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.

A re-posting from November 9, 2009

Trading gods

If I can keep my mind active and busy with the clutter of competing and distracting thoughts that keep me unbalanced and focused on external matters, surely I can exercise the mind toward active, interior prayer that moves from psalms, prayers, and the recitation of the Jesus Prayer, to the prayer of the heart and watchfulness over my interior landscape. Surely, with God's help, I can trade the primitive "prayer" to the idols that seek my allegiance for prayer that anchors me in Jesus and unites me with the inner life of the Holy Trinity.

Surely, if I can "pray" unceasingly to such false gods, I can pray to the true God---for I have God's help and nothing pleases God more.

Breathe

A lot is written about the techniques and benefits of breathing for physical, emotional, and spiritual health.  Sometimes Christians dismiss this teaching as un-Christian, something they must avoid. I've written about the use of the breath in the Jesus Prayer.  I've also offered you an example of a Breathing Prayer.  That other religious and non-religious practices celebrate the use of the breath doesn't make the breath less important for Christians.  In fact the opposite is true.  The use of the breath universally is evidence that it is from God.

Remember, the breath is at the core of the biblical and spiritual tradition.

In the beginning the Spirit (Breath) of God came upon the earth (Genesis 1.1ff). After the Resurrection, Jesus entered the upper room and breathed on the disciples and they received the Spirit (Breath) of God. At the new beginning (the church) the Holy Spirit (Breath of God) came upon the church (Acts 2).

With such biblical evidence of the priority of the breath for hooking up with God, why resist it. When you don't breathe you die. When you're stressed, your breathing becomes shallow (and you're moving toward death). But when you open to God, and breathe in great gulps of the Spirit, you live.

Don't grieve the Holy Spirit by resisting the practice of breathing as prayer. Instead, draw in the fullness of the Spirit with deepening breaths.

A sure way during the day to come back to your senses in Christ is to simply return to your breath and let the Name of Jesus rise and fall with each breath.

Then smile.  You're alive.  Exquisitely, unexplainably alive.  A true miracle.

The kiss of God

Notes from my reading of the Ancrene Wisse, a medieval guide for anchorites (early 13th century); taken during my study at Oxford, summer 2007. Here's a lovely meditation on the priority of the heart, and the tenderness of the One we seek in prayer:

"'Protect your heart well with every kind of defense, daughter,' says Solomon, 'for if she is well locked away, the soul's life is in her,' (Proverbs 4.23). The Heart is a most wild beast and makes many a light leap out. As St. Gregory says, nichil corde fugiatus, 'nothing flies out of a person sooner than their own heart. . . .'"

"'Do what you should here and you will be fair elsewhere, not only among women but among angels. You, my worldly spouse,' says our Lord, 'will you follow the goats, which are the lusts of the flesh, to the field?'--the field is desire's breeding ground. 'Will you follow goats through the field in this way? You should beseech me for kisses within your heart's bower, as my lover, who says to me in the book of love: 'Let my lover kiss me with the kids of his mouth, the sweetest of mouths,' (Canticles 1.1). This kiss, dear sisters, is a sweetness and a delight of the heart so immeasurably sweet that every taste of the world is bitter compared with it. But our Lord kisses no soul with this kiss who loves anything but him, and those things it helps to have for his sake."

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.