Quaker Prayer
QUAKER PRAYER
Prayer is a problem. If we obtained exactly what we asked, I suppose it wouldn’t be; prayer is education.
1. Is it valid for us to pray for others?—This is a question of experienced pray-ers. Is it not unavoidable and an essential step, to pray for others? When people have practiced prayer seriously for a long time, they make distinctions between prayer stages. To recover from a state of atrophy is impossible without sustained & exacting effort. As prayer is growth of spirit, growth of consciousness, it represents mental conflict.
Prayer that does not raise as many questions as it answers, is a prayer which will be driven deeper by God’s challenging silence to its easy, obvious appeals for help; God wants first to question us. We must confess both our ignorance and our very mixed motives. Have our keenest prayers, perhaps the first we ever offered with whole-hearted intensity, been to know God better and to love Him more?
Our wish to pray for others certainly assures a degree of selflessness, but not necessarily enough make our prayer fully efficacious. The more we would understand others, the more we must learn of God; the more we would love and serve others the more we must serve God. Catherine of Genoa said [to a maid asking for help for her dying husband]: “The first thing you must know is that at this moment God is not alienated from him, and therefore cares for him more than it is possible for you or me at our very best to care for him. [Asking only] “Thy will be done” is a greater service to the soul [than asking for] anything specific; sufferers are raised out of their accepted suffering, and attains to a new level of consciousness.
How can God endure for God’s creature to be in this pass? I don't think it is possible for us to grow in spirituality, in prayer in the life of the companionship of God without such crises & the necessary pain [that comes from them]. Is it not then an essential step in our knowledge of God & our trust in God to pray for others, & then watch God? God will at times give the very reverse, give what we feared. [And we may] finally admit “That was the best thing which could have happened, but it was superhumanly brilliant and cunning."
2. Will praying for others be productive of constructive results in securing peace?—The Gospel of John says: “Peace I leave with you, my peace, I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. “Without prayer there can be no “producing constructive results in securing peace.” What is peace? There are 3 levels of peace: peace in our hearts; [peace with and of God]; peace toward our fellows. Below the critical, contriving, level of the mind is a great depth of those absolute assurances where the basic will resides. God has made this [physical] world for us. God has made us to come to God. I don’t think God gives us to know what peace toward our fellows will look like politically or economically.
God, because God is Presence and is always entirely present, is unaffected by the “fact” that there is a past which is irrevocably finished and done with, fixed and settled forever, and a future which is wholly unknown and non-existent. If anyone wants to be free to do good, the first thing is for one to come close to God. [Because] it never takes God any time to do anything, we are making [with our prayer], the deepest, most constructive and most instant results in securing [God’s] peace. [People] of God know 3 things: God exists, infinitely wise, loving, powerful, and concerned; God wishes to be known; we do not know God.
The great spiritual master Ruysbroek, said, “There are three stages of being: servant of God; friend of God; sons of God. Servants of God do great good in home and business, but have no message to offer. Friends of God produce a tremendous effect in their own society. Sons of God change history. A new epoch, a new age, a new civilization follows after their appearance.
3. How serious is the barrier presented by secular minds in the United Nations to our efforts to reach God through these men?
Does prayer have any effect on the wills of men who are indifferent to spiritual values?—What has God created this world for?
God has told us that people can come to God; has told us that they are free, that free will is an essential part of their contribution of God’s plan. So secular minds in the United Nation are able to be a barrier. But by apparent failure [of Jesus’ ministry,] which ended in “defeat,” a new epoch opened not for Palestine but for all of western humankind. If God has given us freewill, men may fight God to the end of time.
Materialism is dying. What we are witnessing in this decade is a battle between apt force (spirituality) & apt violence (to retain possessions). The Roman Church says some people pray for humankind. They pray with constant intensity & yet for nothing & no one in particular; it builds up a capital of prayer, an enormous force. The less we pray in particular, the more God can direct the place in time through which prayer force comes.
God sometimes tears away the veil of what we thought was the good, the obvious, visible way of helping people, and then there is released this invisible radiation, out from the very heart of God’s Being. The moment we can really attend to God, the moment we feel this terrible longing for him, distractions cease. God says: “You are not fit to pray efficiently and well, you shall pray at the level at which I choose you to pray.” The Cloud of Unknowing says, go on repeating some simple word, such as God or Love, over and over again on your heart beat. It costs a tremendous amount to pray for somebody who, one feels, is utterly wrong, but that prayer when it is prayed is forever to the credit of the soul waiting for it.
4. What can one do to stimulate the will to pray for others, in persons who ordinarily pray only for themselves?—The real truth is, as we know, there is no private salvation. To the degree that you can love [God and others], you are saved. You must be able to pray for others. To answer the [above question], we must impress upon them the fact that God is totally present. In response to those who pray and get “results” we may question them by eventually asking: Do you feel happy about it? Do you find your peace of mind has increased? Do you get on better with others? You may find that their “results” are not lasting ones. I think that
it is very important that people know to whom they are praying, and the nature of that Being to whom they pray.
5. Must we love someone before we can pray effectively for them?—[I make 2 lists]: the people from whom I have had great blessings; the people to whom I have been a stumbling block and frustration. I alternate between them. [For the latter list], the 2 of us go into the presence of God together, & eventually one will cease to be an obstacle to the other person. [In praying for the great evildoers of our age,] Can we despise [them] or what they do, & at the same time pray successfully for them? If I were in their position, could I have done better? We [usually] have only enough spiritual resources to keep evil in some check. The evil in me, to a certain extent, made it possible for that person to perish. [That] evil in me would drive me to the same place. The ego hates God & everybody but itself. It is held in some control by God’s grace and our religious exercises.
6. Is it to be expected that our prayer life will force us into an active program in the political & economic field? There are in this life people who: serve God through social service to others; have the intellectual love of God & learning/understanding; have a tremendous devotion to the person of God. My word to you is to beg that prayer be made an expert study and that there be a center where study and research can go on.
7. What is the relation in effectiveness between intensity over a prolonged prayer time and repeated short prayers? I have been able to study the great masters of prayer; [the repeated short prayer] was their prayer. That is what they did the whole time; it shot through all their actions. This practice does not disturb one’s occupation. [But] you cannot push people [into prayer]. It is the hunger for God that leads them to do it.
People, when they reach my age, suffer insomnia. What are they to do with their hours of rest? [They may not be able] to spend hours of the day in prayer, but there is not the slightest reason why they should not spend hours of the night in prayer. [For me] the terrific sense that God is sustaining the world, that God is conscious thought through whom alone all thought is at all possible, becomes completely dominating only at night. It is because at a deep powerful level we are cowards and disloyal that we cannot for so long command, when waking, the attention in prayer we would like to have. You can lie in bed and quietly repeat the name of God and think of God. And gradually you realize that God’s peace has come into your heart. A man who prays very deeply at night will not have any difficulty praying in the day, and you [now] become distracted towards God away from the incoherence of the world.
Other questions are: Are emotions involved in prayer? What should the pray-er’s personal feeling be? Is there too great an intensity of feeling? It is important that people should be aware with their minds, as well as with their heart that God is Present, [even] when they feel nothing. [&] the mind turns toward God, & offers life’s events. Everything takes on meaning in that light. Nothing is truly comprehensible seen otherwise.
8. Is prayer more effective when the person for whom you pray knows that you are praying for them?— Prayer is a form of high attention. If you are praying for someone at night, when your attention is high, you will probably very quickly get results, [and] the person may be aware of you in their mind. But prayer is much more
Other questions are: Are emotions involved in prayer? What should the pray-er’s personal feeling be? Is there too great an intensity of feeling? It is important that people should be aware with their minds, as well as with their heart that God is Present, [even] when they feel nothing. [&] the mind turns toward God, & offers life’s events. Everything takes on meaning in that light. Nothing is truly comprehensible seen otherwise.
8. Is prayer more effective when the person for whom you pray knows that you are praying for them?— Prayer is a form of high attention. If you are praying for someone at night, when your attention is high, you will probably very quickly get results, [and] the person may be aware of you in their mind. But prayer is much more
than attending to some other human being. [In order that our ego not presume too much, we need to remember that] no person has ever helped somebody with prayer. One stands aside, & asks God; God does the helping.
9. Are many individual prayers more effective than a smaller number of groups meeting for intercessory prayer?—Both methods must be used. The one whose prayer life is not deep is unlikely to be able to stand the austere strain of prayer in the presence of others. And someone who lives an exclusively private life & never prays with others has an incomplete life. [The words one uses in] prayer help to a certain point, and then, the moment style and phrase take the place of spirit and self-forgetfulness, then prayer stops though sound goes on. Slow down until each clause, each phrase, is only introduced to bring back the mind as it begins to wander.
[Focus on the spirit, and do not be distracted by the prayer itself.]
10. What bearing does quality of one’s own life have on effectiveness of one’s prayers for others?— We shall not know God unless we are pure of heart. Without an Act of Contrition, who can go into God’s Presence? And what are we doing as evidence of our contrition? God’s grace will keep us from the mortal, [planned and proposed] sins. But we are continually committing little sins of passion, dishonesty, arrogance, impatience, and [gossip]; those must be erased, because neglected they spread.
What shall we ask of those who respond to a call to prayer? They must be quite certain that God exists. [Once they know this], all else will follow. [Those who know God have been timid.] God, the Holy Ghost, speaks to us through intelligence, through love, through purity of living, & through understanding the knowledge God is ready to give us. [Mental health professionals will dismiss all prayer as autosuggestion]. This is nonsense; they don't know their stuff. Low prayer is autosuggestion. High prayer has nothing to do with to autosuggestion.
What helps can be offered? There are 3 things for which you must [give thanks for]: 1st for the human body; 2nd for the wish to know God; 3rd for the company of fellow-seekers. We must keep together. If we are not doing that, we are not taking the benefits we were meant to have and we are not giving them either. We help others, and they help us. We cannot be saved without others.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
339 Prayer: Beginning Again (by Sheila Keane; 1998)
About the Author—Sheila Keane is a graduate of the School of the Spirit's 1995-97 "On Being a Spiritual Nurturer" program; much of this pamphlet's content [is from there]. She was a Pendle Hill resident student while writing this. She is active as a spiritual nurturer & has a clinical and teaching practice as a physical therapist.
PREFACE—I didn't know enough about prayer, & I wanted to learn what others said about praying; something was missing. [This time] I prayed the learning, & that has made all the difference. I experimented with praying techniques & my own styles. I held open my intention to pray & talked about it. I interviewed 9 members of the 1996-97 Pendle Hill community. The prayer queries I used are listed at the [end of this summary]. This pamphlet's words & concepts were mostly given to me, re-discovered treasures. I invite you to pray this pamphlet.
Beginning Again/ What is Prayer?—After each new book or wise suggestion, I began again, full of enthusiasm. Then I lost momentum as I ran into the inevitable doubts and failures. This was my path, my entry into a sustained life of prayer: always beginning again, doing it over and over again.
Christians define prayer in terms of the content of prayer. There are prayers of: petition; intercession; worship; giving thanks; praise; confession; listening; meditation. I have found these ideas an inadequate description of a full life of prayer. I asked God: What is prayer? God said: "It is malchut, the place we meet. It is a feeling echoing, glowing in your core beyond words—which quiets, chastises, uplifts, comfort, and celebrates the One." There's an attitude, a way of being that is integral to the prayer. Without a deep voice from beyond the words of prayer, our ["praying"] can be shallow and inauthentic.
The desire for a relationship with God is often our entry point to prayer, and our desires are shaped by our prayers. [Along with our values, desires show themselves in actions of humility, love, and compassion. Thomas Kelly writes: "The Living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders ... All our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us." In defining prayer, we must include ways of being, yearning, acting, or receiving prayer. There is something mysterious and incomprehensible about praying, which is the expression of our relationship with the mysterious Divine Being.
Why do we pray? We pray as an expression of the ever-deepening relationship between ourselves & God. "Prayer is the intentional slipping into the soul's chambers. What goes in will come out in accordance with God's purpose." "Prayer is talking to, being with & listening to God. I pray to be in relationship with God." I pray most often to be helped, guided, comforted, or transformed by prayer. Brian Taylor writes: "Prayer's purpose is to become aware of life as it truly is for us at any moment & to learn to embrace it ... We ... see ... life's inherent holiness...If this moment is where God is to be known & appreciated, we start to see God in the ordinary moment. Rather than seeing people as experiences...to cling to or avoid, we can see them as they are, with appreciation...Reverence, peace, light, playfulness, openness, renewal, freedom, happiness, truth, courage, & love...are God's qualities we can know." [Some believe that prayer only changes our] own receptivity to grace. Others believe prayer changes others & the world. Distinctions between other & self becomes blurred as I approach the unitive experience of prayer, [which in turn] allows me to hope that our prayer joins with creation's original prayer. We become co-creators with God, who is large enough to have a deep & personal connection with all.
Theology Affects Why & How We Pray—Coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of the Divine being is both a purpose & an outcome of prayer. I have often found that my beloved God-as-other can best be found by turning inward & attending to my own thoughts, feelings, worries, and desires. Prayer happens when the God-within meets the other-God which transcends all. All God-images or names are true as metaphor, not as absolute. The familiar male/king image is useful in describing some aspects of the Divine, but misrepresents other aspects, as does any God image. If we are to have any image of God, perhaps we should have many.
Those of us rejecting oppressive, restrictive doctrines and images may have arrived at an un-imageable God. Majorie Suchocki thinks that God is a power within all matter, pervading it with divine presence and potential purposes. The fulfillment of our divine potential and consequent expression of our authentic selves is our prayer and action in the co-creation of the world. Suchocki claims that: "Prayer is God's invitation to us to be willing partners in the great dance of bringing a world into being that reflects something of God's character." Some may claim that rejection of organized religion and its doctrine is a sin, but to fail to risk sensing that God exists is probably a greater sin. Do not allow religion to remove you from your God. Guard Her jealously, and let Him have as many genders and images as you can imagine.
How Do we Learn to Pray?—Sunday School, family attitudes & practices shape our pathway to knowing God. Learning prayer can be spontaneous, through beauty, poetry, arts, nature, or the deep spiritual presence in elders. Prayer is learned throughout life, & is very private & individual. It reveals the truth about ourselves, God, our world. Prayer painfully strips away illusion. It takes trust to pray truthfully. [Our circles of intimacy start far outside us with the General Public, then moves inward through Acquaintances, Close Friends, Intimate Other, to Self, & its God Within. Who would you trust with the secret of who you really are? Perhaps no one, not even God. But you can't hide from truth. Being with God-within reveals the truth of who you are & who you aren't. The boundaries & capabilities of self expand, yet we become small in the context of the vastness of God.
Personality Shapes How we Pray—Praying doesn't have to be nice or flowery in language. It has to be real. To be real requires knowing myself & expressing [true] self fully & honestly to God. The more I forced daily prayer, the less I was able to pray. My impulse to pray needs to come from bringing concern before God or gratefully recognizing presence of an intimate God. By what criteria do I decide that prayer is working? [The most notable type of pray-er] has difficulty unraveling prayer from rest of living, so natural & pervasive was their prayer habit. Theirs is an ongoing conversation with God, & noticing God's presence in all [experience].
[There are 3 essential life stances of pray-ers described in the Sufi Enneagram]: heart-centered, head-centered, gut-centered. Head-centered people seek to understand through study and reflection the general nature of the Divine. They are distracted by interior experience of thoughts to be explored, and find it difficult to descend from the rational into the emotional domain of prayer. Heart-centered people tend to understand a particular situation, [including] scriptural readings, as an example of a universal truth. They are distracted by the pulls and tugs of the outer world, especially by the need to be seen doing it right. Authentic heart-centered prayer is more free-form and spontaneous, arising from expressions of the deep self; they find expressive Psalms useful.
