Prayer is universal. At all times in history and in all places, people have sought the Divine and uttered some kind of prayer. Prayer is the yearning of life; it is a desire for the Source, the unending Fountain of life. Prayer not only is this yearning, it is a finding.
In prayer we come home to God, we dwell with and in the One who is life (John 1.4).
Thinking is as routine as breathing. Spiritual awareness awakens you to the fact that you don't have to follow your thoughts where they want to lead. Here's an excerpt from my current, still very-much-in-process writing--the follow up to my eBook. It's the first of three posts relating our thoughts to the practice of unceasing prayer, the intentional awareness of God in each moment:
My cell phone rumbles on the nightstand beside my bed. I press “snooze” and roll over hoping to give my body another five minutes of sleep. But my mind is already pulled into the day. It’s already praying—unbidden by any effort or conscious suggestion of my will. But it’s not until I’m half way through my shower, twenty minutes later, that I realize I’m praying, but it’s a very unflattering and unhelpful form of unceasing, interior prayer.
From the moment my alarm went off I’d been thinking—planning, solving, managing, worrying, dreaming. Dozens and dozens of thoughts jostling about in my brain, clamoring for my attention. Wrestling, hollering, coming and going, elbowing each other out of the way, trying to gain an audience before the Seat of my soul. One of them wanted to remind me of the tough pastoral problem I’d have to face in a few hours. Another started to list the emails I’d need to get through by late morning. Still others pulled me back to things yesterday, tomorrow, and even further down the road—things that both worried me and excited me. A memory paraded itself across the screen of my mind, and with it came an emotion reminding me of my great loneliness, the reality that my marriage was falling apart, my sense of powerlessness and failure. And then, the emotion, strong enough to hold all other thoughts at bay for a while, finally gave way to the crowd of thoughts pressing at the door. They came tumbling in like a horde of ruffians looking like they’d just broke through a castle gate. In a flash, I was back to alternating between plans for a meeting, writing emails, preparing a sermon, and wondering what I’d fix my sons and me for dinner tonight.
A re-posting from November 7, 2009
In this brief video, I describe the place along Big Sur where I spend a few weeks each year in solitude seeking God. You not only get a window into the natural beauty of the setting, but also into my rhythm of prayer. I also describe the simple practice of arousing the 5 senses as a way to a deeper encounter with God. All at the New Camaldoli Hermitage.
In this short video, I meet with you at dawn at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. I'm on a weeklong prayer retreat, and in this video introduce you to a simple practice for not only awakening to the new day, but to an experience of prayer that includes all your senses, and therefore by-passes mere thoughts about God to meet with the real presence of God. I tell the story of a man who'd felt a growing distance between what he knew in his heart about God and what he was actually experiencing. This is an invitation to spiritual awakening.
Regarding prayer to the saints---we Protestants aver. Why?
If we "believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints," (which we do), and if we can appeal to another human being for prayer on our behalf (which we also do), then why neglect so great a community of hallowed disciples as intercessors?
Unless we really don't believe or understand what we confess.
These to whom we appeal are not run-of-the-mill humans---they are saints, whose form of life is simple, humble, kind, holy--with whom God is in greater communion by virtue of their proven sanctity, their abandonment to God.
It's not sufficient to deny prayer to saints because it's "too Roman." We must think better than that. More biblically. More theologically. More mystically. We must not be taken captive by our "Protest" and our uncritical immersion in Enlightenment rationality.
And if we can appeal to the saints gone before us and bridge the thin barrier between worlds, what then of Mary, mother of our Lord? She is not divine, not confused with Christ, or a rival of the Trinity. But she is one whose virtue makes her particularly efficacious in her prayers and intercession and guidance. Further, is she one who, by the grace she begs from our Lord on our behalf, can give birth to a broader transformation of our lives, the formation of Christ in us?
Of course! Pray to the Holy Trinity with fervor. But don't neglect the grace that may come to you through the intercession of one of God's special ones, especially if they're special to you and you to them.