My God,
I pray better to You by breathing.
I pray better to You by walking than by talking.
- Amen
(Fr. Thomas Merton)
Our very existence is a prayer. What does yours say?
The Best Prayer of Them All
Reply
Tag Archives: contemplative prayer
The Shortest Prayers Say the Most
I had one of those speechless days in which there was so much emotion going on in my head and in my life and in the lives of all those around me (hey… it’s a week until Christmas!) The itchy, unsettled, squirmy thoughts and emotions spun around so much that the more I tried to center on any sort of prayer or reflection, the fewer words came.
It always starts off with some snarky question that’s not really asking anything: “Hey God. Answer me this….“
And then before waiting for whatever response (if any) there is going to be, with the very next thought I’m off on some diatribe of head preaching at God about whatever it is that has pissed me off today. It’s not so much “Hey God, I want to ask you something” as it is “Listen up God, I’m going to TELL you something.”
Even in prayer, that isn’t conversation: it’s nagging.
I grew up in a religious tradition of very long, very verbose, and very pointed praying so that by the end of it, those who were still awake and alert had absolutely no question about what was on the pray-er’s agenda that day. Add lots of filler catch phrases about taking this food as nourishment to our bodies (that makes its way into nearly every blessing at meals my extended family says.) Mix in a bunch of “to the glory of Your name.” And in the last bit, top with a shake of “if it so be Thy will” (like the pray-er is giving God a choice) and pop it back in the oven for another minute under the broiler, et voila! Fifteen minutes of reciting every catch phrase in one’s larder and finishing with a prayer that has said Absolutely Nothing.
And most times with more thee, thou, and thine than Shakespeare would have used. Trust me here: God does have a full comprehension of contemporary English (or whatever your primary language is.)
But hey: we prayed, right?
I graduated to a standardized form of public prayer in which one could go to the book, look up an event type (or a date, or a Saint’s day) and there would be the prescribed prayer ready to go, no additions needed (or appreciated.) Those are in a standard 3-phrase context of
- Say something good about God
- Tell God what God has done for us around the topic at hand
- Ask God for whatever it is that the prayer is seeking on this same topic
It’s great for read-along and speak-along public services because everybody knows the words and it’s like a hymn or a psalm. And the assumption here is that the pray-er has an internal understanding of the message of the prayer, by reciting those words in community with others. The downside is that some folks out in the pews think of these communal prayers as “inpersonal” and even more “saying a bunch of phrases” and not off-the-cuff as the lengthy recitations above.
Do you think God really cares? It’s not so much which songs we sing and what words we bring forward to the proverbial Throne of Grace, so long as we sing and pray.
Some days, neither of those schemes works.
Within these years of a centering prayer and contemplative practice, some days my human feelings get in the way. I don’t’ feel like spouting on forever until the gravy gets cold, or simply saying rote that which has been said a billion times before. I want to get out what I need to get out, and I want to be true to both my feelings and that spiritual relationship.
For those times, I have my shortest prayer. Very simple, a single line, with no attributions or “in Jesus’ name we pray,” etc. It speaks in just a few words my feeling that yes, God, I want to (OMG! need to!) talk to you about something, AND the words just aren’t there right now, AND I need you to know that I am here, the other part of this relationship, and any guidance is appreciated. Even though I have said these words just as many “millions” of times, always exactly the same, this action is so brief and so close to the bone that it becomes a prayer from all that I know and all that I want to know.
The words become more than just words.
When emotions get high all around me and within me, I go to this simple prayer to summarize all that I feel, all that I want to get off my chest, and how I do not want to sit in my own sorrows and fears. Instead I want to do whatever it is that I am to do next, even if all I can do next is to sit in that moment of quiet and let go of those wiggling distractions. I want release from this moment so that I can proceed on to the next moment and see what there is to see of this thing we call relationship, our communion. I want to drop my own nagging, and become open to receiving whatever it is that I am to see, to feel, to experience in this moment that seems so very dark.
The realization comes that no matter how distracted and upset I am, many others out there need help too. My own troubles fade in the lending out my alone time with God – by being with God in the sharing of God, in a sure belief that all this distraction will calm. We learn that we come the closest to that which we think of as God, by sharing. Divinity is not a thing to be hoarded.
By sharing this need for our Maker during the bad times, and realizing that we are not alone, that message also lives in the air around us as a prayer.
Lord,
For those who need you more than I.- Amen.
In Our Silence is Both Singing and Prayer – a contemplation with music
Singing is like praying twice.