Gut-centered people seek to detach, to learn to let reality be, & to surrender to God their need to be powerful, influential, or right. Stilling activities like centering prayer, mindfulness meditation, & witnessing God's presence, & calming passions are necessary to provide balance for gut-centered people; they are exquisitely present to the world's realities. They benefit from setting aside a specific time to pray, creating an idleness that allows God to be more fully active through them. This unitive prayer can re-invigorate their valued ministry with new life emanating from the Spirit. To help you find a way that best fits with your personality, I offer a prayer menu.
What shall we ask of those who respond to a call to prayer? They must be quite certain that God exists. [Once they know this], all else will follow. [Those who know God have been timid.] God, the Holy Ghost, speaks to us through intelligence, through love, through purity of living, & through understanding the knowledge God is ready to give us. [Mental health professionals will dismiss all prayer as autosuggestion]. This is nonsense; they don't know their stuff. Low prayer is autosuggestion. High prayer has nothing to do with to autosuggestion.
What helps can be offered? There are 3 things for which you must [give thanks for]: 1st for the human body; 2nd for the wish to know God; 3rd for the company of fellow-seekers. We must keep together. If we are not doing that, we are not taking the benefits we were meant to have and we are not giving them either. We help others, and they help us. We cannot be saved without others.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
339 Prayer: Beginning Again (by Sheila Keane; 1998)
About the Author—Sheila Keane is a graduate of the School of the Spirit's 1995-97 "On Being a Spiritual Nurturer" program; much of this pamphlet's content [is from there]. She was a Pendle Hill resident student while writing this. She is active as a spiritual nurturer & has a clinical and teaching practice as a physical therapist.
PREFACE—I didn't know enough about prayer, & I wanted to learn what others said about praying; something was missing. [This time] I prayed the learning, & that has made all the difference. I experimented with praying techniques & my own styles. I held open my intention to pray & talked about it. I interviewed 9 members of the 1996-97 Pendle Hill community. The prayer queries I used are listed at the [end of this summary]. This pamphlet's words & concepts were mostly given to me, re-discovered treasures. I invite you to pray this pamphlet.
Beginning Again/ What is Prayer?—After each new book or wise suggestion, I began again, full of enthusiasm. Then I lost momentum as I ran into the inevitable doubts and failures. This was my path, my entry into a sustained life of prayer: always beginning again, doing it over and over again.
Christians define prayer in terms of the content of prayer. There are prayers of: petition; intercession; worship; giving thanks; praise; confession; listening; meditation. I have found these ideas an inadequate description of a full life of prayer. I asked God: What is prayer? God said: "It is malchut, the place we meet. It is a feeling echoing, glowing in your core beyond words—which quiets, chastises, uplifts, comfort, and celebrates the One." There's an attitude, a way of being that is integral to the prayer. Without a deep voice from beyond the words of prayer, our ["praying"] can be shallow and inauthentic.
The desire for a relationship with God is often our entry point to prayer, and our desires are shaped by our prayers. [Along with our values, desires show themselves in actions of humility, love, and compassion. Thomas Kelly writes: "The Living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders ... All our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us." In defining prayer, we must include ways of being, yearning, acting, or receiving prayer. There is something mysterious and incomprehensible about praying, which is the expression of our relationship with the mysterious Divine Being.
Why do we pray? We pray as an expression of the ever-deepening relationship between ourselves & God. "Prayer is the intentional slipping into the soul's chambers. What goes in will come out in accordance with God's purpose." "Prayer is talking to, being with & listening to God. I pray to be in relationship with God." I pray most often to be helped, guided, comforted, or transformed by prayer. Brian Taylor writes: "Prayer's purpose is to become aware of life as it truly is for us at any moment & to learn to embrace it ... We ... see ... life's inherent holiness...If this moment is where God is to be known & appreciated, we start to see God in the ordinary moment. Rather than seeing people as experiences...to cling to or avoid, we can see them as they are, with appreciation...Reverence, peace, light, playfulness, openness, renewal, freedom, happiness, truth, courage, & love...are God's qualities we can know." [Some believe that prayer only changes our] own receptivity to grace. Others believe prayer changes others & the world. Distinctions between other & self becomes blurred as I approach the unitive experience of prayer, [which in turn] allows me to hope that our prayer joins with creation's original prayer. We become co-creators with God, who is large enough to have a deep & personal connection with all.
Theology Affects Why & How We Pray—Coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of the Divine being is both a purpose & an outcome of prayer. I have often found that my beloved God-as-other can best be found by turning inward & attending to my own thoughts, feelings, worries, and desires. Prayer happens when the God-within meets the other-God which transcends all. All God-images or names are true as metaphor, not as absolute. The familiar male/king image is useful in describing some aspects of the Divine, but misrepresents other aspects, as does any God image. If we are to have any image of God, perhaps we should have many.
Those of us rejecting oppressive, restrictive doctrines and images may have arrived at an un-imageable God. Majorie Suchocki thinks that God is a power within all matter, pervading it with divine presence and potential purposes. The fulfillment of our divine potential and consequent expression of our authentic selves is our prayer and action in the co-creation of the world. Suchocki claims that: "Prayer is God's invitation to us to be willing partners in the great dance of bringing a world into being that reflects something of God's character." Some may claim that rejection of organized religion and its doctrine is a sin, but to fail to risk sensing that God exists is probably a greater sin. Do not allow religion to remove you from your God. Guard Her jealously, and let Him have as many genders and images as you can imagine.
How Do we Learn to Pray?—Sunday School, family attitudes & practices shape our pathway to knowing God. Learning prayer can be spontaneous, through beauty, poetry, arts, nature, or the deep spiritual presence in elders. Prayer is learned throughout life, & is very private & individual. It reveals the truth about ourselves, God, our world. Prayer painfully strips away illusion. It takes trust to pray truthfully. [Our circles of intimacy start far outside us with the General Public, then moves inward through Acquaintances, Close Friends, Intimate Other, to Self, & its God Within. Who would you trust with the secret of who you really are? Perhaps no one, not even God. But you can't hide from truth. Being with God-within reveals the truth of who you are & who you aren't. The boundaries & capabilities of self expand, yet we become small in the context of the vastness of God.
Personality Shapes How we Pray—Praying doesn't have to be nice or flowery in language. It has to be real. To be real requires knowing myself & expressing [true] self fully & honestly to God. The more I forced daily prayer, the less I was able to pray. My impulse to pray needs to come from bringing concern before God or gratefully recognizing presence of an intimate God. By what criteria do I decide that prayer is working? [The most notable type of pray-er] has difficulty unraveling prayer from rest of living, so natural & pervasive was their prayer habit. Theirs is an ongoing conversation with God, & noticing God's presence in all [experience].
[There are 3 essential life stances of pray-ers described in the Sufi Enneagram]: heart-centered, head-centered, gut-centered. Head-centered people seek to understand through study and reflection the general nature of the Divine. They are distracted by interior experience of thoughts to be explored, and find it difficult to descend from the rational into the emotional domain of prayer. Heart-centered people tend to understand a particular situation, [including] scriptural readings, as an example of a universal truth. They are distracted by the pulls and tugs of the outer world, especially by the need to be seen doing it right. Authentic heart-centered prayer is more free-form and spontaneous, arising from expressions of the deep self; they find expressive Psalms useful.
Gut-centered people seek to detach, to learn to let reality be, & to surrender to God their need to be powerful, influential, or right. Stilling activities like centering prayer, mindfulness meditation, & witnessing God's presence, & calming passions are necessary to provide balance for gut-centered people; they are exquisitely present to the world's realities. They benefit from setting aside a specific time to pray, creating an idleness that allows God to be more fully active through them. This unitive prayer can re-invigorate their valued ministry with new life emanating from the Spirit. To help you find a way that best fits with your personality, I offer a prayer menu.
A Prayer Menu
DOING PRAYER: spiritual disciplines; scheduled prayers [worship]; journaling; God-letters; spiritual friendship; packaged study aids; exploring self-care & self-knowledge; studying & learning; imagining scriptural life.BEING PRAYER: have gratitude and awe; emotions- and body-awareness; be that with which God can create a Spirit-filled world; submission; "holy obedience"; deep listening; family/ daily life as spiritual discipline; living in intentional religious community; choosing "manual labor" while living more simply so as to have more time and energy for God; simplifying life; being alone with God.
GIFTING PRAYER: expectant waiting and receiving God's gifts of quiet insight or vocal ministry in meeting for worship; reading sacred texts directly into the heart, shaping desires more than beliefs.
Prayers of Mystery/ Prayer and Discernment—Prayers of Mystery are a union beyond words or images, God's unspeakable name, living into the questions. What am I supposed to do? What is God calling forth in me, in us? How can we know what we are called to do? Discernment assumes there is a divine will which we seek to discover, a will to which we attempt to align our motivations & actions. Decisions are based on reasoning, emotional reactions, & social consequences. Discernment uses these & goes beyond to include a fundamental yearning for union with the Holy Spirit. The first tool of discernment is a real sustained relationship with God, knowing & loving God with all your heart & mind & soul, with all your being. Living in the mysterious state of perpetual submission to the holy will is more than most can manage. We need tools of discernment to be used in helping us to transcend our human limitations.
The Inward Discipline of Discernment—Prayer is the vehicle of deep relationship with the Holy One. To pray is to offer our most tender wishes to God, to listen to God's responses to our soul's deepest desire, to notice with gratitude God's presence in and around us, to recall the graces of our past and to hope for more and greater graces. Self-awareness, acceptance, nurture, the gentle stripping away of the false self, [even time-off from discerning], are all important to the discernment process. We need to be spiritually at home, "resting in the Lord," centered in and grateful for the love and comfort of God.
[Awareness of our body's unconscious reaction to thoughts about discernment encourages honesty]. Using imagination is another way to encourage the intuitive. If your life were nearly ended, what would you choose to do now? Writing or journaling about concerns and notable thoughts can be useful in preventing self-deception. Patterns emerge over time that are more easily seen as patterns because they are recorded. Research, information concerning decisions is not incompatible with faith, but the most prudent choice is not always the most faithful; let prayer and its answer be the guide.
Outward Discipline of Discernment/ Recognizing and Receiving Answers—At some point, a choice has to be made, often before we have inward clarity; this is doing while listening. We move cautiously, [& watch carefully] the outward signs resulting from actions. The "consolations" are: inner peace; clarity; things ["clicking"]; obstacles falling away; increased energy, inspiration; new possibilities; more joy & love; closeness to God; soft certainty. The "desolations" are: anxiety; forcing things; exhaustion; concern obsession; separation from God; joyless, judging & angry; rigid certainty. Do my actions make use of my talents & abilities? Are my choices compatible with my life constraints? A radical life change is often contrary to God's will.
Traditional religious wisdom also holds that leading should be in accord with scripture. And the more impact the choice will have, the more essential it is that we bring our discernment process under the scrutiny of our spiritual elders. The spiritual community shapes us simply by our proximity and involvement in it [e. g. worship and business meeting]. [There are smaller groups available in the form of] clearness committees. When we stay open to receiving needed messages and messengers or angels, we are practicing spiritual hospitality. [We are ready for a stranger's message to] strike and ring in the center of truth within.
No one can tell me what God's will is for me. I can and should consult with others, but in the end I must make my own decision. There are a variety of discernment tools and forms to be used in balancing the inward and outward forms. Discernment is like driving in the fog; we often can see only what is immediately ahead. Perhaps, it doesn't matter what we choose so much as how we choose, open-hearted and yearning after the divine will. Answers often come indirectly, embedded in the whole of life. Live into the [uncertainty], the paradoxes, the vulnerable condition, our utter dependence on God's divine guidance.
Effects or Outcomes of Praying—Experiences of the clear presence or answering of God exemplify the via positiva, the way it's supposed to be. Sometimes we seek a Word and get a Blank Stare; this is the via negativa. Perhaps it is because God doesn't care which option we choose in a particular situation, or because God is calling us out of dependence on outward confirmations and more toward an inward sense of divine will and faith. If you experience pain, loss, loneliness, or despair during your spiritual journey, you may be in the common phase called the "dark night journey"; you may need guidance for a time. Prayer has a way of changing things; it brings on a desire for God. This desire leads to "the conversion of life," changing our thinking, feeling, values, time- and money-spending, home, friends, and work in a way which serves the greater will of God. How we do this is discernment; the actions that result are ministry.
Final Words of Advice—Prayer, like walking, is always beginning again. I offer 3 universal advices about prayer: be authentic; get encouragement; practice. Recall that the human body is an inherently unstable machine. To walk is to continuously fall and catch one's self, over and over. It is the almost there, yearning nature of invitation that gets us past the threshold, and it is practice and experience that gains us skill. We leave behind old things, ways, roles, and relationships, falling and catching ourselves continuously until it becomes directed by the skill of our intention toward God. We invite and encourage one another.
If we merely "recognize" that of God within one another, we see only the potential for this dance. You need to: "... be patterns, be examples in all places ... that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them. You will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing ..." As we encourage each other to grow spiritually, we will find that suddenly, [our "that of God"], the Imprisoned One erupts out of us and glows Her new Freedom into the world. The Imprisoned One in each other meet and dance before us in a cosmic beauty surpassing all expression. Deep speaks to deep, and we are made new. Welcome to the dance.
Queries—How do you express your prayers using your body, senses, emotions, thoughts, or actions? How do you listen for God's responses? How necessary is piety in prayer? How do you prepare for prayer? What problems have you encountered in your prayer life and how did you cope with them?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
382. Holding one another in the Light (by Marcelle R. Martin; 2006)
About the Author—Marcelle Martin a member of Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting, served as teacher and spiritual nurturer at Pendle Hill; she facilitates retreats to help monthly meetings explore spiritual practices and growth as faith communities. She is a graduate of the Shalem Institute Program on Spiritual Guidance.
Our life is love and peace, and tenderness … praying for one another, and helping one another up with a tender hand. Isaac Penington
Learning to Pray for Another—Praying with & for one another is a powerful way to engender spiritual vitality in our lives & meeting communities. However we understand intercessory prayer, holding one another in the Light can bring us deeper spiritual intimacy with each other & Divine. [Praying for God to do something] according to what I think is best is problematic for many Friends. [Some don’t agree with God picking & choosing, some believe God knows without guidance, some don’t conceive of divinity operating in a personal way.
During my early college years, intercessory prayer was not part of my relationship with the mysterious Eternal Being. An ongoing series of experiences has convinced me that holding others in the Light can have an effect. [I have felt internally a connection with another person that had no basis in external fact. It has given me strength and brought peace to relationships].
Over the years, praying for others, holding them in the light has become a frequent practice. Often my prayer doesn’t include mental words or specific requests. Sometimes I visualize the person filled & surrounded with light or imagine them being held by God. A moment sometimes comes when, in my mind’s eye, the person seems to smile or glow more brightly, & I will feel the prayer is complete. Often I pray for others during quiet time in the morning. [Spontaneous prayer comes often throughout the day]. I have learned to be more humble about the cause of my problems with another and hold us up together for divine illumination and healing. I suddenly become aware that I have been “holding” someone or many people without being fully conscious of it.
What Happens in Intercessory Prayer?—Prayer on behalf of others is an opportunity to participate in divine love. The “answer” to our prayer for them may be an action we ourselves are called to take. Imagining a change for a Friend might not be what God wanted, but the effort would nonetheless be helpful, just not in the way one imagines. Taking on the suffering of others may not necessarily be required as part of intercessory prayer. One can instead imagine those persons in their essential wholeness, visualize that of God in them, and them surrounded by the Light. Often I have an image of Jesus being with that person in a healing way.
Other experiences of intercessory prayer suggest a metaphor of being a hollow tube, bridge or conduit for God’s healing power to flow through; or perhaps a transformer, a recipient of God’s high-voltage love for another who converts that love to a frequency easier for that person to assimilate. In prayer we might find ourselves shifting from our everyday consciousness to the state in which we and the one prayed for are inseparable, both part of the “hidden unity in the Eternal Being.” This state of oneness with another in God, can activate or assist the healing capacities of Light within them. All these forms of intercessory prayer may be part of the spiritual journey. Not everyone prays the same way, or needs to. Participation in the divine love for others is somehow necessary. We can become mediators of the love of God for one another, gradually helping ourselves and those we love and pray for to become more directly open to the divine healing love that makes us whole.
