Teach Me To Pray

As an Anglican, I have the consolation of many prayers which are prescribed in our prayer books and elsewhere.  I find this comforting as it is a challenge for me to pray extemporaneously.  However, it is also restrictive as I am often not challenged to explore the possibilities of prayer that come from within as well as other places.  In this, I can relate to the disciples who asked, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”  This raises an interesting question about how John taught his disciples as was raised recently, however, that is a question for another time.  

The question I want to explore is how we pray?  Jesus provided us the well-known answer in what is known as the Lord’s prayer which is undoubtedly the best-known prayer―at least in the Christian world.  Even this is presented to us in different forms and languages which we can draw on and learn from.  I recently drew on the form from the New Zealand church which I find resonates with me.  That gives some hints at how we can learn to pray.  What speaks to you and gives you words that resonate with you at a deep level.  It also tells us that we need to have experience of prayer in many different forms to receive more possibilities of how we can pray. 

I recently listened to the program On Being on National Public Radio which had an interview with Elie Wiesel https://onbeing.org/programs/evil-forgiveness-prayer-elie-wiesel-2/#transcript.  This was a rebroadcast from  a program on the occasion of Wiesel’s death in 2016.  Wiesel was a holocaust survivor and renowned author.  In the interview, he prayed a prayer that was from his book One Generation After:

I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware and worthy of Your listening. I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You. I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.

As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers, but not Your countenance.

They are modest, my prayers, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land. I ask You, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too. I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only implore You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.

There is so much of Elie Wiesel and of God packed into that prayer that you could spend many days or weeks or a life time exploring.  That is truly what prayer is about―to explore your relationship with God and with life and with yourself.

Blessings on you journey.

What Shall I Cry?

What Shall I Cry? Is the title of the address given by Dr. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury at a Special Convocation at Huron University in London, Ontario on Monday.  The title comes from Isaiah 40:6:

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.

Dr. Williams gave the lecture on the occasion of receiving the degree, Doctor if Divinity, (honoris causa).  To clarify, it was actually a lecture on preaching with the subtitle, “How Do We Preach Today?  Now, a lecture on preaching may not be to everyone’s cup of tea or even more potent drink, but I believe that the message was applicable for all who want to share their faith as Christians with others.

Reflecting on the lecture I want to start in a way that is not usual for me, poetry.  Here is my attempt based on what I gleaned from Rowan’s words:

To hold in the cry.

At what cost

Do I hold

The cry within?

We cry our name

Naming who we are,

What we are and

What we say and do

To respond to the Word

With a gift of words.

What then must I declare

To open the door of hope

With an invitation,

To Speak to the heart of the community

The call to receive God’s grace renewed. 

Dr. Williams provided the contact for the quote from Isaiah as a prophet of Israel who called from exile the People of God who now can know reconciliation.  Dr. Williams structured his lecture on four words; mortality, lament, consolation, and invitation. 

In the recognition of mortality, lies the recognition that all flesh is grass.  We are mortal and as it says in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”  This is not just the realization that we will all die.  It is the acknowledgement of all times of loss and abandonment.  We are not, ultimately, in control despite how much we cling on to things in an effort to deny that reality.

Lament is not a list of complaints and bitching about how things have not gone the way we expect or want.  It is the rhetoric of despair, loss and grieving for not only what we have lost but also what the community has lost.  It is not a Jeremiad for the church to be great again.  A good lament is a cry for what might have been and what may yet be.  We acknowledge what we are all deprived and complicit.

Consultation is to give comfort and support.  It is not a case of coming to a person with the attitude that I know what you need or that I know what is best for you.   It is to give encouragement and to offer whatever you are able to give to the person who identifies what that might be.  What comes to mind are the friends of Job. They began well, offering consolation:

they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

 Unfortunately, this comfort did not last, for they knew what he needed to do:

If you will seek God
   and make supplication to the Almighty,^*
6 if you are pure and upright,
   surely then he will rouse himself for you
   and restore to you your rightful place.