Music and lyrics aren’t always what we expect, and aren’t always in a church or coming from our ear buds and our favorite playlist in the car. Prayers – likewise – are not always in the words we expect, or even in words at all.
Silence is not always the lack of sound around us; it is the lack of noise around us. When we are still and our mind is at peace, even in the rattling and curving of life around us, we find great moments of silence, of peace, and of prayer. Prayer without words. Songs without lyrics. Peace – for that short time – with no end.
Approach the stillness, and in your silence, sing!
Keep the faith!
- Amen
Trustworthy? – a prayer during Lent
Oftentimes it isn’t a question of how much trust you put in the Universe, or the Maker, or whatever noun you use here. More likely it is the case of how much trust that Creator puts in you.
I am reflecting on a comment from a friend who said this week:
“I am so tired of the awful things these crazy religious people do and say that it makes me ashamed to be a Christian.”
I find no stress in the things those people do or say as much as I do stress out in the knowledge that these people do not have a clear understanding of the “Religion“(sic) that they profess. I wonder: given that many professed Christian people today pick up half-backed drips and drabs of ideas on what they (personally) think is right, stir that with a few out-of-context Biblical quotes (you know the ones!) and add the watering down of contemporary Biblical translations written for an un-reading contemporary society, and prayers that are long, rehearsed recitations of that pray-ers personal shopping list,
How much would God – the Maker – the Universe – trust them to follow – and seek – Universal Truth?
Being a spiritual person is very easy to do. Being a religious person is very difficult. Religion is not all perfect, and in a perfect world it is a constantly-evolving thing. Just as God evolves (no more plagues… no more earth-drowning floods… no more destroying cities with fire or turning people to salt), so must we, and so must our understanding of what “religion” means outside of our own experience.
Spirituality is a single effort. Religion happens in public (in communion, if you will.) To become proficient at both, you will (spiritually) break a sweat, and then your tongue will ache from the bite marks, and your ears will ring from all the listening instead of speaking. And at that end, while you are all sweaty, numb-tongued, and ear-ringing, somewhere in there you will find the God who is looking to find you. For those who believe in Born Again, realize that this salvation moment and subsequent baptism is not the end of the party. Maybe it’s too obvious for some to see that the term Born Again means a re-birth. It means a time to begin this new journey – to listen and learn, and to develop into the person to be loved (always) and trusted (more) by God.
For those who come from a tradition of Infant Baptism: As Dorothy Allison once said to me (and made me cry!)
You. Owe. Me.
In your early months of life when you were Baptized, a lot of people stood around and made promises on raising you up as a good and faithful and well-meaning person. I have done this many times over the years in our parish and take that obligation very seriously to do whatever I can to help that child grow up to be the best person they can be.
Review your church’s Baptismal Covenant. Check to see if the people around you are holding up their part of the deal. Look inside to see if you are holding up yours. I will entertain no arguments about this being something that was done on your behalf in infancy. I will hear no arguments from the other team saying that Infant Baptism is invalid. I will make it very simple for you: if you agree with the concept as it pertains to you, then you should review, take notes on what should improve in your life, and the lives of those around you. (see “communion,” above)
If you do not believe in such things and you consider it invalid, then please feel free to shut up, stop whining about how bad your life is, and use the door out of that mindset to find your own spiritual bliss. It really is out there. Just keep in mind that the spirituality part is very easy. The religion part will make you work.
- Will your meditations and your prayers and your actions through the 40 day desert of Lent lead you to a place of knowing-more?
- Will you arrive at a point of understanding even a tiny bit more than you did before you began?
- Will these 40 days of contemplation and redemption land you even one step closer to being that person in whom God -Maker – Universe puts their almighty trust that you – at last – are seeking the better path?
So many questions, and so few days to come closer to your own answers!
- Keep the faith!
A prayer on the Trust of God, for Lent
God of Peace,
You have put your Holy Spirit
in our hearts.
Your spirit renews at every moment
your love for us.
And we wish to do
all we can
so that the trust you place in us
overflows
in love for others.
- Amen
The New Day
One of the greatest inspirational songs I’ve ever heard was one that WETA-FM in Washington, DC played every morning at 6:00 am for many years. I’m not sure if they still do, but in those early training school days of my retail career, I was up in suit-and-tie and on my way to class with the other trainees at 8am, then meetings at 9, and having my little section of the giant store open at 10. When I found the song playing each day at that time, I set my radio alarm so it was the first thing I heard every day. Not realizing it at the time, it was like a morning prayer, or reading the daily office before starting the day. All done in less than four minutes.
No loud alarms, no jumping out of bed, no choking down scalding coffee as I ran out the door. I just got up and started my new day.