Spiritual Fellowship and the Prayer of Carrying—One month, it puzzled me why particular people were coming to mind in prayer, rather than others with whom I was in more frequent contact. One day I realized that each of them had taken it upon themselves to pray for me on a regular basis. Thomas Kelly describes what he calls the Prayer of Inward Carrying, which “consists in a well-nigh continuous support, in prayer, for some particular souls who are near to you in the things of the inner life. Through the day you quietly hold them high before God in inward prayer, vicariously offering your life and strength to become their strength and life. These are not a chance group of people; they are your special burden and privilege]: You quietly hold them high before God in inward prayer, giving them to Him.” This is key to sustaining the vitality of the meeting community.
Praying with Others/ Prayer as a Meeting or Meeting Committee—Taking time to pray for one another during a private conversation can greatly renew & strengthen us inwardly. Praying in groups can be a powerfully healing & supportive practice as well. [Once when I sat in a chair as a focus of others’ prayer, I was] profoundly moved; I felt lovingly held & known. During coming year I recalled memory of being held in the Light by that small group. It helped me love & accept myself and feel sustained by God. I was especially moved by my experience in a small group containing members of different races and varied religious traditions. I felt a strong inward vibration of prayer and a sense of being united in a precious spiritual oneness with the group.
There are many different possible ways to pray aloud for another person. Those who do not feel moved to speak aloud can hold the person in the Light silently also a powerful gift of prayer. Participants [in a prayer circle] are often able to offer touching words for one another, and sometimes speak of a spiritual power they experience while praying for others in the group, a power that leaves them feeling energized in an unexpected way. People often return to the larger group with a softened faces, looking as though they been deeply blessed, even baptized, washed clean of something that had separated them from others. The experience serves to unite the members of the group, heightening their awareness of the love they have for one another.
There are occasions when a meeting wants to pray together for a particular concern. At Pendle Hill it is currently the custom after meeting for worship to ask if there are prayer requests. Praying for the whole meeting & its individual members was once an important function of meeting committees. [By doing so], the committee’s service becomes more truly an expression of divine love for their community. Praying together is a powerful way to heighten the bonds between members of any group & to anchor the group’s activity more strongly in the love healing, & guidance of the light. It can become increasingly natural for individuals to request prayer, or to suggest it when someone seems in particular need. Strengthened by the group prayer, the divine inner seed continues providing guidance & support long after the gathering has dispersed.
Meetings for Healing—A regular or occasional evening can be set aside for holding a meeting for prayer & healing. At Pendle Hill, a meeting for prayer & healing is held every Sunday evening for an hour. I try to open myself to participate in the flow of divine healing energy, to center myself in the state of Eternal Oneness in which all is already whole & healed and in harmony. Out of the silence, someone will make a request for prayer. During the course of the hour anyone may stand up and walk to the chair. The person may be touched by several people. If the person remains deeply moved after returning to their seat, someone may go sit close by to show continued support even after the focus of the larger group turns toward another prayer request. At the end of the hour the group forms a circle, saying their own name and others for whom they wish to pray. Placing hand on another person may not be right for everyone, & it may be best to wait for a leading of the Spirit before doing so.
Meetings for healing can be held entirely in silence, without spoken requests or prayers. Even when there is no physical touch or eye contact, in the silence one can sometimes be more aware of a palpable effect of the powers of healing. [Once, in a group of] about 60 women, I experienced a profound silence inside me and in the room. We were gathered into a deep, tender experience of spiritual connection with each other, the whole world, and that which is eternal.
Some Friends prefer requests or prayers be offered as moved by the Spirit out of that silence, while others prefer that each person speaks of their needs & is prayed for. Whatever the form, gathering as a meeting to pray for one another, one’s spiritual community, & the world is a wonderful opportunity for spiritual closeness. Monthly meetings would do well to consider organizing meetings for prayer & healing. The meeting as a whole can experience a spiritual deepening as a result. There have sometimes been reports of healing that happened after prayer group held an absent person’s concern in the Light. Just knowing they are being prayed for can help people be receptive to the healing capacities within themselves. Some meetings created prayer networks or prayer chains. [In special cases], a prayer vigil requires participants to commit to pray at a particular time of day. People are signed up to pray as close to 24 hours a day as possible. [Even though a cure to the subject of prayer] may not come in the form desired, some felt sure prayers had been helpful in invisible, spiritual ways.
Intercessory Prayer to Nurture Meetings, Members, & Ministry—Prayer is one of the important ways we help the divine seed within ourselves, others, our culture, & the world to overcome the forces that oppress it. [Those] called to pray both for individuals & for the meeting community as a whole are now known as “spiritual nurturers.” It is helpful for some Friends to pray for the meeting as a whole and to offer themselves to help the Spirit be present as fully as possible to all the members of the meeting. While many factors were involved, an important part of improving the quality of our business was Friends holding the business meeting in the Light.
Earlier Friends understood that prayer supported the vocal ministry. 1 of a pair of traveling ministers would pray for inspired ministry to come through their traveling companion. Intercessory prayer for the meetings they were visiting was also an important part of the spiritual task of those who traveled. The power of the vocal ministry of traveling ministers to nourish, heal, & transform the listeners was due in part to their intercessory prayer.
Today, friends in the liberal tradition are regaining a sense of how vocal ministry’s depth is related to prayer. Over time I have become more attuned to those laboring with a call to vocal ministry. [Holding people in the Light can help the speaker both to receive the message more clearly & to find courage & clarity needed to speak it faithfully. One might also pray that those present may be receptive to message being delivered. [I have been called to hold a “vocal minister” in the Light while she waited for others to finish their ministry. I have been “corrected” & led to hold in the Light those whose ministry doesn’t speak to my condition]. If I had continued to direct negative thoughts toward him, it might have impaired his ability to experience that of God within.
While teaching or speaking I can sometimes palpably feel the effect of the prayer of the faithful Friend [I have asked to pray for me.] I have learned profound lessons in what it means to be held in the Light and how important it is that we hold one another—in prayer, in love, and even in the body. I experienced how important such support is to one’s capacity to be a faithful and effective minister. Sometimes I imagine myself being held close by God in the form of a loving mother. It is enough to be in her presence, and I do not need the anxious internal dialogue in which I am asking for answers and clarity right now. I believe that Friends and family holding me, physically and in prayer, has helped me gradually to simple be present with the Divine.
Prayer for the World/ The Practice of Intercessory Prayer—There was a prayer vigil for peace in the world, held on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Our purpose was to pray & witness to the need to seek divine guidance & assistance. The vigil on Independence Mall was the hour of deepest prayer & worship I experienced during the week. I would begin by asking divine assistance in finding peace among those parts of the vigil. My focus would then expand from myself & my fellow vigilers to conflict, war, or violence in our city, country, & elsewhere in the world. This would sometimes culminate in an image of holding Planet Earth in my arms as I asked God to bring peace and justice everywhere. Asking God to bring peace would usually lead me to greater peace within myself. Eventually I became aware that God is always showering everyone & everything with divine healing love. To more fully activate God’s peacemaking on earth, we need to ask for it & offer ourselves as channels through whom it can come more into the world.
In the 3rd stage, there were often no more mental words, and no requests. I would simply offer myself as a channel for God’s peace. Allowing one’s self to become tender at the same time that one stands strong in one’s faith and witness is in itself a radical act of peacemaking. During the prayer of simple receptiveness, I have found myself more aware of the divine Light shining within each person. I felt an immense tender love reaching through me towards each individual. Such peace prayers have a place in our private devotional time each day as well as in meetings. It is important remember that prayer itself may be as important as any other activity we take. Our intercessory prayer may be a channel through which divine healing is enabled to penetrate the dark clouds hovering earth and within human consciousness to bring light, hope, healing, harmony, justice, and peace.
For some of us, the regular practice of intercessory prayer can become an important part of each day and a way for the Spirit to bring us closer to the image of Divine within. One Friend [started daily practice after September 11, 2001]: “I felt the prayer deepening and somehow strengthening me in a way I could neither describe nor understand. One morning, I had a deep sense of being inside the prayer itself. I was actually with the world suffering. It has allowed my soul to touch a place of ever-deepening compassion and awareness. As I conclude this pamphlet, my prayer is that Friends everywhere will renew our practice of frequently holding one another in the Light. Intercessory prayer in all its variations supports those we love, helps our meetings to be spiritually vital, and contributes to making manifest God’s healing and transforming presence on earth.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
174. Friends, Let Us Pray (by Elsie H. Landstrom; 1970)
About the Author—Elsie Landstrom is a member of Wellesley Monthly Meeting, is active in Friends World Committee, and was one the original editors of Approach, the literary magazine born at Pendle Hill. She was writer and editor with the American Friends Service Committee. She said: “I had not meant to write about prayer … I sat down to write letters. Hours later I got up, astonished to find this meditation in my hand.”
My Meeting—My meeting is a suburban American Meeting, 138 members: Indian, Mexican, Jewish, Black visitors; teachers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, professional women & housewives. [There was] conflict over providing the setting we felt was needed for the central place of worship, & being shocked by the “edifice complex” in a world asking that our time, thought, & money be placed elsewhere.
Worship is the focus of being drawn together on Sunday morning. There are times when a true gathered quality carries the meeting beyond closing time. They have signified that we could move from our scattered & separate selves into communion, making of us one being. We often stand on opposite sides [on the many issues surrounding worship]. When the meeting goes beyond 11:30, we are met in a moment when we are gathered to a common focus, where our varied responses in mind & spirit are stayed on an instant beyond ourselves. After meeting we hear that was a good meeting, or meeting fell short. Both responses are often made to the same meeting. We rightfully bring our concerns for national legislation & individual action [on social issues]. We bring our anguish, intuitive insights, emotional upheavals, convictions, & where we might go to make our world better.
There is the feeling of imminent split in our Meeting, however, because some members feel strongly that political issue and moralistic sermons are contrary to the spirit of worship; [some find it a suitable place for those things]. The difference between a meeting for worship and an interesting [vocal] happening lies in the spirit in which the message is given. If it begins in concern and deepens into spiritual insight, it contributes well to worship. We are still too young, in terms of worship, to reach real worship in times of stress; but we can learn.
Vocal prayer nearly died out of our meeting with the death of an older member. When group prayer was proposed, we postponed it as “too uncomfortable.” Vocal prayer in meeting need not be our aim. It will be the fruit of time & effort we give prayer in our separate lives, the rich loam of private devotions that gives any meeting its full depth whether voices are raised in prayer or not. We need to understand more clearly the paradoxical place of prayer in our lives, freeing this old word from its trap of conventional limitations. Prayer requires us to let our Self go into the larger stream of spirit where we can be reconciled to each other & to God.
This Strange & Terrible Reversal—Friends drawn from other churches to unprogrammed worship are relieved to dispense with [everything that goes with] a planned order of worship. Haven’t we a responsibility to strengthen our worship with preparation? Let us siphon off our longing for debate to coffee & desert time [afterwards]. Let us not confuse worship’s essential purpose with argument or distress. These have their place in meeting for worship only as they open to us to vaster spiritual understandings or the need for growth.
Prayer is hardship. Prayer invokes dread, requires risk. We may look forward to the joy we intuitively know is a fruit of real contemplation, but we avoid risking the dreadful desert that lies between. [We busy ourselves with social activism]. We do our share. & we pray. Or how do we pray? How do I order my life that so periods of solitude & silence are given priority daily? How do I cultivate the attitudes of openness of faith, joy, reverence, expectation, trust? How do I acknowledge myself a beginner in prayer all my life?
Activists and contemplatives clash in our Meeting; but Mary and Martha need each other. They must be kept in balance in each of us if we would be Friends. Whatever form is natural to us, we can each profit from experiencing other forms of worship. How do we evade the hard life of prayer? In prayer we face not only God, but our worst selves before him. In prayer we learn to strip off layer after layer of self-deceit.
Move over for an Attitude/Tricks of the Trade—Prayer can become as natural as breathing and be offered consciously in the moments between other things. [One Friend’s prayer has] developed a theme of praise, for they are essentially praise of God in his and all life; praise opens and closes his prayers and lies at the heart of them. Some find that the ordering of our lives into a formal prayer pattern does not conform to the need of our inexplicable selves. We need to develop a way to prayer consistent with our own beings. We must acknowledge constantly that we are but beginners in prayer, and turn for guidance and help to the artists of all times and ages. We forget that our method of worship grew out of solid liturgical beginnings. Those active in the world must keep in balance the inner life of the spirit to feed his good works. The contemplative’s prayer life is sterile unless it springs from the everyday toils of his life and its difficult relationships.
We need tricks, handles to grasp, images with the power to do for us what we are too weak to do for ourselves, to open the door to prayer. The word is supremely powerful and can set forces going that I hardly knew were present. To approach prayer in joy and a spirit of praise and celebration even when I feel weighted down with woes is an important venture. One of my most powerful handles to prayer is an ancient Jewish prayer: “Am I willing this day to do the will of God?” Prayer is my mysterious relationship to the mysterious source of power, of beauty, of joy. The mind grasps through its awareness of man’s qualities some intimation of the vast mystery of God, a mystery showing itself in part in intellect, compassion, in anger and in humor.
A Discipline of the Spirit—To discipline the spirit is no less difficult, tedious, and rewarding than to discipline our bodies or our minds; It sets aside daily the time and place for personal meditation. [It is to not] translate our gratitude to God into admiration for ourselves.” To discipline the spirit is to intentionally lead its 1st anguished gropings toward God from the base of petition where it almost invariably starts. It is to lead the more confident in prayer into a sustained caring for others, the intercession of spirit which can and does alter life in strange ways. To discipline the spirit, to pray, is a central way to deal with the dark side of life, with hatred, pride, anger, self-will, jealousy, not in others, but in ourselves where they have their roots.
When we meet up with all these aspects of life in our society that we have been trying to better, we have one of the few opportunities open to us to actually transform what we call evil into good. In order to keep the dark images and forces from governing our tongues and our actions, we must face them and know them for what they are. Disciplining the spirit means a willingness to descend into the dark of our own being where the dangers of being swamped are immense. The artist knows darkness as a creative source, and that what rises through one to creation in paint or word or music feeds on itself, creating infinitely new possibilities. There are no set rules governing the fluid and difficult inner world, and we will make mistakes. May we keep open and learning from them, distinguishing light from dark under the hand of God.
Wordless adoration of God, the beginning and end of prayer, cannot but return to earth in an offering of the self to others, for every advance in prayer is a movement in loving care. Evelyn Underhill writes: “If you are to love … thus, translating your love, as you must, into unremitting intercessory work, and avoid being swamped by the great ocean of suffering … this will only be done by maintaining and feeding the temper of adoration and trustful adherence. This is the heart of the life of prayer.” It is by setting aside our own will, be becoming pliable, receptive, listening, that the fiery spirit of God acts within us.
But Under the Stress of Life I do Not Pray—More and more people do not pray under the stress of life. My husband Norman says: “But I don’t turn to prayer when I am in trouble, and you know I have had plenty of that. Prayer is not natural to me although I recognize the reality and power of it in your life … What have you got to say to people like us? … Is being moved to the depths of [my] being prayer?... Maybe part of my problem is a hang-up on the word ‘prayer,’ although I don’t have the same trouble with the word ‘God.”
I said: “For me the word ‘prayer’ carries the full cultivation of inner life … Even while I believe petition to be the easiest, simplest form of prayer, I don’t think we should belittle it; it is often the opening to deeper prayer. [Sometimes] a cry for help is often all we are capable of.”
Norman said: I haven’t tried classical forms of prayer”; they seem irrelevant, & besides, I’m not the type ... I have tried repeating psalms … they don’t seem to help. [I joined meeting] because I was searching for a better expression of the meaning I feel to be present in the universe.” He also wrote: “What is prayer? [It was] the prayers I repeated as a child. I imagined God listening, never answering in words, but perhaps intervening to make something happen. As I grew older [these concepts] seemed inadequate & shoddy. Prayer is communication; communication goes beyond verbal to mystical experience, & also other forms of spiritual experience.”
