Get over yourself

Here's a little paraphrase of St. Paul's instructions in Philippians 2.1-11. Apt guidance for everyday life in our families, work settings, and neighborhoods.

If you climb over others on your way toward your goals, you're blind to Christ in them, and your ego's become your god.

Instead, remember what I've told you: you have everything it takes to set yourself aside and help others find their way.

Look, this is the down-to-earth way of life modeled for us by Christ, and Christ expects us to follow him.

But if you don't do the hard work of letting go of the things you don't think you can live without,

You'll never be able to get past yourself long enough to lend a helping hand.

The Modern barrier to prayer

Such talk of prayer is likely to awaken objections---

"How do I pray continually when my life is so full of obligations?"

"When I'm not doing the things I need to do to get through the day, I'm thinking about what I need to do. Prayer is often the last thing on my mind."

"As much as I desire intimacy with God, the call to prayer loads me with more guilt than inspiration. The prayers I utter are basically prayers for help---for myself and for others."

There's no getting around the truth that Jesus summons us to unbroken communion with God and that the Apostles taught this practice to the first Christians. Throughout history, there's also an unbroken line of praying people who've kept the practice alive, handing it down from one generation to the next. That it's foreign to us is an indication that the Modern world isn't very hospitable to interior experience, to mystery, and the mystic encounter with God that is above and beyond the heightened rationalism so characteristic of these last centuries.

You were made for this

Prayer then, according to Jesus, is more like breathing than sitting down for a meal at certain times each day. Nevertheless, the ability to live in unbroken communion with God is fed by formal times of prayer alone or with others, by the Psalms, Scripture, and by offering intercessions. Unless you sit down and eat periodically throughout the day, you're not likely to do much breathing. But, fail to breathe and the meal hasn't done you much good.

Unceasing prayer as unbroken communion with God is not for super-Christians only---the spiritual elite---any more than breathing is for some special class of human beings. Prayer is life and life is prayer. You were made for this.

Toward unceasing prayer

Prayer, according to Jesus, is life. Prayer isn't a doctrine or a duty; it is bread, or better, breath. Jesus lived prayer. He not only joined in the formal prayers in synagogue and temple, but also he prayed in the middle of a meeting, walking along a road, facing intense suffering, and experiencing conflict. The Name of God was constantly on his lips. His words were heart-deep, as if drawn up from a well of an inner life that was, regardless of outer circumstances, in constant communion with God.

And he taught his disciples to "pray always and not lose heart" (Luke 18.1). "Keep alert," so God doesn't "find you asleep when he comes suddenly." So, "keep awake" through the practice of unbroken communion with God (Mark 13.33-36).

Christ's disciples followed his example. Saint Paul lived a life of prayer, and urged it upon all believers. "Pray without ceasing," (1 Thessalonians 5.17). "Pray in the Spirit at all times. Keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints" (Ephesians 6.18).

Prayer, then, is life and life is prayer.

Fire everywhere

How an ordinary person awakens to a life as prayer.  Continued from yesterday . . .

My misery shut me down. Sleep was the only way I could find respite. In sleep, I could inch myself minute by minute toward the day I would leave. One afternoon as I slept a fitful sleep, the Light came to me, an angel awakened me—though it still seems hard to believe. Some, of course, will dismiss this as the fabrication of a troubled mind trying to find a way out of its trauma. It’s true that the psyche is remarkably agile and able to find ways to rescue itself. But it would be a pity to dismiss such a grace, or for me to forget it. Just as the desert was stripping me of all that had become as Pharaoh to me, so too this terrifying nothingness was my baptism into my own exodus—a death necessary for rebirth.

Roused from my sleep by the angel, I heard these words: “You didn’t need to come this far to learn what I must teach you. Though perhaps you did—to finally know the futility of searching the world for answers. The journey is within, and anyone can take it without even leaving home. The fullness of God is near as your breath, near as the beating of your heart. For the kingdom of God is within you.”

All was suddenly full of light. Fire everywhere.

End of series.  For more, download my free ebook Returning to the Center: Living Prayer in a Distracting World. Available here.