What prayer is meant to be

It seems to me that so much of my praying is rather tame, routine.  And that's not wholly bad.  Expecting to soar in ecstasy always is, frankly, a little hard on the equipment we mortals are given.  But ecstasy does come to those who wait.  Even once in a blue moon is enough.

Teach Us To Pray

And this is what I saw—

Leviathan leaping, full length, in radiant delight, up from the dark depths of Mystery.

The night sky, clear; the moon full, casting its silver light across the whale-fractured sea.

And then she crashes, full length. A million silver shards dancing their holy glee.

As she disappears again into the dark, silent depths, to soak in Thee.

Why then pray like some dead fish in this, God’s sea?

Dance, fly, play, plunge. That’s what prayer is meant to be.

Looking in the right place

A colleague of mine and I were recently chatting about fostering an active spirituality in our congregations. He said, "We're so busy living the life we believe we're suppose to live, we don't have (or take time) to discover the life God has already created in us." Yes, we too often live the shoulds and oughts that keep us always looking elsewhere than where the life we seek is really taking place--right here, now . . . within us.   The Holy Spirit offers an inner witness, if we know where to look.

If this is what you're looking for, I recommend a remarkable series called: Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton. It's an 8 booklet set of 8 sessions each for private or group reflection. I'm using it in my spiritual formation course at the university now and plan to use it in the congregation in the future.

The second in the series is called "Becoming Who You Already Are"--a journey into the revelation of God in us.

For those seeking to go deeper still, the author of the 14th century Cloud of Unknowing (an English spiritual director), writes a little book called, "The Book of Privy Counsel." Here's a link to a lovely new translation of both Privy and the Cloud. In the second chapter he summons us to focus not on what we are, but that we are. That is a spiritual practice with revolutionary consequences.

Here's what I've said and written recently about the merit of the 14th century for an active spirituality today.

Suffering doesn't mean tolerating abuse

Some disliked my choice of wording in a previous post. When I say, "When you're Real, you don't mind being hurt," it feels to them like I'm saying, "you don't care that you're hurt"---suffer, no matter, what comes your way.

I do not mean to say anything like that. If a woman is being abused, it would be wrong for me to suggest she should not care about being hurt. She should care and so should the rest of us. And she should do what it takes to end the abuse, move away from it, get help, seek justice, stand up for her God-breathed dignity---and us, with her.

When I say that "you don't mind being hurt," what I mean is that you want to get to the point where you're no longer getting hooked by your thoughts over and over again, obsessing in your mind about the wrong done to you, living unconsciously about the way your thoughts can drive you into a doom-loop of cognitive captivity.

My focus is your thought life. If with your feet you must walk away, if you need to protect your body, then by all means possible, do so.

And when you're free and have the safety to do so, then enter into a healing process so you can learn to let go of the outrage that can fester and hold you prisoner to the abuse you once experienced. Relinquish the resentment. Give up your grievance. You can do so, by becoming aware that of the fact that you will suffer, but your suffering doesn't have to define you. No one wants to suffer, but all of us will---some of us in awful ways. And I do not intend to minimize or render people passive to the inhumanity of some forms of suffering.

Instead, I want to invite you into a way to be honest about your suffering, while not tolerating the kind of suffering no human being should have to suffer.  The resurrection of Jesus means at least this:  Life is at work in you and will not rest until you are fully alive, fully free.  So, you should no longer tolerate abuse.  Neither should you let suffering define you, imprison you, or keep you suffering over your suffering.

Unless you learn to stop suffering over your suffering, the abuse will never stop, even if you're now living in safety. The abuse has just moved inside, into the realm of your mind. Your abuser is no longer outside you, but inside you. The thoughts of your mind have become the abuser, and your mind is much more difficult to escape.

Facing depression this Holy Saturday

This site focuses on awakening the spiritual life.  Frankly that's easier said that done.  Sometimes there are forces at work in us that make awakening on our own pretty damn tough, if not downright impossible. Holy Saturday seems an apt time to reflect on the nature of depression and the spiritual life.  We live most of our lives somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  And for millions of people clinical depression can make us feel so far from Easter that it's announcement of life's triumph over death seems little more than whistling in the dark.

The recent and tragic death of a cherished friend has made me more more aware and sensitive to the effects of depression, as well as the dangerous and debilitating stigma we still attach for mental illness.  We must work much harder to remove this stigma, and find ways to stand with and support suffers and their families so that clinical depression is no longer a hidden and isolating disease.

Here's a link to a remarkably candid and healing interview on Speaking of Faith---one of my favorites podcasts (you can download the MP3 or just listen to in on your computer; see the links under the photo banner; it reads like this: SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 53:18) ¦ » Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:00) ¦ » Podcast).  If you prefer, here's a link to the written transcript.

In it Krista Tippet not only engages a few remarkable people who explore their own experiences with depression from a spiritual perspective, but she shares her own journey through the darkness.

I commend it to all with the prayer that a thin ray of Easter's light may break in upon us and help us find healing---both in us and through us.

Seek the answer here

The life of prayer carries us into the way of the Cross. It's a stripping, a nakedness, and a dying.  But who wants that?   Nobody . . . unless letting go of all this also involves a receiving.  You'll only detach yourself from what you hold dear if there's a compensating attachment to Something greater. On this Good Friday (good, because the way of death leads to Something greater, the fulness of Life itself) here's is a meditation from St. Bonaventure that invites you onto this path.  This way of "darkness, not daylight," dying, silencing, and nothingness "carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love."

If the conventional ways aren't working for you, if you know suffering and darkness, if death's come near, and what's dear to you has been pulled from your hands, if you've got more questions than answers . . . you're closer to God than you think.

Seek the answer in God's grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom, not the teacher; darkness, not daylight; and look not ot the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love. Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness, silencing our anxieties, our passions, and all the fantasies of our imagination.