“The presence of God has never been for me a presence directed to me as an individual but a recognition that life and the universe have a purpose and meaning not fully revealed but which I believe exists. I try to carry over my religious beliefs into what I hope is a consistent attitude in my daily affairs. [Micah says it best]: “For what does the Lord require of thee but to do justice & love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”
[I said]: “Could you be a person of prayer without knowing it? You point skeptically toward those who go about doing dreadful things to others in the name of their Lord. I agree that to distinguish between God’s will & my limited self’s will is difficult indeed … I believe that I can discover something of the will of God only for my own life, not for others’. I still find truth & a yardstick of my self’s will in Carl Jung’s words: “God is the name I use for all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.”
Another test lies in sorting through [my current] action to see whether it chimes right on several levels, not just one. The end may still look wrong from 1 or 2 angles & be right on the major ones. It is only intuitively I know where next to move, & when the intuition is strong I must follow it. In living, intuitive & reflective understanding are equally important before taking more steps. I know the critics’ interpretation of prayer as a crutch for the weak & the frightened. I admit to weakness & to fright, even on those days when I feel strongest & most secure in my world. Prayer, carried silently in me, seems to me a greater gift to others than all my practical tasks.
Prayer in my Life/Friends, Let us Pray—I have stumbled along this way of prayer for many years, making all the mistakes & been recalled to it by life over & over again when I thought I had done with it. I veered away from them time & again, afraid to be drawn into depths beyond me. I count it one of the finest gifts of my life to have been exposed to greatness in more than one religion. My father’s faith was rooted in experience of God and Christ, in real and unshakeable conviction in the saving power of his Lord. He found brothers in Jew, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem. Wherever men believed with fervor, he in delight found God.
Like many adolescents, I fell 1st into the fervent Christian role, then into the fervent skeptic's role; theological discussion bored me. I met God 1st in Satan’s image, God’s shadow. In every person I have met God’s image whole, in his excellent & his terrible forms. The controversies raging over God & God’s existence seemed irrelevant to the essential task at hand of coming into God’s presence. I found myself [slipping] into sloth or burying myself in work. With prayer’s return there came the conviction that love of others is no danger to prayer.
There were more than 20 years between my 1st acquaintance with Friends in a college international seminar and my joining the Society of Friends. It was among Friends I grew up, for among them I learned some of the hard lessons of life. There is hardly a defect of human mind or spirit that is not blazoned in some degree across the Society of Friends. Reconciliation came. I looked at the persons in meeting and found their strengths were my strengths, their weaknesses my weaknesses. These were my people. I had to wait for that moment when I would know I am a Friend. When I devote myself to serving others, why is it I in the end receive the most? Why is it this service does not bring complete fulfillment? Life expands continually through life’s discoveries, enriched through discard as well as accumulation.
There have been moments when my Meeting has waited with great care on a right decision; this same care isn't extended as often or faithfully in the meeting worship. It isn't recognized that to wait is important, that silence is a discipline to our distressed or eager selves that can deepen our words. Both the waiting & the quality of the message have a direct relationship to the amount of inner preparation we have been willing to make.
It is in the long tradition of Friends to prepare for meeting. If we were to look closely, we would likely find a long inner preparation behind spontaneity. I live in prayer, yet in prayer I am a novice, and I continually experience all the obstacles and dangers that every novice encounters. It is only when I am willing to let go of myself and experience fully the meaninglessness of my life apart from God that the activity of the Spirit within me takes over, grace comes as a gift, and joy.
Friends, let us pray. What matters is that we learn to pray in our solitude, that we bring ourselves to meeting for worship in the spirit that effects reconciliation among us on the deepest levels of our beings. As the London Yearly Meeting of 1928 recorded: “In silence, without rite or symbol, we have known the Spirit of Christ so convincingly present that his grace dispels our faithlessness, our unwillingness, our fears, and sets our hearts aflame with the joy of adoration. We have thus felt the power of the Spirit renewing and recreating our love and friendship for all our fellows. This is our Eucharist and our Communion.”
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
123. Prayer: The Cornerstone (by Helen G. Hole; 1962)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR—Helen G. Hole is a graduate of Vassar with a Master’s from Columbia. She is Assistant Professor of English at Earlham College; her husband Allen D. Hole teaches French there. They have led Earlham Foreign Study trips in France. Helen and Allen are active in the Society of Friends. Prayer: The Cornerstone was 1st delivered as an address at the 1961 Pendle Hill Mid-Winter Institute.
William Penn said, “I would have thee and all men to know that I scorn that religion which is not worth suffering for, and able to sustain those who suffer for it.”
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE 1ST CHRISTIANS—Our entire family visited the town of Herculaneum, not far from Naples. Herculaneum was buried by hot mud at the same time Pompeii was buried in ashes. We climbed to a small 2nd-story servant’s room. On one wall, in a sort of alcove, we could see a place where a wooden cross had been embedded. It brought home to me the impact of that 1st Christian movement. The 1st Christian had no church property, no separated clergy, no acknowledged authority except experience in the life of Spirit. [I have seen at the heart of Christianity’s vitality] 2 essential factors whose combination was irresistible.
Koinonia/Encounter—The New Testament (NT) shows me that there were no solitary Christians. [The solitary eunuch of the NT either gathered friends to form a fellowship or almost certainly ceased to be a Christian]. There is much evidence in the NT as to the quality of the relationship between the members of the Chris-tian fellowship. They felt the need to meet frequently, to pray, sing, eat, rejoice, all together. There was [a sense] that they were a part of something significant. Each person was important, each had a part to play. Here we have an example of a community grounded in the individual encounter between the human soul and God, but at the same time taking place in the here and now of human society.
This fellowship is an essential factor which characterized the Christian movement. The 2nd basic element which I find is that each person in this community had known Jesus. It is evident that Paul was convinced that there could be no contact more immediate than the spiritual contact he had known with Jesus. We all of us tend to feel the Early Christian’s accomplishment would be impossible for us, [never to be achieved in another time]. But there has been the exhilaration and purity of the Franciscan movement, the surging power of the Wesleyan revival, and the early years of Quakerism, which we choose as our example.
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE 1ST FRIENDS—Those 1st Friends had no trained clergy; no one had authority over them except those with the authority of spiritual experience: George Fox, William Penn, those who spoke with power. There was a tremendous sense of fellowship among these people too. They had a tremendous sense of the overwhelming significance of the experience they were going through together. Each individual Friend played a part in this community. William Penn said, “I would have thee and all men to know that I scorn that religion which is not worth suffering for, and able to sustain those who suffer for it.” The 1st church and the Quaker movement were made up of very human people. I believe with absolute certainty that this same source of power is open to us today.
PRAYER: CORNERSTONE/WORSHIP/VOCAL PRAYER/SMALL PRAYER GROUP—The vitality of both communities was prayer; I believe it was their cornerstone. Practically every passage written after George Fox’s 1st experience is permeated with explicit or implicit references to prayer. Faith which overflows in real spiritual power must be fed with prayer. Our Quaker fellowships must be nourished with prayer if they are to endure as centers of life & power, rather than as static institutions. Prayer [here] is a method of raising & uniting the soul to God in the attempt to bring our will into line with God’s purpose. There is prayerful corporate waiting which takes place in any meeting when it has centered down. Prayer—a loving attention to God, a sur-rendering to the spirit Jesus expressed—is our task as individuals and as a group.
Vocal prayer may instill life into a previously dead silence, or it may bring unity to a meeting whose ministry has seemed scattered and discordant, or gather up and bring together fragmentary messages. There are many meetings in which such prayer is scarcely ever heard. Is it possible that public prayer’s practice calls for a certain unapologetic, open commitment which many of us are not prepared to make?
The 3rd place for prayer within the Quaker Fellowship is in the small prayer group. Most of us live as isolated individuals, suffering under a separate burdens of inadequacy, & even guilt & fear; we limit our relationships to the superficial level. In a prayer group we put our energies into trying to express our hidden, buried selves, without repressions or evasions or pretense. [The deep sharing of these groups] brings with it healing, vitalizing power which may transform the lives of the group’s members & bring power to the meeting as a whole.
A fellowship’s unity & power will come when members uphold each other in prayer. A true intercession is when we concentrate our whole soul force on the need of each person & hold them up before God. It is this sort of prayer which must be the basis of true fellowship, if it is to have depth, or the basis of any deep Christian relationship. The regenerative power released by this prayer will inevitably be channeled into the meeting’s life.
PRAYER: IN THE FAMILY; OF LOVE—It is in the family that our children should conceive of the love of God for the 1st time through the love of parents & brothers & sisters. Our testimony for peace must begin at home, by creating family harmony. At home the child may sense the possibility of a God-oriented life. The degree of success will be determined by the degree of our own personal commitment & our own progress in the life of prayer. Is your home a center for the spiritual nourishment of your family and those who enter it?
Every meeting needs a few individuals mature enough and dedicated enough to communicate with people who have special needs. Persons needing help need to be recognized by someone who cares, someone who is willing to lay aside his own preoccupations in order to focus on their needs. Simone Weil writes, “[The unhappy] have no need of anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.” [Few of us have the confidence] in our meager resources or the spiritual maturity to the problems of others without becoming emotionally involved. Only the wisdom which results from a sustained and disciplined life of prayer can channel through us the spirit of healing which these persons who suffer so sorely need.
THE CENTRALITY OF PRAYER—If prayer has not been a reality throughout the week for at least a core of its members, participants in the Sunday meeting cannot reach high levels of worship. [Vocal Prayer flows from a cup already full]. We have to make a place for regular prayer. We have time if something has to be done; prayer must become a priority. But we must learn how to pray and practice praying. Prayer is an art that must be acquired and cultivated. We can learn from classical religious documents on prayer, but we learn most as we apply their precepts to the needs that we ourselves experience in prayer. Gradually, irrevocably, we find as we walk the [prayer] path that every part of our lives calls for revision.
Fred Tritton queries: “Are you continually relating every thought, impulse, and action to God? Are you watchful and alert that nothing goes forth that does not proceed from that holy center? Knowing how to use the silence brings a quiet mind and clearer understanding of our tasks. Lives rooted in prayer are necessary for any vital, powerful meeting for worship if it is to continue to grow.
OBSTACLES TO PRAYER—[Our age] is not an age of faith. We know too much about suffering and brutality and insecurity. For all of the public speakers in a 3 month period, some turn of speech was inevitable which betrayed the complete and corrosive uncertainty that is in the air in our time. Some persons feel that there is little to be hoped for beyond survival. How can we accept a theological structure which must make room for human suffering? In an atmosphere of this kind, how can we find a place to stand in, a faith to pray?
THE HIDDEN GOD—In our relationship with someone else, there is always an element of not being able to possess, encompass, or get near. God is infinitely more hidden from us than a person, infinitely more free & incalculable. To know God in even a little, we must transcend the limitations of our finite selves. We have to be partly transformed into God if we are to know God, & [true] faith is essential to this transformation.
True faith should stir & disturb us. What is required of us is the total surrender of our whole being to the search. Prayer can become the orientation of all the attention of which our soul is capable towards God. We have to regulate our course before we are sure of it; we have to continue along it for a long time, guided by faith alone. “I believe; help thou my unbelief.” &, “Blessed are they who haven’t seen & yet believe.”
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
291. Prayer in the Contemporary World (by Douglas V. Steere; 1990)
About the Author—Professor emeritus of philosophy at Haverford College where he taught from 1928-64, Douglas Steere is a noted author of: Prayer and Worship, On Beginning from Within, and Work and Contemplation. He has carried out many missions in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, Japan for the American Friends Service Committee. He writes: “I have always believed that interior prayer is to religion what original research is to science.” These 30 personal prayers were written at the end of Vatican Council II (1966).
[Prayer: Qualities, Functions, Method]
O God, we thank thee for the honest doubts and criticism of those who blister our clumsy efforts at prayer with their fiercely honest attacks. May that which is phony and specious and egocentric in our prayers be seared away by these helpful blasts. Cleanse, cauterize, and cut away that which separates us from Thee and from our fellows, and give us Thyself and the open way into the hearts of those with whom we live.
What is being attacked in the charges against prayer [as being superstitious, autosuggestion, & pietistic]? Are they being leveled against high prayer or on low forms of prayer that masquerade [as prayer]? [Prayers warding off danger or compelling success are superstitious. Autosuggestion & self-centering is a logical place to start in prayer; true prayer does not end there & seldom does]. The case against prayer [will] cleanse true prayer of its shadows & compel it to show its truest face.
O God, rouse my dispersed spirit from its stupefied torpor. Wake the sleeper in me and kindle such a fire in my heart that I shall never be content with anything short of Thee. Re-light in me the flame of a steady life of prayer. O God, keep open, keep open, my mind, my heart, my soul.
Simeone Weil became an apostle of the spiritual life of France after World War II. At the heart of her insights is her definition of prayer as attention. Prayer is awakeness, attention, intense inward openness. Sin is anything that destroys this attention. Prayer is naturally attention to the highest thing I know. God can only disclose the Divine whispers to those who are attending.
God from whom I came, how prone I am to think that I am self-initiated and self-propelled and self-sufficient. As I gather myself in prayer, may I ever begin by recalling what is going on, what it is costing, and why I have forgotten. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.
When I pray, the most important thing of all is that I shall come into a deep inward realization of what is really taking place in the cosmos. God is the lover besieging the soul of every man and woman that comes into this world. This redemptive love can reconcile any separation, any dissonance, any malformation. “I came from God. I belong to God. I return to God.”
O God, I come to you not alone but in the midst of this tattered company [of distractions]. This is the kind of being I am, Lord, and the kind of companions I flock with, and the kind of world I inhabit. Give us your blessing, O friend of my soul, and draw us into the tendering warmth of your presence.
When I settle down to pray, I am always aware of distractions, [outer noises and inner, spiritual distractions]. If one resents these distractions, fights them, resists them, and tries to drive them out of one’s mind, one is lost. I acknowledge them as part of my world and my life, and then gently move on in to greet and be greeted by the Giver of Love. It is the hallowing of the husk of my life that the Lord desires.
O God who hast carried us when we knew it not, and who faithfully seeks us when we are yet afar off, lay on us a ministry of intercession for others, [and thus bring] us down into the very matrix of Thy yearning for souls and make us members of the great chain of redemptive love that girdles our world for its healing.
When I touch the heart of prayer, I touch the lives of others, for in some mysterious way, we are all inter-connected in the life of God. When I pray for another, my intention of bringing the soul of my friend, or of some situation in the world, or of warding off some threatening disaster is [purified], lifted out of its frame and used. Brothering, [sistering] the souls of [all] is the most social act there is. There is no richer area for exploration.
O God, help me to want what I really want to do and strip from me the reservations and hesitations which [block my service to you]. Kindle in me such a flame that I shall be swept into thy service. Snip the leash that I am always retying and draw me into the self-spending life of thy human servants.
The tragedy of postponed obedience is a tragedy in the life of each of us. Prayer is a great quickener of the heart; nothing can draw me more readily toward swiftness, fervor, and agility than a season of prayer. There is such a strange disequilibrium in the human heart between what it really wants to do and what its surface wants may twist it into performing; in prayer the deep want is restored, [and we become available].
O God my inward teacher, my kindler and sustainer, my hidden companion and the love of my life, forbid me from settling for a life of uncollected dispersion. Quicken my inward ears that I may hear the pulses of the divine whisper and live as one who walks through the dream of life as one awake.
Planned, [self-conscious] prayer is only a means to an end; there is a more continual state of prayerfulness or openness that goes on through the day and through the night. This is what is meant by those like Frank Laubach and Thomas Kelly who talk of praying continually. [When “God’s whisper”] is in eclipse, the knowledge that it has been buoys me up and gives me faith that it will be again. Isaac Penington said: “There is that near you which will guide you. O wait for it and mind that you keep to it.”
