).
PRAY WITHOUT CEASING
Meister Eckhart urged us to carry from our secret meeting with God "the
same frame of mind" into the world around us. Thomas Kelly, in his
"Testament of Devotion", talks about living on two planes at once.
This is the same as the psalmist's enjoying the Lord "always before my
face". Paul says we should "pray constantly" (1 Thess. 5:17). God is
vitally concerned with all the details of our lives: "In everything by
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made
known to God" (Phil. 4:6). "Pray at all times in the Spirit..." (Eph.
6:18). Jesus taught that we should "always pray and never become
discouraged" (Luke 18:1).
Even if - like me - you don't enjoy moving physical objects of any kind
across the face of the earth, we can use these times of doing chores to
pray. Our God and Father is never very far from any one of us. He is,
indeed, closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet.
Protestants - particularly evangelical Protestants - have written very
little in the area of formative spirituality, particularly about
contemplative prayer. The great British Methodist, Dr. W.E.Sangster
did, but he was a generation too early!
Now all that's changing. Protestants and Catholics all around the
world are meeting to learn more about spiritual disciplines.
One of the best introductions to this whole field is Richard Foster's
THE CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE. Foster is an evangelical Quaker (as
reluctant Quaker, he once told me, as he appreciates the validity of
the sacraments), and a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary).
THREE DISCIPLINES
Foster divides the spiritual disciplines into three categories: inward
disciplines, outward disciplines, and corporate disciplines.
"Superficiality", he says, "is the curse of our age...The greatest need
today is ... for deep people." Striving for holiness by the human will
is insufficient: righteousness is a gift from God. And we must lay
down the "everlasting burden of needing to manage others", so we must
resist the temptation of turning spiritual disciplines into laws. Leo
Tolstoy observed, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody
thinks of changing himself".
There are four inward disciplines: Meditation, Prayer, Fasting and
Study. In reality, Foster says, eastern meditation is an attempt to
empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind
in order to fill it. Thomas Merton wrote, "Meditation has no point and
no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life."
The chapter on prayer is superb. "The Bible pray-ers prayed as if
their prayers could and would make an objective difference."
There has recently been a greater interest in the discipline of
fasting. The list of biblical personages who fasted becomes a "Who's
who" of Scripture, although there are no biblical laws that command
regular fasting. We do not fast to get God to do what we want:
fasting enables us to centre on God himself.
STUDY
If meditation is devotional, study is analytical. Meditation will
relish a word; study will explicate it. The principal task of study
is to perceive the reality of a given situation, encounter, book, etc.
This involves four steps: repetition, concentration, comprehension and
reflection. The whole process demands humility. The central purpose
of study is not doctrinal purity (though that is no doubt involved) but
inner transformation. An important discipline is to find time for a
two- to three-day study retreat: even busy people can find this time
if the idea is important enough to them.
Then there is the study of nonverbal understandings - in nature, for
example.
OUTWARD DISCIPLINES
There are also four of these: simplicity, solitude, submission and
service.
"Simplicity is freedom. Duplicity is bondage. Simplicity brings joy
and balance. Duplicity brings anxiety and fear."
Because - and to the degree that - we lack a divine Centre our need for
security has led us into an insane attachment to things. "Conformity
to a sick society is to be sick." However, asceticism and simplicity
are not the same: asceticism renounces possessions; simplicity sets
possessions in proper perspective. Then there is the discipline of
sharing. Martin Luther said somewhere, "If our goods are not available
to the community they are stolen goods."
We'll pick up on the idea of solitude next issue.
Richard Foster's The Celebration of Discipline is not a comfortable
book, says David Watson in the foreward. "in an arresting and
challenging way it brings us right back to the most basic essentials
for knowing God and for living the life of Jesus."
Foster calls these essentials "disciplines". Last time we looked at
the four inward disciplines - meditation, prayer, fasting and study -
and the first of the outward disciplines, simplicity.
