Scripture

Prayer is more than words, but it’s got to start with words if it’s to go beyond them and into the Great Silence, which is the language of God. So, as you seek the Ineffable, consider well the words you gather yourself. You’ve chosen the psalms as a guide to prayer. They’ve involved you in the particular style of language used by those who’ve found trustworthy paths into the Mystery. So now, having spoken—or better, sung a psalm—gather yourself around a little fire made of the words of God’s prophets, sages, and apostles and dwell there for a awhile.

Your time with them needn’t be long. Just a few minutes, attentive before this fire you’re building for yourself is enough to warm you up to God. But take care that you don’t overdo it. You need kindling, not the branch of a tree. These words are incendiary, and just a few will kindle a blaze. But that doesn’t mean more is better—drop too much Scripture onto this traveler’s fire, and you’ll do more harm than good. Your religious ego might tell you that you ought to read a whole chapter and study it thoroughly, while the irreligious part of you hollers that you don’t have the time for any of it; you’ve got a project to get to or kids to take to school. Truth is, you do have time for what your heart needs most—just a twig is enough to keep this fire of your faith burning.

My practice is to read very slowly through, say, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Song of Songs . . . one or two verses a day. My aim is just to gather around Scripture, awakening my heart to God, feeding the flame of devotion.

So, take a little text, and let it first rest in your mind. Then draw the words down into your heart and let them dwell there. Allow a single word or phrase or image to focus your attention. You may be intrigued by it, confused, or even repulsed. The point is not to do anything about your response, but rather simply to experience it. You’re not to think about this encounter as much as you are to look at it and sit with it, dwelling with these written words that come from someone else’s living encounter with the One you seek. You’re reading is intentionally different from how you read other words; read for intimacy not for information, for love not for knowledge.

This is sacred reading. Just light a little fire and wait for God, you never know when a nearby bush, or something else, may go up in flames (Exodus 3.1-6).

For more meditations on the Daily Guide/Rule of Life, click on the blog category, “Daily Guide/Rule of Life”

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The art of prayer and love: on flirting

Each Sunday this fall, our congregation is sitting with the Song of Songs (or Solomon) and listening for the ways this racy, erotic, playful love poem seeks to awaken our love for God and to arouse love within marriage and dating. We're calling the series of sermons, "Romancing God: The Art of Prayer and Love." It's a daring enterprise, trying to hold together the summons to spiritual and relational love, but in the history of spirituality, it's just these two that must go together if we're to experience the health and vibrancy we seek. Here's a link to a recent sermon on the second chapter of the Song of Songs. And below is a little sample of the message that focused on flirting and fantasy (with God and your beloved):

First, here's a little about the flirting commended by the text. Note the playfulness. 2.1: she speaks, minimizing her beauty, fishing for a compliment. 2.2: he’s not too dull to notice and artfully (and wisely) replies. 2.3-4: she reciprocates, returning and magnifying the compliment and is aroused by the interchange. (In this we see that love requires a game, playfulness, flirting takes tact). 2.5: she becomes faint and asks her friends to give her nourishment; passion burns energy. 2.6: she yearns in her heart for him, and then warns her jealous girlfriends against pushing for love prematurely; wait, ladies, it’ll come to you (2.7).

In these days of seriousness, rocky marriages and romances need to recover the playfulness of flirting. Flirting keeps you in the game, and when you’re playing the game, the relationship is interesting. Here flirting is different from being a “tease.” A tease seeks to arouse in order to hold power over the other. Teasers make bad lovers; they are unwilling to give themselves away for love. They only want attention. But flirting is a genuine invitation to dance, a gesture of openness, a willingness to give-in to love. In romantic flirting, there’s a tenderness, a warmth, a humor, a vulnerability. This kind of flirting is a blessing extended to the other.

So, why has honest flirting within marriage virtually disappeared? Why does marriage often seem like the end of courtship rather than the beginning of a lifetime of play? How does this biblical text and the thousands of years of lovers who’ve read and cherished it invite us to renew the game, learn to flirt again, and awaken love?

Continued in the online sermon.

Psalms, part 2

When you want to ascend too quickly, the psalms will grab you by the heel and pull you back to earth. With the psalms there’s no posturing or pretending before God—no tidy language offered to God, no flowery nonsense. Angry? There are psalms to help you voice your rage. Confused? There are psalms for that too. And there are psalms that’ll give you words when you’re holding a newborn, when your bank account's overdrawn, your lover’s betrayed you, cancer’s trying to kill you, the government’s a mess, or you’re standing in awe before a sunset. The psalms pull all the anatomy of the human soul onto the path toward God—nothing inappropriate, unwelcome, or excluded. They'll penetrate your pretension and puncture your denial; they'll make you more human, and therefore more nearly divine. Pray a psalm a day. If it’s long, pray part of it. And I suggest you chant or sing it. After all, the word, psalm, means “song.” Merely speaking a psalm is inconsistent with its nature—a little like using a spoon as a mirror; sure, you’ll see yourself, but poorly.

There are, of course, techniques for chanting the psalms, and there are many good books to help you. But I urge you to simply try it. Just gently let your voice interpret the words you’re singing—in your own way, a simple, even faltering little tune. Look, you’re not giving a performance; you’re sitting before the One who takes great delight in whatever you offer; and you’re offering these old words just as they instruct you to offer them, as a “new song” rising from your heart (Psalm 96.1).

And as you do, God smiles. Guaranteed.

For more meditations on the Daily Guide/Rule of Life, click on the blog category, “Daily Guide/Rule of Life”

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Psalms, part 1

In prayer, Christ is leading you up the holy mountain and into an encounter that will lead you speechless (Mark 9.2-8). But you’ll never reach the peaks of prayer without sauntering the well-worn paths through the valleys and along the ridges of the psalms. When you pray the psalms, you’re praying the prayers Jesus prayed. He knew them by heart and carried them with him wherever he went. Praying the psalms involved him in a tradition that was already a thousand years old. When you pray them now, you’re following a path that’s led people up the holy mountain for over three thousand years. Some people look at these old, crusty prayers and think they can bypass them. They want the rarified air, the glorious views, the transforming vision found at the heights of meditation and contemplation. They don’t like paths—they want shortcuts; they don’t want to walk where others have walked before.

In the fourth through sixth century, the deserts of the Middle East were populated by daring and sometimes foolish God-seekers. The Roman Empire was collapsing and many were seeking firm ground to stand on. The deserts became home to some of the wisest, sanest saints alive. But they also held the bleached bones of fools who tried to soar too quickly, pioneering types who thought they didn’t need paths, and figured they could get along without guides. The wise knew better and said so: “If you see a brother trying to climb into heaven,” they taught, “grab him by the heel and pull him back to earth.”

For more meditations on the Daily Guide/Rule of Life, click on the blog category, “Daily Guide/Rule of Life”

Click here to read or pray the Daily Guide/Rule of Life

'Till the mind is ravished

Notes from my reading of the Pursuit of Wisdom (by the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, 14th century), taken during my study at Oxford, summer 2007: "You must gather together your thoughts and your desires and make of them a church, and there learn to love only this good word Jesus, so that all your desires and thoughts are directed to love Jesus alone. And do not fail in this mindfulness, insofar as it is possible by grace and your frailty will permit, humbling yourself more and more in prayer and taking counsel, patiently waiting on the will of the Lord, until the mind is ravished above itself to be fed with the sweet food of angels in the beholding of God and godly things."