[God Speaks …]
O My [Creator, I do not ask for wounds for I have many already. But I have not listened to find what, on such occasions, you have had to tell. Open my inward ears and bring me up out of the basement of over-activity and preoccupation into the chamber where I may hear thy word and respond to it.
The basement [where we cannot hear “Jesus knocking”] is so expressive of the human condition as we know it today, that it seems for many to take shattering experiences to rouse them to what is going on. W.H. Auden writes: “It is where we are wounded that God speaks to us.” For some of us it is only in the depths of suffering that we seem open enough to listen to what God has to say to us.
O God, whose hand is upon me in times of strength & prosperity & in times of weakness & brokenness, may my senses’ threshold be lowered until I may bid thee cross & enter & give me guidance. Lay upon me the burden of the world’s need & the world’s suffering that I may be ready to see & minister to it with all [my strength].
In Bernard of Clairvaux’s (12th century) On Consideration, he guides a fellow Cistercian brother on how to bear the prosperity & power that became his as Pope Eugenius III. Bernard points out that his friend would be tempted to let the busyness of duties blot out his time for consideration (listening for deep wisdom). Those who have power & authority are not removed from God’s communication if they do not cut themselves off.
Oh God, if I resist Thee or draw beyond the sweep of today’s wave of thy compassion, O keep sweeping ever higher, O Lord, until I am no longer reluctant to accept thy invitation to move into the deeps of thy ocean and into the new to which thou has bidden me.
There are times when we come to the plateaus and when we do not seem to be able to get beyond. Certain things need to die before others can be born. [Sometimes we have to step back from our chosen path, “rest on a bench,” and wait for a new wave of release to come and restore our creativity]. Plateaus need not be permanent or final if we are open for a disclosure of God’s further landscape.
O God who has spoken to us through the Bible and other great books, help us to have the appetite and the capacity for discernment that will lead us to expose ourselves to books and find in them the word that is meant for us at that moment. Speak thy word to us as we read, and give us grace as a listener who listens and hears.
Meeting with a book which has a message in for us may be decisive in speaking to our condition. [A book may inspire someone to lead a life that may in turn inspire others]. Often the decisive book has been the Bible as was the case with Augustine and Francis of Assisi. Books and the written word are often God’s vehicles for speaking to us if we are prepared inwardly and are ready to listen to and ask for their message to us.
O God whose burning life flows in our veins, may we in the blaze of thy grace be open for all that thou givest us by night as well as by day and be attentive to find in them the message of thy surging life for our instruction. May we be made more open for their instruction.
There are times when God speaks to us in a dream; the Bible has many such stories; [they speak to us of where to go and where not to go]. [Carl speaks along with the Gospels and the Pauline teaching, saying] that unless the unconscious has embraced the new way of life, it can never be more than a veneer. A dream ignored is like an unopened letter that has been neglected.
O God, we thank thee for the gift of friendship and for the mutual kindling that such a gift may bring. Lift the level of our friendships and make us willing to be the kind of a friend in which this tie may be a thin point in the membrane through which thy word may touch us both.
God often speaks to us through a friend. Friends can shield us against God’s true invitations because they have made the same compromises, or they can be emissaries of God in that they confirm in us the deepest longings we have already had and give us courage to respond to them. Rufus Jones was inspired by and along with John Wilhelm Rowntree to rekindle the Society of Friends life for the service of the world.
O God, how little we realize that the poor in my generation may be able to open my own poverty and encourage me to rejoin the human race. O living God, pour through the newly opened arteries of our common life and wipe out all distinctions as we speak to one another’s need.
Is it conceivable that Jesus saw that the way to touch any society was at its Achilles heel, by serving the group whom it wanted to hide from its sight? It reaches to the quick of that society, touches it, and opens it to its own condition. Can we discover a mutual ministry to one another when this bloodstream of our common humanity is restored? Yes God does speak to us in the poor.
[Unlimited Liability …]
O God, I accept myself, the unacceptable, because thou hast accepted the unacceptable, & without further fuss or feathers I mean to get on with this unattractive roommate and with thy help spend him in thy service.
The responsibility to accept all has a difficult catch in; [it includes self-acceptance]. It is a perfect act of love to God to accept ourselves & to put this scarred & wearisome fellow into God’s hands & get on with the work to be done. Unlimited liability may have to begin by laying aside self-hate or the wish to be someone else as a disobedient act & a taking back of myself, which I acknowledge, accept & seek to put at the Lord’s disposal.
O God, we thank thee for using the family to reveal the way in which Thy love is poured out upon us even when we do not respond. Lay on each of us the needs of the others in our families, & grant the constancy of affection so that when we fail, the other family member will know that we cared & that we cherish them [always].
In the family the unlimited liability is never relinquished. How swiftly the family discloses gaps between what we mean & what we say & what we say & what we do; how often is forgiveness & a fresh start necessary? The notion of each being liable without limits to help the others come through to what they are meant to be is an assignment beyond any we may have reckoned with [in considering the duties called for in a Christian family].
O God who gives and gives and never counts the cost, sweep away our webs of calculation and give us that abandon which thy son Jesus Christ has disclosed to us. Frame what we do with a sense of meaning that in all our work we may know that we are a living part of thy continuing creation.
All work must have some frame of meaning or it destroys its human instruments. When in addition there is a sense of real calling, there is scarcely a limit to what can be carried and to the effort which men and women will put forth. John Ruysbroek writes: “The love of Jesus is both avid and generous. All that he is and all that he has he gives; and all that I am and all that I have, he takes.”
O God who wakens sleepers and who opens the eyes of the heart in frail and highly conventional people like myself, give courage and wisdom that I, too may become one of those who when I am needed am “There.”
When it comes to the application of the gospel ethic to my own immediate community, it is so much easier to wring our hands & demand a boycott & a blockade over social injustice in South Africa. In my community as the Gospel ethic begins to dawn on me, all kinds of new, alarming, & highly unpopular insights begin to lift above the parapet. [Will we be like disciples & be] “absurdly happy, entirely fearless, & always in trouble?”
O God whose Holy Scriptures teach us that “for him that is joined to all living things there is hope,” so join us to all the living that we may be children of hope & ever rekindle this hope in the hearts of our own nation.
It isn’t easy to see how to reconcile the state’s claims upon my loyalty, & the unlimited liability I as a Christian bear for all. Christian duty does not stop at this nation’s frontier; boundaries are always moving outward. The moral capital of every state is continually running down. It can only be restored by the tender consciences of its vigilant citizens. Carl Schurz declared: My country: when right to be kept right; when wrong to be set right.”
O God, give me a hearing heart that I may dare to hear the needs of my world and be shown ways in which even I, in all my weakness and frailty, may minister to them.
The world is suffering today from too few people who “hear with their hearts”; it is suffering from a drying up of compassion. The human spirit tends to withdraw and to feel hopeless about the sufferings and needs of human beings in distant places. Individual faithfulness to my world has not been discarded in God’s plan.
O God of all creation, enlarge my heart & the hearts of my fellows with such tenderness for all creation that we shall dare to speak up for all our fellow creatures & for the precious natural world that sustains them.
John Woolman: My heart was often tender, contrite, & universal love for fellow creatures increased in me.” Our loving Creator lays on you & me unlimited liability for all creation & for fellow creatures everywhere.
[Ecumenism …]
O God in whose eyes our separations from each other and our competitive depreciations of each other are clouds of darkness that help to hide from us thy true face, help us to know what these blockages are, and to see them for the clouds that shut us out not only from our brother but from thee.
[The invisible, limiting lines which ecumenism is supposed to overcome and] dissolve can be of very different sorts and dissolving them can be along very different lines. Each of us has our list of reservation to coming closer to other denominational groups from whom we feel separated. The ability to pinpoint these barriers and to face them in God’s presence is an important 1st step in ecumenism.
O God use thy sharpest sickle on the weeds of denominational pride, and possessiveness that are forever springing up anew in my heart and in the heart of our society. Give us a vision of thy passionate love for us all and of the task still [before us]. [Help us] set out together to answer thy beckoning invitation.
[When the Asian and African subjects of missions] meet the witness to Christ in 50 different versions, [complete with exclusive truth & jealous regard for the progress of others], it is not only confusing; it also belittles the whole witness. Denominational imperialism continues to flourish in less obvious but equally powerful ways. The uncommitted world will not be touched until there appears a whole new level of charity towards each other on the part of the Christian Church’s branches.
O God, we thank thee to be alive in a day when the walls are crumbling and the gates are being opened and the charity and affection of men who serve thee are increasing. Kindle a flame in me, O Lord, that I may not obstruct but may help to inflame the heart of the world with this new ecumenical spirit.
Roman Catholic & Protestant approaches to each other are new phenomena in the US. [In the Hitler period in Europe the walls became paper thin as the screws of totalitarian government tightened. The Catholics found strength in the Bible & the Protestants found strength in the Catholic liturgy]. The ecumenical miracle of Vatican Council II was prepared for by common suffering, common charity, and common admiration and affection.
O God, thrust out my boundaries of human compassion and caring. Take away my hesitations and reservations. Quicken me until I may “walk gladly over the world, answering to that of God in every one.”
What was the church really meant for? The Church is not a shelter for the saved; it is not a Noah’s ark to bring specially selected pairs through the wreck of the world to salvation. It is more the sprig of olive, symbolizing that there is a future for humankind. The love of God knows no bounds. It reaches out to Roman Catholics, non-Roman Catholic Christians, the world religions and the latent church.
O God, my love is provincial and thy love so limitless; sweep away my frontiers. Let me move with great openness to understand my brother and sister, and to be open to the witness that thy Holy Spirit may have for me through their witness, as I share with them what is most holy to me.
[Some limit ecumenism to] those who acknowledge Christ as the true window to the redemptive love of God. Great Roman Catholic scholars suggest that God has never left himself without a witness [in the world religions]. Some even suggest that the Holy Spirit may be speaking to present day Christianity through the Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, and Islamic religions. The passionate love of God is truly all-embracing.
O God, we who think we are thy appointed emissaries and spokesperson for thy ways with men, forgive us our brashness and [lead us] to humility and to a great openness to thy secret working everywhere.
A generation ago, secularism was regarded as the sworn enemy-rival of the Christian religion. [But secularism often embodied] ethical principles that implemented our concern for the worth and dignity of all on a scale beyond anything people of religion had ever dreamed possible. [The exportable traits of western legal, political, and labor practices] are deeply impregnated with spiritual principles of the infinite worth of all, and of the liability we each bear for the well-being of the other.
O God, who knowest the true heart of each of us, help us to withhold judgment & to listen with the inward ear to our atheist brother’s [& sister’s] words & what they are really trying to say. [Grant us] the conviction that no one is beyond thy reach or caring, that is it only when we bring them with us that we can see thy face.
In Robert Ingersoll’s “44 Lectures on Atheism,” he is attacking not so much God as the social infidelities that Christians have practiced in God’s name. [There is an atheism] which simply ignores God rooted deeply in us all. What is the hidden God saying to me through the witness of those who deny him?
[Worshiper …]
O God, for the freedom to worship and the appointed occasions to join with my fellows to celebrate thy infinite goodness and care, with all my heart, I give thee thanks.
When I join others in the worship of God, I come in my best, to bring my gift to God in thanks, for God, Jesus Christ, the company of saints, the church, & for all that God has done for me. Celebration with others springs from deep roots in us, for those things that are most precious to us we want to share with others. The common discovery that there is a God who cares, that Christ is alive in the hearts of all today, draws us to corporate worship.
O God, how can I ever thank you for the spiritual life’s rhythm in which private & corporate prayer truly support each other. Nurture both in me & help me always to be faithful to the one without neglecting the other.
There is a time to be alone and a time to be with others. There is a dimension in corporate worship, in praying together, which is not present in the solitariness of private prayer. In corporate prayer, Christ seems to gather the worshipping community and to draw each person from one’s separate solitariness into the household of faith. The corporate worshiper belongs not to self alone but to the whole company of the servants of God.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
42. The Discipline of Prayer (by Fredrick J. Tritton; 1948)
About the Author—Frederick Tritton (1887-1968) was born in Twyford in Great Britain. His father worked in the railways. He put himself through school. In 1914, he began working for Friends Service Counsel, a British organization that provided the model for the AFSC. Friends remember him for his modesty, simplicity & quiet sincerity. He was remembered as the British Friend with the deepest understanding of Quakerism in Europe. His own religious life led him to help organize the first prayer & meditation retreats among British Friends.
Foreword—This pamphlet comes from Howard Brinton's suggestion that I revise my 1947 Pendle Hill Retreat addresses for publications. Chapter V on prayer in daily life was added, where the subject is covered in greater detail than at the Retreat. Together we discovered a number of truths that alone we might have missed. They have become a part of what each of us as an individual has give. This pamphlet is for those looking for practical guidance in prayer, not for the sake of self, but for God and the service of God's family. F. J. Tritton
I. The Preliminary Discipline—[This Retreat is like] a prolonged Meeting for Worship, and [time is spent here] in the hope that when we get back to our normal life, the influence of the quiet time, the spiritual blessings will continue. In Retreat you will find it well to suspend for the time being the exercise of critical faculties. [As valuable an instrument as it is], it's also a power that has been over-exercised; we all suffer from over-intellectualization. Our scientists are so fascinated by the works of their minds that one achievement follows another without being coordinated into a general human pattern; all sense of direction has been lost. The opening of the atomic era and the power to destroy humankind is another aspect of losing God's vision.
In this retreat, we shall put restless intellect aside, [& seek not] repress our deeper layer, & allow it to be revealed. Cultivate reverence in your relationships with people & things during these days. When Jesus told his disciples to consider the flowers of the field & birds of the air, he must have meant something like this. Contemplate them like the poet for their own sake & for sheer joy in them. They are more than divine beauty. They are manifestations, living sacraments of the life, love, [& concern] of the [Creator] for all creation. In this increasingly mechanized world, an attitude of deep respect & appreciation of the value of others is even more important.
"Know one another in that which is eternal, which was before the world was." Refuse to attempt in any way to manipulate other people for your own ends. At this retreat, you will initiate or maybe accelerate a process which will enable you to keep your mind always alert and supple and disencumbered, so that you will gain a new zest for life and an increasing delight in even ordinary people. You will become a channel for the divine life, and God's power in you will redeem you from futility and enable you to act redemptively and creatively with God.
II. Some Aspects of Prayer—Catholic writers agree on 5 divisions of prayer: 1. Vocal prayer, intercession 2. Mental Prayer, meditation 3. Affective Prayer 4. Prayer of Simplicity, applied contemplation 5. Prayer of Quiet, infused contemplation. It is a mistake to think of them as stages you advance through; don't imagine that you will ever grow out of the need or get beyond any of them. It is important that we learn to ask right. In time we learn to ask for spiritual gifts; God doesn't give them without us wanting & asking for them. Jesus said as much.
With or without words we are all the while practicing the prayer of petition. What will you pursue until your objective is satisfied? [Ask this question &] search your hearts during this Retreat [for the answer]. [Be careful what you ask for, or] the Psalmist's saying may be fulfilled in you—"He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul." Mental prayer is true meditation. Take time to fill your mind with spiritual truth. To beginners, not being preoccupied with trivial things, & the effort to steady the mind's outgoing activity sufficiently to enable it to vibrate in tune with deeper realities, is a task that often disheartens. Eventually, our desires & petitions become less self-centered, & the thoughts of our hearts are cleansed by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Almost anything [can be used as a focal point] to start with, for everything is full of significance once we take time to look. (Using a personal problem should be avoided until one has gained some skill in mind control). One of Jesus' sayings or teachings is best [e.g. Take the Beatitudes, or the Gospel of John's 7 affirmations one by one]. Wordsworth, Whittier, Whitman, Browning, Shelley, & later T. S. Elliot poems contain valuable material; note striking passages to use as meditation material. This must remain a prayer, a testing of our lives by the Life we have been thinking about, and not a fascinating mental exercise.
