Unceasing prayer isn't pious exaggeration

Here’s the second of three posts relating our thoughts to the practice of unceasing prayer, the intentional awareness of God in each moment (it follows the post, The daily thought parade):

It was in the middle of all this that I realized I was praying.  I wasn’t just thinking, I was prostrate before the unholy trinity of Hurry, Worry, and Vanity.  My interior life was fully engaged, alert, and devoted to adoring this unholy Three unceasingly, from the moment my alarm buzzed me awake, until this very moment of awareness.  And, I figured, they’d probably been at it all through the night as well.

Then in a moment of reverie, birthed by a sudden ray of light, I laughed out loud. St. Paul urged those who love God to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.17), and “pray in the Spirit at all times” (Ephesians 6.18).  But up till now, I’d considered them hyperbole, pious exaggeration, the enthusiasm of a saint.  But in this flash of insight, it dawned on me that St. Paul’s advice wasn’t to be dismissed.  I shouldn’t ask, “Can I pray without ceasing?”  Instead, the real question is, “To What or to Whom do I pray unceasingly?”

At that moment, I figured that if unceasing, interior prayer to those unholy gods, Hurry, Worry, and Vanity, can rise so easily within me, why can’t I pray unceasingly to the Holy Trinity?  Right then and there I wagered that if I can be this focused on worldly things and endlessly vexed by them, I could also be full of God, learning to rest in the Spirit, and in the midst of the active life that is mine, bring a sense of peace and wholeness and joy that transforms all of life.

The daily thought parade

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.

When you're stuck in a moment you can't get out of

So much of the talk about living in the present or making every moment a meditation can sound pretty glib to those whose present moment feels something like the U2 song, "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." What if the present moment is not a very nice place to be?  What if you don't want to be here, now?  What if you feel downright stuck and wish you could be anywhere but here?

In response to a recent post on this site, Linda asks, "Do you have advice on how to experience the gift of the moment when you really prefer not to be in it at all?"

For people who feel stuck in such a moment, I'm pretty guarded about giving advice.  Companionship, empathy . . . yes.  But advice will probably ring hollow to those whose present moment may be full of physical or emotional pain, despair, loss, fear, or debilitating mental distress.

I can say this much.  I've known my share of moments I'd prefer not to have lived through.  I'd have given just about anything to be anywhere but stuck in a moment I couldn't get out of.  I also know that there was no getting through those moments in any other way than living through them.  Wishing I could be anywhere else was natural, even understandable, but not very helpful. By wanting to be somewhere else I evacuated myself from the only place I could really be.

The only way through such moments is through them . . . as frightening as that may be.

Here are three practices I've learned from my own painful dwelling in such moments--ABCs for living in a moment you can't get out of:

1. Awareness.  Take stock of yourself.  Check in with your body, your blood pressure, signs of anxiety.  Awareness is the gift of freedom from being hooked by a past you cannot fix and a future you cannot control.  What you have is this moment.  Like it or not, it's the only moment you've got.

2. Breathe. When we want to be elsewhere, your breath becomes shallow.  Conscious breathing is the best way for you to move into awareness.  Breathe.  In and out.  It's is a spiritual and bodily practice that can't help but pulls you back into this moment.

3. Compassion. Reach out to yourself as if you are a friend in need.  You're apt to show others more compassion than you do yourself.  Compassion requires awareness of your real situation and whispers to of grace, saying, "All shall be well."

For a helpful article by neurologist, Dr. Robert Scaer on trauma, see The Precarious Present: Why is it so hard to stay in the present? Especially the final section and it's practical suggestions.

Can I experience more than fleeting moments?

About my last post, Struggling to live in the present, Joe and Linda ask good questions about experiences common to so many of us.  I'll address Joe's today, and Linda's later. He asks: Is it possible to have more that a brief moment during the day to enjoy being in the presence of our creator?

The experience Joe asks about is common to nearly all of us. We may have brief glimpses of real beauty and wonder, then live oblivious to it all in the push and pull of daily life until we collapse at day's end--too numb to seek God at all. We're not cloistered monks. We live beyond the sacred wall, amid the hustle and bustle of urban life. Few of us can change that, and there's no reason we should. But we can change is how we experience the busyness.

Is busyness an obstacle to enjoying the presence of our creator, or is our active life an opportunity to open more fully to the Presence Who is always present?

A true Christian spirituality (as with Buddhism, Sufism, and other spiritual traditions) affirms the latter.  The former view will leave us frustrated, but the latter awakens us to the presence of God who is always right here, right now.  The present is, frankly, all we have.  And the presence is where we encounter God.  But we're often so fixated on the past, or anxious about the future that we're anywhere but the place (the only place!) we can meet God.

I'm in favor of periods of stillness and silence and solitude. Gobs of it. But I'm not in favor of using stillness as an escape. Moments of ecstasy in stillness or rapture before a sunset merely makes it possible for us to live with more attentiveness to the Presence in times chaos and fear and noise.

So . . .

• Take care not to experiencing the presence of God as an either/or thing.
• Awaken now.
• If you're harassed and harried right now, if this moment is an ugly one and you don't want to be here now, acknowledge it; wake up to that truth.
• Awareness of my experience of the present is the key to living in the present.

Struggling to live in the present?

There's plenty that can keep us locked in the past or fixated on the future, anywhere but the present.

Some of you are asking (especially on Facebook) if it's really possible to live intentionally, here and now in the midst our busy lives--in a traffic jam, working in a chaotic office, tending a pair of screaming infants, arguing a case in a crowded courtroom.  Can we do it late in life when our minds feel a bit more like sieves, and our old habits seem hard to break?

Yes, we can.  In any place and at any age we can wake up to the gift of each moment.

That said, there are forces at work in us that keep us everywhere but the present.  And we must be honest about them.

We try to sit still.  We seek God in wordless prayer.  We try to focus on one task as we sit at our computers.  We try to be present before the one we love but our brains think they're a Twitter account with 10,000 friends--a new tweet arrives with each new moment and we can't seem to resist a quick glance.

If you can't stay in the present, congratulations, you're part of the human race.

• You're not weak.
• You're not spiritually inferior.
• And you don't lack that prayer-gene that your friend seemed get in spades.

Welcome to the journey.  Learning to live in the present is gonna take some work.