Begin with a simple, affective, preparatory prayer

In the previous post, I wrote that Richard Methley urged us to begin the brief episodes of simple prayer scattered throughout the day "with a simple, affective, preparatory prayer." Here's one of my little poem-prayers I offer when I begin my morning prayers. It recognizes the wild dogs that bite and nip at my heals---the distractions that keep me unfocused and scattered. And it summons me to the one thing that really matters.

We never know what hounds us so, until the desert kills the dogs. Then naked and alone we cross the narrow gate, and find the kingdom known as God's.

Arrived, we owe no debt to yesterday, No anxious glance tomorrow's way. The present gives us all we need, for here and now our hearts are freed to love, and from Your river stoop and feed.

Toward a simple rhythm of daily prayer

Okay, so here's a lesson from the 14th century to the 21st. Maybe you'd prefer something a bit more modern, up-to-date. I assure you there's nothing more up-to-date for the living of these days than some instruction from a century a lot like our own---instruction that's been treasured now for some seven centuries. Richard Methley, a teacher of the life of prayer in our turbulent world, describes his own practice of daily prayer (this comes from James Walsh's introduction to the Cloud of Unknowing, pages 17-18).

Methley instructed those who seek God to go to their accustomed place of prayer, concentrate the whole attention on God, hide from every creature, close the eyes, and begin with a simple, affective, preparatory prayer (like the Jesus Prayer).

His own habit was to get away from the distractions of daily life for three brief episodes---at dawn, noon, and just before sleep---for up to 15 minutes. Just a brief and simple dip into the Holy. He practiced a longer season after supper---a half hour.

My own practice has settled into a similar rhythm. Most people, with a little renovation of their lives can improvise on this instruction. Lots of folks do similar things with other occupations---reading the paper, smoking breaks, watching TV, a Starbucks run.

You may tell yourself you have no real time to pray. Frankly, you'd be surprised at how much time you actually do have. But you'll have to put a little muscle behind shifting things around.

The key is not to bite off more than you can chew as you're making the renovations.  A little time here and there goes a long, long way.

Painful things can hold exquisite beauty in its place

Usually, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I come to the end of a book.  I close the book and put it back on the shelf and feel no compulsion to reread it.  But once in a blue moon, I come the end of a book and grieve reading the last few sentences.  I'll never again get to read the book for the first time. In 2006, I felt that way with Will Dalyrimple's, From the Holy Mountain.  This morning, I read the final word, "Selah," in Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, paused, and wept.

The Red Tent is a deeply moving retelling of the biblical story of Jacob's kin, told from the vantage point of the women.  It's a tale of rare beauty, terrible brutality, and of suffering redeemed.

After these grueling years of my own suffering, I find my journey reframed by this ancient tale freshly retold.  After brokenness and loss and death, a new wholeness is coming.  After her own long, hard road of suffering, Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob says, "The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place."

I like that.  Pain made beautiful.  Somehow---both a gift of God and the fruit of our own dogged determination to put one foot in front of the other.  Pain is not forgotten or trivialized.  Rather, there comes a point when you begin to realize that your knotty pain is keeping the beads of an exquisite beauty in place.  You awaken to realize that even death has lost its cruel sting.

Suffering and death, no longer enemies, become "the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art.  Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death."

Suffering winnows and refines until only love remains.  If it does that---if we allow it to do that---death will lose its sting.  And suffering becomes our teacher.

Solomon once said that "love is strong as death."  He was wrong.  It's stronger.  For love alone is immortal---and so are we, when our suffering's stripped us of every lesser thing.

PTSD and spiritual practice

A reader commented on my recent post, Suffering doesn't mean tolerating abuse.  What she says is very important, and adds urgency to what I've said before.

I really appreciate the awareness you're been fostering concerning mental illness, especially depression. It's something that is highly stigmatized and misunderstood, and too often dismissed in church communities. I would like to bring up another mental illness that is also misunderstood, dismissed, and often not even believed to exist: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD).

Your description of an abuse victim suffering from an internal abuser after the external abuse has stopped is, I believe, a classic description of PTSD. And though I don't think you were at all trying to imply in your post that abuse is something one should just be able to "get over", and I agree that the process of getting out of one's thoughts can be helpful in the healing process.  But I think that a sufferer of PTSD usually needs a lot more.

Too often in our culture communities tend to deny the abuse itself, as well as the fallout---the reality of the symptoms of PTSD, which are the normal human response to trauma. The further tragedy is that PTSD is highly treatable with a number of therapeutic approaches, but most abuse victims don't get the treatment they need, either because they don't know about it or because it's really expensive.

The big thing I would like to stress is that the symptoms of PTSD, including the feelings you describe in your post, are not the result of any kind of failing on the part of the victim, and that to imply that they are does further damage to the sufferer.

I don't think you're implying this, but a reader who suffers from PTSD might misunderstand you---since one of the symptoms often related to PTSD is the way the sufferer feels responsible for and guilty of the things that one suffers, even though that's not the case.  And given the pervasiveness of abuse in our culture (statistically more American women have been raped than hold college degrees), it's probable that you have quite a number of PTSD sufferers among your readers.

Again, I greatly appreciate your engaging in discussion of mental illness. It's terribly important and necessary, and we can't have healing in our society without such discussion.

For an excellent treatment of the relationship between spiritual practices like meditation and emotional distress like PTSD see this brief article by Dr.Robert Scaer.

Is unceasing prayer a pious fantasy or the fountain of contentment?

Unceasing prayer a pious fantasy? Are St. Paul's words hyperbole? Three years ago in the deserts of Egypt, I decided I must know. I'd gone to a remote monastery seeking wisdom for my life. Instead I discovered the secret, not just of unceasing prayer, but of a deep interior contentment that nothing can steal (I've written the tale of this journey in my free ebook, Returning to the Center).

An occasional journal entry posted here will track my journey. This comes from September 10, 2007 in the midst of a very busy week:

If I can keep my mind active and busy with the clutter of competing and distracted thoughts, thoughts that keep me unbalanced and focused on external matters, surely I can exercise the mind toward active, interior prayer---a praying that moves from the recitation of the Psalms, through the Jesus Prayer, into the prayer of the heart, and watchfulness over my interior landscape.

Surely, with God's help, I can trade my "praying" to all these lesser gods that seek my allegiance for the pure prayer that anchors me in Jesus Christ, unites me with the inner life of the Holy Trinity.

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