If we tend to be discouraged, we must direct thoughts away from ourselves to God. No devotion should be considered complete unless at some time we leave our reflections & open ourselves fully to God's presence with us, yet beyond us. We pass from thinking about spiritual things to offering ourselves to the divine Person, from I—He (past tense), to I—Thou [beloved 2nd person]. In Affective Prayer we don't so much exercise intelligence in thinking about divine things, as our feelings in love toward the author of all things. [In the absence of energy] for mental exertion, one can still offer affection to God; sentimental, emotional indulgence, or fervor needs to be avoided. [Make it] just a simple, sincere expression of whole-hearted love to God, Father, [Creator], or Christ.
III. Contemplation of the Prayer of Presence—As we meditate regularly, we gradually pass into a "form" which is mostly without form, imageless, & an unemotional offering ourselves to God. It roughly corresponds to the prayer of simplicity or applied contemplation, which could lead to prayer of quiet or infused contemplation; many attaining the simplicity prayer never reach any sustained experience of infused contemplation. If we can't meditate, we should take it as a leading that prayer should consist less of words & forms. John of the Cross, Cloud of Unknowing author, John Chapman, George Fox, Robert Barclay, Quaker & Catholic, meet on common ground [of a formless prayer space]. Lady Claypole, Oliver Cromwell's daughter received a letter from George Fox, advocating the prayer of contemplation: [excerpt follows]:
"Be still & cool in thy own mind & spirit from thy own thoughts; then thou wilt feel the principle of God ... from whom life comes ... be still ... from thy own thoughts, searchings, seekings, desires, & imaginations ... Look at the light which discovers temptations, distractions, confusions; feel over them to receive power to stand against them ... That ye may feel the power of an endless life, [by being brought] up to the immortal God ..."
Loving contemplations brings freedom from: ... restless mind ... personal cravings ... concepts & fantasies. The will sustains attention. No thoughts, whatsoever, are to draw us away from this occupation; we are to persevere until minds are raised up to God & stay there. Robert Barclay points out that the Quaker form of worship, although it might seem strange to many, has been practiced in all ages, by certain mystics, & by English Benedictines in 1657. [The Quaker difference is that] God was "revealing & establishing this worship [with a wider base of practitioners]; "poor tradesmen, yea young boys & girls [are] witnesses." [It is] as the eyes of the servant looking unto the hand of their master." With personal thoughts & desires set aside, one's whole attention is focused on the Lord, until we know [beyond a doubt] that the Master is addressing us. Steady practice & constant watchfulness against self-deceit bring the assurance that one isn't alone, but communing with the Lord of life.
It was practicing this prayer that gave early Quakers assurance that God spoke to them & was supporting them. Group worship, with its natural check upon extravagances & its encouragement of what was pure & healthy, played an important part in keeping [the practice of this prayer on track]. It might be good if Friends paid more attention to this prayer form & encouraged a more diligent practice of it for individuals & the group. If we could but unlearn our clever intellectual ways, we too should be able to pray this prayer of simple regard & enter upon a whole new range of experience. In my own experience of this prayer, I generally use petition & meditation as preparation. I turn to contemplation with words like, "O God thou art here, near to me. [I give the rest of this time and myself to thee]. Do what thou wilt." Or I use the opening clauses of the Lord's Prayer. I turn away from all else, to the Beyond that is Within, and is approached from within. I repeat John Chapman's: "O God, I want thee, and I do not want anything else; or just "God." The will comes into operation as quiet watchfulness.
If it seems that nothing is happening in the phenomenal world, I have no doubt that God is at work. I seem to have come close to my spiritual center. One's knowledge about God doesn't increase as in meditation; one's direct knowledge of God as an inescapable reality grows steadily & surely. [There is a blessed absence of]: imagination; emotion; aridity; desolation; discomfort; conflict; misunderstanding; exaltation of spirit; depression. Nothing at all can separate you from God's love revealed in Christ. [We have of late concentrated on practical application rather than deeply mystical prayer], and worship has been meditation rather than contemplation. This generation will find its inspiration in a fresh discovery of God through the practice of the Prayer of the Presence.
IV. Intercessory Prayer—We can't believe that God needing to be urged to do good gives a true picture of God. In using this image, Jesus was urging persistence in prayer. [The Greek word] for intercession denotes approaching somebody on behalf of another. We are poor things, and our prayers are very feeble, but God through Christ and God's Spirit helps make them effective. We have a spontaneous impulse to call in a higher power, but the impulse needs disciplining; intercession needs to be made according to the will of God.
[For interceding in another's desperate situation], I must seek to understand the circumstances. [In answer to my prayer offering myself for the other], I may be shown something I can do. I can suggest something to someone else, if I am sure there is nothing more for me to do. If no direction comes, I may still be sure that God is at work. Maybe my offering provided the linking up or channel needed for spiritual forces to flow more freely for the one in need. I can pray for causes in the same way, or for spiritual movements [when called to do so]. In all intercession I must continually remind myself that it isn't the words that matter but the offering of myself.
Intercession is a process that brings our scattered forces into a focus and links us with the powers of the spiritual world. [In a meeting where intercession has taken place, participants] come away with a sense of quiet strength and renewed vitality, receiving in proportion to what they offered. In making a total offering of themselves, they may become "filled with all the fullness of God." How am I to fulfill my responsibility to intercede for others? How might I make use of a list of those needing help? Have a time each day for this service, bringing to God those persons and things that are uppermost. Do not let your intercession become mechanical. It is good practice to draw in all [those sharing the condition of the one you are praying for]. How can we practice intercession when we are greatly in need of the "streams of refreshing" and feel useless? Evelyn Underhill writes: "You can also offer your prayers, obedience, and endurance of dryness to our Lord, for the good of other souls ... The less you get out of it, the nearer it approaches something worth offering." The power of God is quite as often demonstrated in this way as when our prayers come easily and confidently.
V. Prayer in Daily Life—Prayer expresses a constant impulse of human nature to reach out towards that which is greater than itself, seeking a Reality [which at first is barely perceptible to the spiritual self], which longs to know it more fully. As the impulse to grow is in the plant/self, the real cause is in the sun/ God. One's reaching out results in physical, intellectual, moral, & spiritual growth. Growth [is side effect, not the ultimate end], which is the kind & quality of relationship that one achieves with that which stimulated one's response. Growth increases the area of one's receptivity. [The ultimate end] has no end, for this relationship [which seems to take place over time] belongs not to time but to eternity.
If one fixes attention on God, all achievements, regardless of field will tend towards that end. Fascination with worldly things, seeing them as the main end of one's existence, become the end of one's better striving. Emerson said, "Things are in the saddle, & ride humankind." [How can a religious society resist being transformed by the world according to a worldly pattern]? [Those few who truly confess a failure to resist in] an encounter with the Supreme Reality release fresh forces for action. [They serve as leaven which] spreads until large communities are regenerated & God's will is once more being done on earth. There is no reason why a new outpouring of God's Spirit should not take place in these latter days.
To take part in this new Pentecost, we must become men & women of prayer. Why is it our meetings don't throb with spiritual life more often? [How can we learn as individuals to cultivate a deep impulse that seeks out heavenly Presence]? The group experience is dependent upon that personal spiritual quality which is given to us in our private devotions, & which binds us together in the process of transforming the world.
Meditating on the Lord's Prayer—The model prayer Jesus taught in response to "Lord, teach us to pray," is so familiar through frequent recital as to have almost become degraded to a "vain repetition." It would be good practice to take it for a period as a theme for daily meditation leading to contemplation, in order to assimilate its meaning and implications, to pray with understanding, and to have its spirit pervade all our prayers all the time.
"The heart of prayer is adoration," emptying the self in contemplating God's wonder & glory." [Adoration is more prayer's starting point than it's goal]. At the start, the Light has revealed evil. Once evil is recognized, we turn away from it to God. By calling God Father, [Mother, Parent], we are by implication denying & renouncing self which obeys selfish, egocentric impulses. In "hallowed be thy name," we pray that all may come to knowledge of God, & glorify God by using their powers as holy gifts. Thus all may become 1 holy family in God, & God's kingdom may come. "Thy will be done," implies we want to be "fellow workers with God," [& to become] so deeply in love with God that we are ready to do what God wants, whatever the cost. If we understand these opening clauses right, identify ourselves with them, we shall be in the right spirit to utter the remaining petitions.
Going through the whole prayer quietly & thoughtfully, we shall find times of healthy self-examination & sober reflection, as well as strengthening & confirming our spiritual base. Or suppose we take the complete prayer daily for a time, trying to see & realize it afresh as a whole, perhaps by using a new translation or a new language. Then recite the prayer slowly, uniting our being with it but without tension, in an attitude of loving attention to God. We are to go from thinking about God to meeting God in personal intercourse & communion.
We mustn't expect anything magical. In the course of time we shall come to realize that, whether or not we were directly conscious of it at the time, a sharing in a larger life is taking place. Whom have I in Heaven but thee? Who is there on earth beside thee? As non-ritualists make use of the Church's ancient prayers & hymns for meditation, they will come to understand that in most cases, hymns, responses, collects & litanies had their origin in someone else's [spiritual] experience; they enshrine a vision, insight, deep meditation, or encounter with God. They could serve to [give our wandering minds and spirit pause] and prepare us for contemplation.
The daily turning of our minds & emotions from terrifying demands of the world to reflect upon things that belong to our peace is a vital necessity. Turning ourselves to God in loving attention, contemplation, is the central act of devotions & corresponds to receiving Christ in Holy Communion. A daily program is invaluable, [& might include] lifting our hearts up to God immediately upon waking, 10-30 minutes of prayer, odd times spent thinking on the subject of your morning meditation. The evening is a good time to reflect quietly on events of the day. Commit those you love, dislike, & fear, the events of the day to God. Then commit yourself to God.
Prepare yourself for weekly worship with a ½-hour of special prayer & meditative reading. If you can't be at worship try to be present in spirit during at least part of the hour's worship. 2 or 3 times a year, try to make a retreat with like-minded people. Friends have found that longer time together makes them more sensitive to things of the Spirit & [spiritual] growth results. There is likewise an increase in power for service. The natural impulse of human nature to reach out towards that which is greater than itself can be cultivated, & lead to growth in the knowledge and love of the Father and Christ, [and actual experience of God's presence], that will trans-form one's outlook & indeed one's basic character, & bring a deep sense of power and peace and joy everlasting.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
66. The World in Tune (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1952)
[About the Author]—Elizabeth Janet Gray (1902-97) was born in Philadelphia, PA, She was a graduate of Germantown Friends School, Bryn Mawr College in 1923 & Drexel Institute in 1926, & became a librarian at the University of NC—Chapel Hill. Vining was widowed and severely injured in an automobile accident. During her convalescence (1933), she became a Quaker. She was mainly a children's book author. 1946-1950, Vining was chosen by Emperor Hirohito to become private tutor to Crown Prince Akihito. She brought in 4 teenaged boys to help the Prince learn English, & taught other children of the Imperial household. This pamphlet is a collection of quotations from some of the author’s favorite mystics with interpretive comments.
"Prayer is the world in tune." Henry Vaughn
[Introduction]—Lord, thou commandest the Israelites to offer a morning sacrifice, so I offer up the sacrifice of prayer & desire to be preserved this day. 316 years ago Mary Proude, a little girl struggled with prayer. Later she discovered that prayer need not be written at all; she felt she had learned true communion with God. Her 2nd husband was Isaac Penington, & her daughter married William Penn. At the opposite pole from obscure children like Mary Proude & George Fox, was the popular divine, John Donne, dean of St. Paul's. His prayers were exquisite pieces of writing composed not only with a literary regard for beauty of phrase & cadence, but with a courtier's feeling for formal and reverent approach. [He is in stark contrast to Teresa of Avila less than a century before, who] informed God that he had so few friends because He treated those he had so badly.
The tide was turning against set prayers. Some found them "a supercilious tyranny," while most Protestants discarded them; few so thoroughly as Quakers. Friends' prayers were extemporaneous, under the promptings of the Spirit, & were seldom written down afterwards; no collection of George Fox's prayers were made for future generations. [When] mystical writers see spiritual life [in levels], prayers of prepared words are at the lower ones; prayers of quiet, or for union are later stages. In times of empty meditation, wandering mind, & earthbound heart, spontaneous prayer is difficult or impossible. Then, verbal prayer becomes a support for the flagging spirit. They speak to God and us, providing discipline, informing imagination, directing will, inducing awareness from without, when the inner doors appear to be closed or lost. We can read them slowly, savoring each phrase or sentence, waiting until each line is exhausted. Memorized prayer, or a phrase that has caught our attention may accompany us through the day, steadying us in time of anxiety or stress, or expressing a sudden joy.
[Purity Collect]—O God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires know, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our heart by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify they Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen
This prayer, is one of the oldest & most beloved of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. While it is ascribed to 8th century Alcuin, it may be from some still older group of prayers. It expresses [succinctly] worship's essence. His prayer appeared in the 1st English prayer book, the Sarum Missal. Osmund, nephew of William the Conqueror, compiled a manual for the priests' use only; it was in constant use for nearly 500 years. The people got tired of how Norman soldiers treated clergy, & built a new cathedral; the main body was completed in 38 years, & the spire was completed after a pause of 37 years in 48 years. [Old Sarum took over a century of actual construction]. The Cloud of Unknowing's anonymous author prefaced his book with the Purity Collect.
The Purity Collect appeared in the 1549 prayer book in its present form. Through all the book's changes of rubric and content, this prayer has proven itself indespensible. The magic bit for me is the word inspiration, used in its Latin sense of breathing into, Sir Thomas Browne's "warm gales and gentle ventilations of the Spirit." The prayer continues with [a prescription of] inward attitude [love] and outward action [magnify thy name]. The last phrase once seemed to me an outworn formula. How can a grubby and self-absorbed little human add anything worthy to the Name of God? The Christian minority in Japan are judged by their acts; by their deeds they magnify or belittle the God with whose Name they are identified. [The idea of cleansing thoughts is echoed in the 1st century] Jewish 18 Petitions: "Cleanse our hearts to serve thee in truth."
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave/ To do the like; our Bodies but forerun/ The spirit's duty; True hearts spread and heave/ Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun./ Give Him thy first thoughts then; so shalt thou keep/ Him company all day, and in him sleep. [This and following poem are by Henry Vaughn]
The rising winds/ And falling springs,/ Birds, beasts, all things/ Adore Him in their kinds./ Thus all is hurl'd/ In sacred Hymns and order, the great chime/ And symphony of nature. Prayer is/ The world in tune.
[Morning Worship]—Our 1st thought in the morning and the last at night should be of God. It seems to be the nature of religion to turn in the morning, after the darkness & oblivion of the night, to the source of returning light. The atmosphere of true worship was palpable in the silent moments of Shinto morning worship in Japan. We are aware in the morning of God's loving-kindness, God's gift of the new day, fresh and unspoiled, and the opportunities that lie before us. At night, when we are all the wiser for our knowledge of [successes], failures & uncompleted opportunities, if we have kept "God company all the day," then we can most completely give our selves into God's hands for the night and "in God sleep."
BEFORE SLEEP—The toil of day is ebbing/ The quiet comes again,/ In slumber deep relaxing,/ The limbs of tired men.// And minds with anguish shaken/ And spirits racked with grief/ The cup of all forgetting/ Have drunk and found relief.// The still Lethean waters/ Now steal through every vein,/ And men no more remember/ The meaning of their pain.// Let, let the weary body/ Lie sunk in slumber deep;/ The heart shall still remember/ Christ in its very sleep. Prudentius (4th century Spaniard)
[Meister Eckhart (1260-1327)]—Lord, grant sorrow of the humble; a mind escaped from ... body; to love, laud ... & cherish act & thought toward thee. Grant me a ... prayerful mind with intuition of thy will, & love & joy which make it easy to act. Lord, [may I] always [make] progress toward better things & never backslide.
We are repelled by mystics, their self-torture & wishing their families dead, that they might give all their mind to God. Rufus Jones: "[Eckhart] was sane, with moral health, vigor, & humor, 1 of the best normality signs. He exhibited religious intuition." Eckhart: "Active life is better than just contemplation, so far as we spend in service what came from contemplation." This prayer pleas for steadiness. Luke says in the Sower parable, "In good ground, are the honest & good hearts, having heard the word, hold it fast & bring forth fruit with patience."
