Curved in upon ourselves

Much of our lives are spent curved in upon ourselves—closed up within, and closed down to the Divine. But there comes a time when each human heart receives an invitation to awaken to the Light that radiates from the Center, Source, and Substance of all things—to open what was once closed, to curve outward in a gesture of receptivity, like a chalice awaiting the wine.

Many of us ignore that this summons to come home; we minimize it, deny it, struggle against it.

When we do, we remain restless— vagabonds wandering this earth, searching and searching but never finding . . . until we awaken to the invitation to come home to the Light manifest in Jesus, who is, astonishingly, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, Love who gives life to all, our eternal Home.

Awakening to prayer

Prayer—conscious, intentional, and in the words of St Paul, “unceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.12)—is the highest expression of our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. Prayer, when we are awake to it, is life.

When you consciously and intentionally enter into the prayer that is always going on around and within you, you become spiritually active, free, and more fully aware that you are alive to more than your “self-made me” and its many compulsions, anxieties, and obsessions that keep you curved in upon yourself, fallen into the sin that separates you and contracts you and closes you off from the presence of the Beloved who is always near, and whose prayer is always calling you to the friendship that is prayer.

We exist by prayer as we exist by breathing

Prayer can be and should be as natural as breathing—for we were made to pray just as we were made to breathe. The Bible tells us that in the beginning, God gently lifted the formless clay of the earth, cherished it lovingly, then kissed it and breathed life into it (Genesis 2.7). Prayer then is the experience of this tender intimacy, this reunion with the One who made us and loves us and who sustains us still by the Divine Breath.

Whether we know it or not, we exist by prayer just as we exist by breathing—God’s prayer for us and the prayer of our heart, which is always praying with each and every breath, each and every beating of our heart. Whether we’re mindful or not of this praying doesn’t matter.

Prayer is.

And without prayer—the sacred relationship shared by Creator and creation—things simply would not be.

Prayer is . . .

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).

Prayer helps you stay put in the present

Here is the third in a series relating our thoughts to the practice of unceasing prayer, the intentional awareness of God in each moment. It follows two other posts, The daily thought parade, and Unceasing prayer is no pious exaggeration.

So, standing there, water splashing down upon my head, baptizing me anew, I tried a little experiment. I gathered all these thoughts down into my heart. I made my heart a sanctuary and invited my mind to come to full attention before Jesus Christ. From that center, the chapel of my heart—where that ruffian horde of preoccupations and distractions were no longer in charge—I simply gave myself to the moment. I reveled in the clean smell of lavender soap, the holiness of nakedness, the too-easily-missed glory of thousands of little beads of water, reflecting the morning’s light, running in golden rivulets down the glass door of my shower stall. It was prayer. I was ecstatic, alive to the goodness of God, to God above all, and to myself, fully present to it all.

The command to “pray without ceasing” is not an exaggeration or an experience only for monks and mountain mystics. All of us think without ceasing . . . no exceptions. The mind never shuts off. And if that’s true, we can pray without ceasing. For at heart, prayer helps us to take charge of our thoughts. Prayer helps us resist being defined by our thoughts. Prayer helps us stay put in the present, in real life, alert to the seductions of those thoughts that want to carry us away into illusion, fantasy, and anxiety. Alert to God, we draw those ruffians down into the chapel of the heart where they swear their allegiance to Jesus Christ, and then, put in their rightful place, re-ordered and realigned, our thoughts can do what they are meant to do: help us live life rather than fret over it.

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.

A re-posting from November 11, 2009