Of the three remaining outward disciplines (solitude, submission and
service), solitude is perhaps the most scary for many of us.
SOLITUDE
Our fear of being alone drives us to noise and crowds. But loneliness
and clatter are not our only alternatives. We can enjoy solitude in
cities; it is possible to be a desert hermit and never experience
solitude.
Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfilment.
In his Life Together Bonhoeffer wrote: "Let him who cannot be alone
beware of community ... Let him who is not in community beware of being
alone." So we need both community and solitude: each is necessary for
the enrichment of the other. It is only in the discipline of silence
and solitude that we learn when to speak and when to refrain from
speaking.
Butif we take seriously the discipline of solitude we will at some
stage pass through what John of the Cross calls "the dark night of the
soul". It is a time of apparent desolation, but in reality God is at
work in divine surgery, bringing us to a profound stillness, so that he
may work an inner transformation upon the soul.
Thomas Merton observed: "It is in deep solitude that I find the
gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary
I am the more affection I have for them."
SUBMISSION
"A Christian man", said Martin Luther, "is the most free lord of all,
and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of
all, and subject to everyone."
The discipline of submission frees us from the terrible burden of
always needing to get our own way. We can be given the grace to love
people unconditionally, and give up the right for them to return our
love.
Jesus calls us to self-denial (which is not self-hatred or
self-contempt). Self-denial is simply a way of coming to understand
that we do not have to have our own way. Our happiness is not
dependent upon getting what we want.
The spiritual classics make lavish use of the language of self-denial.
For example, Thomas a Kempis says "To have no opinion of ourselves, and
to think always well and highly of others, is great wisdom and
perfection". The teaching of the New Testament is revolutionary,
challenging the contemporary customs of super-ordinate and sub-ordinate
and calling upon everyone to "count others better than yourselves"
(Phil. 2:3).
We are to submit to God, to scripture, to our family, to our
neighbours, to the believing community, to the broken and despised, and
to the world. Followers of Jesus come to perceive that authority does
not reside in positions or degrees or titles or tenure or any outward
symbol. Rather we are given a spiritual authority, marked by both
compassion and power.
Occasionally, however, revolutionary subordination to temporal
authorities has its limits - when those authorities violate biblical
injunctions and become destructive.
DISCIPLINE OF SERVICE
"Learn the lesson well," Bernard of Clairvaux, enjoined, "that if
youare to do the work of a prophet, what you need is not a scepter but
a hoe."
As the cross is the sign of submission, so the towel is the sign of
service. It's hard to wash feet, isn't it?
Jesus did not abolish ideas of leadership and authority, rather he
radically redefined them. He did not merely reverse the "pecking
order" either. He abolished it.
"Self-righteous" service may be frantically energetic, is impressed
with the "big deal", requires external rewards, is highly concerned
with results, picks and chooses whom to serve, is affected by our moods
and whims, is temporary, insensitive, and fractures community.
Humility, on the other hand, is never gained by seeking it. It is
more "choosing to be a servant" than "choosing to serve". When we
choose to serve we may still be in charge: we decide whom we willserve
and when we will serve. But when we choose to be a servant we give up
the right to be in charge. If we voluntarily choose to be taken
advantage of, then we cannot be manipulated.
The "service of hiddenness" - even for leaders - is a beautiful grace.
Listen to Jeremy Taylor : "Love to be concealed and little esteemed:
be content to lack praise, never be troubled when you are overlooked or
undervalued."
Then there is the service of loving speech. We must "speak evil of one
one" (Titus 3:2) nor allow others to speak disparagingly of another.
There is also the service of common courtesy, of hospitality, of
listening, of bearing one another's burdens and sorrows, and sharing
the word of life .....
Service that is duty-motivated breathes death. Service that flows from
Christ-within-us is life and joy and peace.
Perhaps, suggests Foster, you would like to begin this beautiful
journey with a prayr at the beginning of each day: "Lord Jesus, I
would so appreciate it if You would bring me someone today whom I can
serve."