[Robert Louis Stevenson]—Give us grace and strength to persevere; courage and gayety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends and soften to us our enemies ... [Make us strong], brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, [and ill-fortune] ... and [to the end] loyal and loving to one another.
The Cathedral of St. Giles in Edinburgh is dim and vast; old battle flags hang tattered and motionless under the vaulted roof, where old religious enemies rest together. A statue of John Knox is there. Everything in St. Giles seems to speak of religion in its harshest and most militant aspects. In a small side chapel is the Steven-son memorial, the bronze bas relief of the invalid in his chair, with his prayer beside him.
We need courage, especially courage to stand by what is right, & to claim justice & love as reasons for acting. Gayety goes with courage; it sets to one side self & its urgencies, & it handles life with a light & healing touch. Both courage & gayety spring, surely, from the deep, quiet mind's rich soil. A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, free from ties & from all self-seeking, & wholly merged into God's will & dead as to its own. [Any deed of this mind], however small, is clothed with something of God's power and authority. Prayers like this of Stevenson, in which specific virtues are sought, are addressed as much to our own deep selves as to God. There can be no better or more effective place to suggest improvements to our selves than in God's presence.
O God who wakens sleepers and who opens the eyes of the heart in frail and highly conventional people like myself, give courage and wisdom that I, too may become one of those who when I am needed am “There.”
When it comes to the application of the gospel ethic to my own immediate community, it is so much easier to wring our hands & demand a boycott & a blockade over social injustice in South Africa. In my community as the Gospel ethic begins to dawn on me, all kinds of new, alarming, & highly unpopular insights begin to lift above the parapet. [Will we be like disciples & be] “absurdly happy, entirely fearless, & always in trouble?”
O God whose Holy Scriptures teach us that “for him that is joined to all living things there is hope,” so join us to all the living that we may be children of hope & ever rekindle this hope in the hearts of our own nation.
It isn’t easy to see how to reconcile the state’s claims upon my loyalty, & the unlimited liability I as a Christian bear for all. Christian duty does not stop at this nation’s frontier; boundaries are always moving outward. The moral capital of every state is continually running down. It can only be restored by the tender consciences of its vigilant citizens. Carl Schurz declared: My country: when right to be kept right; when wrong to be set right.”
O God, give me a hearing heart that I may dare to hear the needs of my world and be shown ways in which even I, in all my weakness and frailty, may minister to them.
The world is suffering today from too few people who “hear with their hearts”; it is suffering from a drying up of compassion. The human spirit tends to withdraw and to feel hopeless about the sufferings and needs of human beings in distant places. Individual faithfulness to my world has not been discarded in God’s plan.
O God of all creation, enlarge my heart & the hearts of my fellows with such tenderness for all creation that we shall dare to speak up for all our fellow creatures & for the precious natural world that sustains them.
John Woolman: My heart was often tender, contrite, & universal love for fellow creatures increased in me.” Our loving Creator lays on you & me unlimited liability for all creation & for fellow creatures everywhere.
[Ecumenism …]
O God in whose eyes our separations from each other and our competitive depreciations of each other are clouds of darkness that help to hide from us thy true face, help us to know what these blockages are, and to see them for the clouds that shut us out not only from our brother but from thee.
[The invisible, limiting lines which ecumenism is supposed to overcome and] dissolve can be of very different sorts and dissolving them can be along very different lines. Each of us has our list of reservation to coming closer to other denominational groups from whom we feel separated. The ability to pinpoint these barriers and to face them in God’s presence is an important 1st step in ecumenism.
O God use thy sharpest sickle on the weeds of denominational pride, and possessiveness that are forever springing up anew in my heart and in the heart of our society. Give us a vision of thy passionate love for us all and of the task still [before us]. [Help us] set out together to answer thy beckoning invitation.
[When the Asian and African subjects of missions] meet the witness to Christ in 50 different versions, [complete with exclusive truth & jealous regard for the progress of others], it is not only confusing; it also belittles the whole witness. Denominational imperialism continues to flourish in less obvious but equally powerful ways. The uncommitted world will not be touched until there appears a whole new level of charity towards each other on the part of the Christian Church’s branches.
O God, we thank thee to be alive in a day when the walls are crumbling and the gates are being opened and the charity and affection of men who serve thee are increasing. Kindle a flame in me, O Lord, that I may not obstruct but may help to inflame the heart of the world with this new ecumenical spirit.
Roman Catholic & Protestant approaches to each other are new phenomena in the US. [In the Hitler period in Europe the walls became paper thin as the screws of totalitarian government tightened. The Catholics found strength in the Bible & the Protestants found strength in the Catholic liturgy]. The ecumenical miracle of Vatican Council II was prepared for by common suffering, common charity, and common admiration and affection.
O God, thrust out my boundaries of human compassion and caring. Take away my hesitations and reservations. Quicken me until I may “walk gladly over the world, answering to that of God in every one.”
What was the church really meant for? The Church is not a shelter for the saved; it is not a Noah’s ark to bring specially selected pairs through the wreck of the world to salvation. It is more the sprig of olive, symbolizing that there is a future for humankind. The love of God knows no bounds. It reaches out to Roman Catholics, non-Roman Catholic Christians, the world religions and the latent church.
O God, my love is provincial and thy love so limitless; sweep away my frontiers. Let me move with great openness to understand my brother and sister, and to be open to the witness that thy Holy Spirit may have for me through their witness, as I share with them what is most holy to me.
[Some limit ecumenism to] those who acknowledge Christ as the true window to the redemptive love of God. Great Roman Catholic scholars suggest that God has never left himself without a witness [in the world religions]. Some even suggest that the Holy Spirit may be speaking to present day Christianity through the Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, and Islamic religions. The passionate love of God is truly all-embracing.
O God, we who think we are thy appointed emissaries and spokesperson for thy ways with men, forgive us our brashness and [lead us] to humility and to a great openness to thy secret working everywhere.
A generation ago, secularism was regarded as the sworn enemy-rival of the Christian religion. [But secularism often embodied] ethical principles that implemented our concern for the worth and dignity of all on a scale beyond anything people of religion had ever dreamed possible. [The exportable traits of western legal, political, and labor practices] are deeply impregnated with spiritual principles of the infinite worth of all, and of the liability we each bear for the well-being of the other.
O God, who knowest the true heart of each of us, help us to withhold judgment & to listen with the inward ear to our atheist brother’s [& sister’s] words & what they are really trying to say. [Grant us] the conviction that no one is beyond thy reach or caring, that is it only when we bring them with us that we can see thy face.
In Robert Ingersoll’s “44 Lectures on Atheism,” he is attacking not so much God as the social infidelities that Christians have practiced in God’s name. [There is an atheism] which simply ignores God rooted deeply in us all. What is the hidden God saying to me through the witness of those who deny him?
[Worshiper …]
O God, for the freedom to worship and the appointed occasions to join with my fellows to celebrate thy infinite goodness and care, with all my heart, I give thee thanks.
When I join others in the worship of God, I come in my best, to bring my gift to God in thanks, for God, Jesus Christ, the company of saints, the church, & for all that God has done for me. Celebration with others springs from deep roots in us, for those things that are most precious to us we want to share with others. The common discovery that there is a God who cares, that Christ is alive in the hearts of all today, draws us to corporate worship.
O God, how can I ever thank you for the spiritual life’s rhythm in which private & corporate prayer truly support each other. Nurture both in me & help me always to be faithful to the one without neglecting the other.
There is a time to be alone and a time to be with others. There is a dimension in corporate worship, in praying together, which is not present in the solitariness of private prayer. In corporate prayer, Christ seems to gather the worshipping community and to draw each person from one’s separate solitariness into the household of faith. The corporate worshiper belongs not to self alone but to the whole company of the servants of God.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
42. The Discipline of Prayer (by Fredrick J. Tritton; 1948)
About the Author—Frederick Tritton (1887-1968) was born in Twyford in Great Britain. His father worked in the railways. He put himself through school. In 1914, he began working for Friends Service Counsel, a British organization that provided the model for the AFSC. Friends remember him for his modesty, simplicity & quiet sincerity. He was remembered as the British Friend with the deepest understanding of Quakerism in Europe. His own religious life led him to help organize the first prayer & meditation retreats among British Friends.
Foreword—This pamphlet comes from Howard Brinton's suggestion that I revise my 1947 Pendle Hill Retreat addresses for publications. Chapter V on prayer in daily life was added, where the subject is covered in greater detail than at the Retreat. Together we discovered a number of truths that alone we might have missed. They have become a part of what each of us as an individual has give. This pamphlet is for those looking for practical guidance in prayer, not for the sake of self, but for God and the service of God's family. F. J. Tritton
I. The Preliminary Discipline—[This Retreat is like] a prolonged Meeting for Worship, and [time is spent here] in the hope that when we get back to our normal life, the influence of the quiet time, the spiritual blessings will continue. In Retreat you will find it well to suspend for the time being the exercise of critical faculties. [As valuable an instrument as it is], it's also a power that has been over-exercised; we all suffer from over-intellectualization. Our scientists are so fascinated by the works of their minds that one achievement follows another without being coordinated into a general human pattern; all sense of direction has been lost. The opening of the atomic era and the power to destroy humankind is another aspect of losing God's vision.
In this retreat, we shall put restless intellect aside, [& seek not] repress our deeper layer, & allow it to be revealed. Cultivate reverence in your relationships with people & things during these days. When Jesus told his disciples to consider the flowers of the field & birds of the air, he must have meant something like this. Contemplate them like the poet for their own sake & for sheer joy in them. They are more than divine beauty. They are manifestations, living sacraments of the life, love, [& concern] of the [Creator] for all creation. In this increasingly mechanized world, an attitude of deep respect & appreciation of the value of others is even more important.
"Know one another in that which is eternal, which was before the world was." Refuse to attempt in any way to manipulate other people for your own ends. At this retreat, you will initiate or maybe accelerate a process which will enable you to keep your mind always alert and supple and disencumbered, so that you will gain a new zest for life and an increasing delight in even ordinary people. You will become a channel for the divine life, and God's power in you will redeem you from futility and enable you to act redemptively and creatively with God.
II. Some Aspects of Prayer—Catholic writers agree on 5 divisions of prayer: 1. Vocal prayer, intercession 2. Mental Prayer, meditation 3. Affective Prayer 4. Prayer of Simplicity, applied contemplation 5. Prayer of Quiet, infused contemplation. It is a mistake to think of them as stages you advance through; don't imagine that you will ever grow out of the need or get beyond any of them. It is important that we learn to ask right. In time we learn to ask for spiritual gifts; God doesn't give them without us wanting & asking for them. Jesus said as much.
With or without words we are all the while practicing the prayer of petition. What will you pursue until your objective is satisfied? [Ask this question &] search your hearts during this Retreat [for the answer]. [Be careful what you ask for, or] the Psalmist's saying may be fulfilled in you—"He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul." Mental prayer is true meditation. Take time to fill your mind with spiritual truth. To beginners, not being preoccupied with trivial things, & the effort to steady the mind's outgoing activity sufficiently to enable it to vibrate in tune with deeper realities, is a task that often disheartens. Eventually, our desires & petitions become less self-centered, & the thoughts of our hearts are cleansed by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Almost anything [can be used as a focal point] to start with, for everything is full of significance once we take time to look. (Using a personal problem should be avoided until one has gained some skill in mind control). One of Jesus' sayings or teachings is best [e.g. Take the Beatitudes, or the Gospel of John's 7 affirmations one by one]. Wordsworth, Whittier, Whitman, Browning, Shelley, & later T. S. Elliot poems contain valuable material; note striking passages to use as meditation material. This must remain a prayer, a testing of our lives by the Life we have been thinking about, and not a fascinating mental exercise.
If we tend to be discouraged, we must direct thoughts away from ourselves to God. No devotion should be considered complete unless at some time we leave our reflections & open ourselves fully to God's presence with us, yet beyond us. We pass from thinking about spiritual things to offering ourselves to the divine Person, from I—He (past tense), to I—Thou [beloved 2nd person]. In Affective Prayer we don't so much exercise intelligence in thinking about divine things, as our feelings in love toward the author of all things. [In the absence of energy] for mental exertion, one can still offer affection to God; sentimental, emotional indulgence, or fervor needs to be avoided. [Make it] just a simple, sincere expression of whole-hearted love to God, Father, [Creator], or Christ.
III. Contemplation of the Prayer of Presence—As we meditate regularly, we gradually pass into a "form" which is mostly without form, imageless, & an unemotional offering ourselves to God. It roughly corresponds to the prayer of simplicity or applied contemplation, which could lead to prayer of quiet or infused contemplation; many attaining the simplicity prayer never reach any sustained experience of infused contemplation. If we can't meditate, we should take it as a leading that prayer should consist less of words & forms. John of the Cross, Cloud of Unknowing author, John Chapman, George Fox, Robert Barclay, Quaker & Catholic, meet on common ground [of a formless prayer space]. Lady Claypole, Oliver Cromwell's daughter received a letter from George Fox, advocating the prayer of contemplation: [excerpt follows]:
"Be still & cool in thy own mind & spirit from thy own thoughts; then thou wilt feel the principle of God ... from whom life comes ... be still ... from thy own thoughts, searchings, seekings, desires, & imaginations ... Look at the light which discovers temptations, distractions, confusions; feel over them to receive power to stand against them ... That ye may feel the power of an endless life, [by being brought] up to the immortal God ..."
Loving contemplations brings freedom from: ... restless mind ... personal cravings ... concepts & fantasies. The will sustains attention. No thoughts, whatsoever, are to draw us away from this occupation; we are to persevere until minds are raised up to God & stay there. Robert Barclay points out that the Quaker form of worship, although it might seem strange to many, has been practiced in all ages, by certain mystics, & by English Benedictines in 1657. [The Quaker difference is that] God was "revealing & establishing this worship [with a wider base of practitioners]; "poor tradesmen, yea young boys & girls [are] witnesses." [It is] as the eyes of the servant looking unto the hand of their master." With personal thoughts & desires set aside, one's whole attention is focused on the Lord, until we know [beyond a doubt] that the Master is addressing us. Steady practice & constant watchfulness against self-deceit bring the assurance that one isn't alone, but communing with the Lord of life.
It was practicing this prayer that gave early Quakers assurance that God spoke to them & was supporting them. Group worship, with its natural check upon extravagances & its encouragement of what was pure & healthy, played an important part in keeping [the practice of this prayer on track]. It might be good if Friends paid more attention to this prayer form & encouraged a more diligent practice of it for individuals & the group. If we could but unlearn our clever intellectual ways, we too should be able to pray this prayer of simple regard & enter upon a whole new range of experience. In my own experience of this prayer, I generally use petition & meditation as preparation. I turn to contemplation with words like, "O God thou art here, near to me. [I give the rest of this time and myself to thee]. Do what thou wilt." Or I use the opening clauses of the Lord's Prayer. I turn away from all else, to the Beyond that is Within, and is approached from within. I repeat John Chapman's: "O God, I want thee, and I do not want anything else; or just "God." The will comes into operation as quiet watchfulness.
If it seems that nothing is happening in the phenomenal world, I have no doubt that God is at work. I seem to have come close to my spiritual center. One's knowledge about God doesn't increase as in meditation; one's direct knowledge of God as an inescapable reality grows steadily & surely. [There is a blessed absence of]: imagination; emotion; aridity; desolation; discomfort; conflict; misunderstanding; exaltation of spirit; depression. Nothing at all can separate you from God's love revealed in Christ. [We have of late concentrated on practical application rather than deeply mystical prayer], and worship has been meditation rather than contemplation. This generation will find its inspiration in a fresh discovery of God through the practice of the Prayer of the Presence.
IV. Intercessory Prayer—We can't believe that God needing to be urged to do good gives a true picture of God. In using this image, Jesus was urging persistence in prayer. [The Greek word] for intercession denotes approaching somebody on behalf of another. We are poor things, and our prayers are very feeble, but God through Christ and God's Spirit helps make them effective. We have a spontaneous impulse to call in a higher power, but the impulse needs disciplining; intercession needs to be made according to the will of God.