Invitation give us an opportunity to join in cooperation with God and with the community.  It we can preach and proclaim the grace of God and invite people to receive the grace of God we will be able to be a voice crying to prepare the way of the Lord.

Blessings on your journey

Growing Your Garden

Last week I wrote about developing a Rule of Life and the study series offered by the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) which is offered in video format and can be found at https://www.ssje.org/growrule/.  This series is using the garden and growing you garden as a metaphor for growing/developing a rule of life. 

The garden is a very good metaphor for this process as explained in the series.  You have to prepare the ground―which can represent the ground of your being to be open to God’s presence in your life.  You have to plant what ever you want to grow in your garden―which can represent the ways in which you are open to receive the grace which God offers you.  You have to care for the garden and what you have planted―doing those practices such as different forms of prayer and activities which connect you with God.  There are other analogies to the garden which are explored in the series such as pruning and watering.  I trust you can see how it is a very good metaphor.

That being said, I must confess that it is not one that resonates with me on an emotional or I could even say a spiritual level.  As my wife Lorna, who is an avid gardener can attest, I am not a gardener.  I do not have much if any interest in gardening.  I will, somewhat reluctantly take time away from the things that I enjoy and which resonate with me, to help Lorna with the heavy (but not too heavy) lifting.  Therefore, the metaphor of the garden does not resonate with me when considering my rule of life and spiritual practice(s).  I can understand it on an intellectual level and appreciate how it is a valid and even a very good metaphor for developing a rule of life.  However, to me meaningful to me a different metaphor would be better.

This is, I believe, a good metaphor for how our relationship to God works and doesn’t work.  God is always present in our lives in more ways than we can ever appreciate just as nature in all its aspects is there for a garden.  There is the soil, the rain, the sun, the daytime for growth and the night for rest.  There are also the storms and the times of drought and floods that will threaten those things that are growing in the garden.  Given our nature and our personalities and the fact that we are all different, we will be more open and in tune to some ways in which God is present in our lives.  Developing a Rule of Life will provide a template for us to become more aware and to deepen those ways.  It is also possible that in developing a Rule of Life we may become aware of different ways in which God is present in our lives and explore those.  Who knows, perhaps God is calling me to try gardening.  However, I don’t want Lorna to get her hopes up too much.

Blessings of your journey. 

Growing The Rule of Life

One of the practices I am engaged in at the moment is following a study series by the Society of St. John the Evangelist on Growing the Rule of Life.  It is a six-week study which is offered in video format and can be found at https://www.ssje.org/growrule/.  I have signed up for the program which is sent to me by email daily.  Today is my third day into the study and I am finding it quite engaging and helpful so far partly because the videos have been quite short and to the point.

The first three have dealt with what a Rule of Life actually is.  To summarize it is, to use the term offered in the video, a template for how to structure your life.  It can allow you to put your life in balance and to be conscious of how your life is unfolding on a day-to-day basis.  Another metaphor that is used in the video is a nozzle on a hose which allows the water (which I understand to represent your life energy) to be focused and to be directed on the thing that you want to direct it on. 

Energy can take many forms.  The most prevalent and obvious form in our society is money.  How you spent your money will tell you where your priorities are.  But energy can be manifested in other ways; how you spend your time and what thoughts you have and what you support and determine what kind of activities you undertake as well as who you support politically. 

As the presented Br. Curtis Almquist notes, we only have one life to live and are actually only sure that we have today, how are we going to live that life.  The rule of life enables you to do it consciously and not just exist.  I am reminded of a commercial from many years ago that had the tag line, If I only have one life, let me live it as a blond.  I checked it on Google and it was a commercial for Lady Clairol.  That really sums up the challenge that the Rule of Life is addressing.  Am I going to live my life as a blonde, in effect chasing after the values that that represents or am I going to seek something which may be more valuable?  I do only have one life, so how am I going to live it?  That is the journey we are all on.

Blessings on you journey.