Next time, our final article in this series: the corporate disciplines
of confession, worship, guidance and celebration.
We conclude this all-too-brief overview of spirituality by looking at
Richard Foster's four "corporate disciplines" in his excellent book The
Celebration of Discipline.
THE DISCIPLINE OF CONFESSION
Confession, says Foster, is so difficult for us partly because we view
the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a
fellowship of sinners. "We imagine that we are the only ones who have
not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore we hide ourselves
from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy."
The followers of Christ have been given the authority to receive the
confession of sin and to forgive in his name (see John 20:23). "Our
brothers.... has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession
of our sins in Christ's stead and he forgives our sins in Christ's
name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I
go to my brother to confess, I am going to God" (Bonhoeffer).
Whilst most of us would have problems with the stylized form of the
"Confessional", there are probably greater dangers in ignoring the
biblical injunction to confess our sins to one another, praying for
forgivenss and healing for each other (James 5:16).
Alphonsus Luguori writes, "For a good confession three things are
necessary: an examination of conscience, sorrow, and a determination
to avoid sin."
It is important that when others are opening their griefs to us we
discipline ourselves to be prayerfully quiet. Too often an embarrassed
comment can destroy the sacredness of the moment.
Foster suggests that "the ministry of retaining sins is simply the
refusal to try to bring people into something for which they are not
ready. Sometimes people are so anxious to get others into the kingdom
that they will try to announce their forgiveness before they have
sought it or even wanted it.
Unfortunately, this malady is characteristic of a great deal of modern
evangelism."
WORSHIP
God is actively seeking people to worship him, Jesus tells us (Jn.
4:23). The form of our worship is surely a matter of indifference to
God - whether of high liturgy or low liturgy, this form or that. A
striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in
"holy expectancy". They believed they would actually hear the Kol
Yahweh, the voice of God.
So it is unthinkable for Christians to live in isolation from one
another. Martin Luther witnessed to the fact that "at home, in my own
house, there is no warmth or vigour in me, but in the church when the
multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it
breaks its way through."
Just as worship begins in holy expectancy it ends in holy obedience.
Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an excape from
the pressing needs of modern life.
GUIDANCE
All the teaching on divine guidance in our century, says Foster, has
been noticeably deficient on the corporate aspect. "We have received
excellent instruction on how God leads us through Scripture, and
through circumstances, and through the promptings of the Spirit upon
the individual heart. But we have heard little about how God leads
through his people, the body of Christ."
The church has not always been individualistic. The people at
Antioch, for example, received the call for Paul and Barnabas to do
missionary work together (Acts 13:2).
At the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. when any member feels
that God has led him or her to be involved in mission, they will "sound
the call" so that others can meet to test the call with that person.
Another beautiful model for receiving God's guidance with another has
been the classical practice of spiritual direction. There is a
renewed interest in this ancient form of relating, right across the
churches throughout the world in this decade.
THE DISCIPLINE OF CELEBRATION
Harvey Cox says that modern man has been pressed "so hard toward useful
work and rational calculation he has all but forgotten the joy of
ecstatic celebration."
True celebration does not come through worshipping a particular way, or
with a particular group. It is rather a function of all the common
ventures of life being redeemed. Of course living in a spirit of
constant thanksgiving in the midst of all situations does not mean that
we will celebrate the presence of evil.
God has established a created order full of excellent, good and
beautiful things. If we think on those things we will be happy, says
Paul (Phil. 4:8.9).
Celebration saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. It adds a
note of gaiety, festivity, hilarity to our lives.
So these classical disciplines of the spiritual life beckon us to the
Himalayas of the Spirit. At times we may be discouraged. Valleys and
foothills will intervene between mountain tops. But, with thousands
who've gone before us, we can have confidence in our heavenly Guide,
who has "blazed the trail" and conquered the highest summit. To him
be glory, for ever, Amen.
Rowland Croucher
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