It followed me from training days, to crawling up through drudge (and some grudge) positions. It followed me to the greatest day job I ever had involving an entire store, in which I had to make large-stroke decisions on the merchandising direction and look of the entire store, not just departments. Then it grew on to doing the same with multiple stores all across the country. Every step along the way – the usual expected office stress aside – it all begin simply with my beginning each sunrise as A New Day.
The career continued forward from there, and I stayed with the song for as long as I was able to work that with my early morning schedule. Retail hours get crazy some times and you’re doing double shifts or closing late, and it’s not so easy to get up every day at 6am like FM radio station clockwork.
When we moved to (back to) North Carolina to try my hand at a start-up company, we had left that regularity, and in a few years’ time I’d stumbled upon this contemplative practice that I write about so much here. It became that same continuity of spirit and serenity. I had to get up a lot earlier to get things done: 5 am each day so I could read through the liturgical readings for the day from the Lectionary (that would be Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel readings for the day.) Then 20 minutes for a timed “sit” – a time of silent prayer in the darkness of the early hours, in that quiet still-sleeping house, usually with the greyhound napping at my feet. The perfect prayer partner: he understood that the three chimes leading us into prayer was the beginning of this time of great silence, and the three chimes at the end was when he opened his eyes, looked up at me, and knew that the day was afoot, tail gently thumping the carpet!
After this meditation, for the first 2-3 years I wrote a homily each day: not so much sermonizing, as it was a sort of “note-to-self” back to me on what I had just read, and what(ever) had come out of that time of contemplation. I still go back and read those manuscripts and wonder at the growth and closeness to my God that I grew into more deeply on the pages.
It all began with a song.
“You Are The New Day” sung by The King’s Singers became an “old chestnut” of the group, and was seen quite often on PBS television stations as their sign-on/sign-off videos back in the days when television stations did not run 24 hours a day, and had to sign off at midnight. Often with some rendition of the National Anthem. Then they signed on again at some wee hour of the morning, and some used “You Are The New Day” for that.
A few years ago, the group performed a once-off variation in concert with a Christmas theme version of the lyrics, written by group member Philip Lawson. I first heard it live when they sang it during an interview on one of the Satellite radio stations, speaking with my friend Robert Aubry Davis. Like the audiences who heard it in concert, I fell in love immediately, and was glad to hear that they finally recorded the Christmas version because of the intense international popularity of this simple song.
The performance below is not by the Singers themselves, but done by a larger choral group, The Cambridge Singers, directed by John Rutter. With only the slightest variation to the original text, Lawson’s verses transform this most gentle love song into a Nativity cradle song for the rest of us – for the ones looking on.
Listening to the Christmas version, I’m reminded that – just as with my alarm clock going off to this sweet melody all those years at 6 am – what we are witnessing at the Nativity is indeed a New Day. And just as with the radio-alarm going off each morning – it is up to us to remember what this day represents, and to find our own ways to spread it forward in gentle peace and love.
On this Christmas, may we each find our own New Day.
Keep the faith!
- Amen
Born on a New Day
performed by The Cambridge Singers and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
directed by John Rutter
Christmas lyric variation by Philip Lawson
You are the new day.
Meekness, love, humility,
Come down to us this day:
Christ, your birth has proved to me
You are the new day.
Quiet in a stall you lie,
Angels watching in the sky
Whisper to you from on high:
‘You are the new day.’
When our life is darkest night,
Hope has burned away,
Love, your ray of guiding light,
Show us the new day.
Love of all things great and small,
Leaving none, embracing all,
Fold around me where I fall,
Bring in the new day.
This new day will be a turning point For every one,
If we let the Christ-child in, And reach for the new day.
Christ the Way, the Truth, the Life,
Healing sadness, ending strife,
You we welcome, Lord of Life.
Born on a new day,
You are the new day.
———————————————–
To see a popular PBS Television spot featuring the original King’s Singers version, please click on this link: You Are The New Day
You Are The New Day
Performed by The Kings’ Singers
Lyrics by John David
You are the new day.
I will love you more than me
and more than yesterday
If you can but prove to me
you are the new day
Send the sun in time for dawn
Let the birds all hail the morning
Love of life will urge me say
you are the new day
When I lay me down at night knowing we must pay
Thoughts occur that this night might stay yesterday
Thoughts that we as humans small
could slow worlds and end it all
lie around me where they fall
before the new day
One more day when time is running out for everyone
Like a breath I knew would come I reach for the new day
Hope is my philosophy
Just needs days in which to be
Love of life means hope for me
borne on a new day
You are the new day