[For interceding in another's desperate situation], I must seek to understand the circumstances. [In answer to my prayer offering myself for the other], I may be shown something I can do. I can suggest something to someone else, if I am sure there is nothing more for me to do. If no direction comes, I may still be sure that God is at work. Maybe my offering provided the linking up or channel needed for spiritual forces to flow more freely for the one in need. I can pray for causes in the same way, or for spiritual movements [when called to do so]. In all intercession I must continually remind myself that it isn't the words that matter but the offering of myself.
Intercession is a process that brings our scattered forces into a focus and links us with the powers of the spiritual world. [In a meeting where intercession has taken place, participants] come away with a sense of quiet strength and renewed vitality, receiving in proportion to what they offered. In making a total offering of themselves, they may become "filled with all the fullness of God." How am I to fulfill my responsibility to intercede for others? How might I make use of a list of those needing help? Have a time each day for this service, bringing to God those persons and things that are uppermost. Do not let your intercession become mechanical. It is good practice to draw in all [those sharing the condition of the one you are praying for]. How can we practice intercession when we are greatly in need of the "streams of refreshing" and feel useless? Evelyn Underhill writes: "You can also offer your prayers, obedience, and endurance of dryness to our Lord, for the good of other souls ... The less you get out of it, the nearer it approaches something worth offering." The power of God is quite as often demonstrated in this way as when our prayers come easily and confidently.
V. Prayer in Daily Life—Prayer expresses a constant impulse of human nature to reach out towards that which is greater than itself, seeking a Reality [which at first is barely perceptible to the spiritual self], which longs to know it more fully. As the impulse to grow is in the plant/self, the real cause is in the sun/ God. One's reaching out results in physical, intellectual, moral, & spiritual growth. Growth [is side effect, not the ultimate end], which is the kind & quality of relationship that one achieves with that which stimulated one's response. Growth increases the area of one's receptivity. [The ultimate end] has no end, for this relationship [which seems to take place over time] belongs not to time but to eternity.
If one fixes attention on God, all achievements, regardless of field will tend towards that end. Fascination with worldly things, seeing them as the main end of one's existence, become the end of one's better striving. Emerson said, "Things are in the saddle, & ride humankind." [How can a religious society resist being transformed by the world according to a worldly pattern]? [Those few who truly confess a failure to resist in] an encounter with the Supreme Reality release fresh forces for action. [They serve as leaven which] spreads until large communities are regenerated & God's will is once more being done on earth. There is no reason why a new outpouring of God's Spirit should not take place in these latter days.
To take part in this new Pentecost, we must become men & women of prayer. Why is it our meetings don't throb with spiritual life more often? [How can we learn as individuals to cultivate a deep impulse that seeks out heavenly Presence]? The group experience is dependent upon that personal spiritual quality which is given to us in our private devotions, & which binds us together in the process of transforming the world.
Meditating on the Lord's Prayer—The model prayer Jesus taught in response to "Lord, teach us to pray," is so familiar through frequent recital as to have almost become degraded to a "vain repetition." It would be good practice to take it for a period as a theme for daily meditation leading to contemplation, in order to assimilate its meaning and implications, to pray with understanding, and to have its spirit pervade all our prayers all the time.
"The heart of prayer is adoration," emptying the self in contemplating God's wonder & glory." [Adoration is more prayer's starting point than it's goal]. At the start, the Light has revealed evil. Once evil is recognized, we turn away from it to God. By calling God Father, [Mother, Parent], we are by implication denying & renouncing self which obeys selfish, egocentric impulses. In "hallowed be thy name," we pray that all may come to knowledge of God, & glorify God by using their powers as holy gifts. Thus all may become 1 holy family in God, & God's kingdom may come. "Thy will be done," implies we want to be "fellow workers with God," [& to become] so deeply in love with God that we are ready to do what God wants, whatever the cost. If we understand these opening clauses right, identify ourselves with them, we shall be in the right spirit to utter the remaining petitions.
Going through the whole prayer quietly & thoughtfully, we shall find times of healthy self-examination & sober reflection, as well as strengthening & confirming our spiritual base. Or suppose we take the complete prayer daily for a time, trying to see & realize it afresh as a whole, perhaps by using a new translation or a new language. Then recite the prayer slowly, uniting our being with it but without tension, in an attitude of loving attention to God. We are to go from thinking about God to meeting God in personal intercourse & communion.
We mustn't expect anything magical. In the course of time we shall come to realize that, whether or not we were directly conscious of it at the time, a sharing in a larger life is taking place. Whom have I in Heaven but thee? Who is there on earth beside thee? As non-ritualists make use of the Church's ancient prayers & hymns for meditation, they will come to understand that in most cases, hymns, responses, collects & litanies had their origin in someone else's [spiritual] experience; they enshrine a vision, insight, deep meditation, or encounter with God. They could serve to [give our wandering minds and spirit pause] and prepare us for contemplation.
The daily turning of our minds & emotions from terrifying demands of the world to reflect upon things that belong to our peace is a vital necessity. Turning ourselves to God in loving attention, contemplation, is the central act of devotions & corresponds to receiving Christ in Holy Communion. A daily program is invaluable, [& might include] lifting our hearts up to God immediately upon waking, 10-30 minutes of prayer, odd times spent thinking on the subject of your morning meditation. The evening is a good time to reflect quietly on events of the day. Commit those you love, dislike, & fear, the events of the day to God. Then commit yourself to God.
Prepare yourself for weekly worship with a ½-hour of special prayer & meditative reading. If you can't be at worship try to be present in spirit during at least part of the hour's worship. 2 or 3 times a year, try to make a retreat with like-minded people. Friends have found that longer time together makes them more sensitive to things of the Spirit & [spiritual] growth results. There is likewise an increase in power for service. The natural impulse of human nature to reach out towards that which is greater than itself can be cultivated, & lead to growth in the knowledge and love of the Father and Christ, [and actual experience of God's presence], that will trans-form one's outlook & indeed one's basic character, & bring a deep sense of power and peace and joy everlasting.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
66. The World in Tune (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1952)
[About the Author]—Elizabeth Janet Gray (1902-97) was born in Philadelphia, PA, She was a graduate of Germantown Friends School, Bryn Mawr College in 1923 & Drexel Institute in 1926, & became a librarian at the University of NC—Chapel Hill. Vining was widowed and severely injured in an automobile accident. During her convalescence (1933), she became a Quaker. She was mainly a children's book author. 1946-1950, Vining was chosen by Emperor Hirohito to become private tutor to Crown Prince Akihito. She brought in 4 teenaged boys to help the Prince learn English, & taught other children of the Imperial household. This pamphlet is a collection of quotations from some of the author’s favorite mystics with interpretive comments.
"Prayer is the world in tune." Henry Vaughn
[Introduction]—Lord, thou commandest the Israelites to offer a morning sacrifice, so I offer up the sacrifice of prayer & desire to be preserved this day. 316 years ago Mary Proude, a little girl struggled with prayer. Later she discovered that prayer need not be written at all; she felt she had learned true communion with God. Her 2nd husband was Isaac Penington, & her daughter married William Penn. At the opposite pole from obscure children like Mary Proude & George Fox, was the popular divine, John Donne, dean of St. Paul's. His prayers were exquisite pieces of writing composed not only with a literary regard for beauty of phrase & cadence, but with a courtier's feeling for formal and reverent approach. [He is in stark contrast to Teresa of Avila less than a century before, who] informed God that he had so few friends because He treated those he had so badly.
The tide was turning against set prayers. Some found them "a supercilious tyranny," while most Protestants discarded them; few so thoroughly as Quakers. Friends' prayers were extemporaneous, under the promptings of the Spirit, & were seldom written down afterwards; no collection of George Fox's prayers were made for future generations. [When] mystical writers see spiritual life [in levels], prayers of prepared words are at the lower ones; prayers of quiet, or for union are later stages. In times of empty meditation, wandering mind, & earthbound heart, spontaneous prayer is difficult or impossible. Then, verbal prayer becomes a support for the flagging spirit. They speak to God and us, providing discipline, informing imagination, directing will, inducing awareness from without, when the inner doors appear to be closed or lost. We can read them slowly, savoring each phrase or sentence, waiting until each line is exhausted. Memorized prayer, or a phrase that has caught our attention may accompany us through the day, steadying us in time of anxiety or stress, or expressing a sudden joy.
[Purity Collect]—O God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires know, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our heart by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify they Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen
This prayer, is one of the oldest & most beloved of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. While it is ascribed to 8th century Alcuin, it may be from some still older group of prayers. It expresses [succinctly] worship's essence. His prayer appeared in the 1st English prayer book, the Sarum Missal. Osmund, nephew of William the Conqueror, compiled a manual for the priests' use only; it was in constant use for nearly 500 years. The people got tired of how Norman soldiers treated clergy, & built a new cathedral; the main body was completed in 38 years, & the spire was completed after a pause of 37 years in 48 years. [Old Sarum took over a century of actual construction]. The Cloud of Unknowing's anonymous author prefaced his book with the Purity Collect.
The Purity Collect appeared in the 1549 prayer book in its present form. Through all the book's changes of rubric and content, this prayer has proven itself indespensible. The magic bit for me is the word inspiration, used in its Latin sense of breathing into, Sir Thomas Browne's "warm gales and gentle ventilations of the Spirit." The prayer continues with [a prescription of] inward attitude [love] and outward action [magnify thy name]. The last phrase once seemed to me an outworn formula. How can a grubby and self-absorbed little human add anything worthy to the Name of God? The Christian minority in Japan are judged by their acts; by their deeds they magnify or belittle the God with whose Name they are identified. [The idea of cleansing thoughts is echoed in the 1st century] Jewish 18 Petitions: "Cleanse our hearts to serve thee in truth."
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave/ To do the like; our Bodies but forerun/ The spirit's duty; True hearts spread and heave/ Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun./ Give Him thy first thoughts then; so shalt thou keep/ Him company all day, and in him sleep. [This and following poem are by Henry Vaughn]
The rising winds/ And falling springs,/ Birds, beasts, all things/ Adore Him in their kinds./ Thus all is hurl'd/ In sacred Hymns and order, the great chime/ And symphony of nature. Prayer is/ The world in tune.
[Morning Worship]—Our 1st thought in the morning and the last at night should be of God. It seems to be the nature of religion to turn in the morning, after the darkness & oblivion of the night, to the source of returning light. The atmosphere of true worship was palpable in the silent moments of Shinto morning worship in Japan. We are aware in the morning of God's loving-kindness, God's gift of the new day, fresh and unspoiled, and the opportunities that lie before us. At night, when we are all the wiser for our knowledge of [successes], failures & uncompleted opportunities, if we have kept "God company all the day," then we can most completely give our selves into God's hands for the night and "in God sleep."
BEFORE SLEEP—The toil of day is ebbing/ The quiet comes again,/ In slumber deep relaxing,/ The limbs of tired men.// And minds with anguish shaken/ And spirits racked with grief/ The cup of all forgetting/ Have drunk and found relief.// The still Lethean waters/ Now steal through every vein,/ And men no more remember/ The meaning of their pain.// Let, let the weary body/ Lie sunk in slumber deep;/ The heart shall still remember/ Christ in its very sleep. Prudentius (4th century Spaniard)
[Meister Eckhart (1260-1327)]—Lord, grant sorrow of the humble; a mind escaped from ... body; to love, laud ... & cherish act & thought toward thee. Grant me a ... prayerful mind with intuition of thy will, & love & joy which make it easy to act. Lord, [may I] always [make] progress toward better things & never backslide.
We are repelled by mystics, their self-torture & wishing their families dead, that they might give all their mind to God. Rufus Jones: "[Eckhart] was sane, with moral health, vigor, & humor, 1 of the best normality signs. He exhibited religious intuition." Eckhart: "Active life is better than just contemplation, so far as we spend in service what came from contemplation." This prayer pleas for steadiness. Luke says in the Sower parable, "In good ground, are the honest & good hearts, having heard the word, hold it fast & bring forth fruit with patience."
[Robert Louis Stevenson]—Give us grace and strength to persevere; courage and gayety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends and soften to us our enemies ... [Make us strong], brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, [and ill-fortune] ... and [to the end] loyal and loving to one another.
The Cathedral of St. Giles in Edinburgh is dim and vast; old battle flags hang tattered and motionless under the vaulted roof, where old religious enemies rest together. A statue of John Knox is there. Everything in St. Giles seems to speak of religion in its harshest and most militant aspects. In a small side chapel is the Steven-son memorial, the bronze bas relief of the invalid in his chair, with his prayer beside him.
We need courage, especially courage to stand by what is right, & to claim justice & love as reasons for acting. Gayety goes with courage; it sets to one side self & its urgencies, & it handles life with a light & healing touch. Both courage & gayety spring, surely, from the deep, quiet mind's rich soil. A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, free from ties & from all self-seeking, & wholly merged into God's will & dead as to its own. [Any deed of this mind], however small, is clothed with something of God's power and authority. Prayers like this of Stevenson, in which specific virtues are sought, are addressed as much to our own deep selves as to God. There can be no better or more effective place to suggest improvements to our selves than in God's presence.
[Rabindranath Tagore]—Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers. These trees were likely at Karuizawa, where I spent holidays in Japan. There were balsam trees nearby; the clear mountain air was tangy with the fragrance. Shafts of morning sunlight slanted through their branches; cuckoos called in the distance. Something [prayerful], higher than thought, deeper than feeling seemed to be expressed by those majestic trees.
[Rufus Ellis]—We thank thee for the dear and faithful dead ... whose truth and beauty are even now in our hearts ... Thou dost gather the scattered families out of the earthly light into the heavenly glory ... and the peace of eternity ... May we live together in thy faith and love and in that hope which is full of immortality.
Prayers for the dead went out of Protestant practice with the 1549 prayer book & the 39 Articles of Faith. Having thrown out the blasphemous fable & dangerous deceits of Purgatory & "paying to get out of it," our beloved dead [begin to fade] out of our religious practice. The All Saints Day that follows Halloween is almost for-gotten; All Souls Day that is next has faded even more. Traditional prayers for All Saints Day refer to the cloud of witnesses by which we are surrounded & to their virtue & unseen fellowship. The loss of All Saints is the loss of intimacy & opportunity to do something to help those whose passing has left such an aching emptiness behind.
China and Japan have a 3-day festival of the dead is held annually and is called "Feeding Hungry Ghosts." For 3 nights there is dancing before local shrines. The people of the neighborhood join in the Bon Odori, an all-ages, folk-circle dance. On the river their guests were sent down the river on a fleet of little candle-lit boats. Religious belief in the modern world has lost much of its old certainty of heaven. When speaking to the Roman abbot Augustine, the Northumbrians of England said: "The sparrow flies in at one door & tarries for a moment in the light & heat of the hearth-fire, & then fly forth from the other door & vanishes into the wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight, but what is before it, what after it, we know not. Let us follow this new teaching, if it tells us aught certainly of ["before" and "after."]
Now, we say little about the life of the world to come, stressing instead the teachings of Jesus and their bearing on social justice. [The "wintry darkness] has stars and universes of light in comparison with the hearth-fire in the hall, which is dim and smoky and brief as a candle's flame. Rufus Ellis' prayer reminds us to give joyous thanks for our beloved dead. We can remember their high moments and their sweet familiar homely ones. And there is continuing companionship that comes to us at times, and the deep conviction that beyond the separation and the mystery we shall find one another once again in God.
[Book of Common Prayer Collect (50th day before Easter)]—O Lord, who has taught us that all our doings without charity [love) are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity ... without it whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for Christ's sake. Amen.
This collect was written new for the 1549 prayer book, and is based on 1 Corinthian 13. When we put together love of God, neighbor, and enemy, the difficulty becomes acute. "Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; therefore it should be most our care to learn it." That we love is one of the illusions we moderns most cherish about our selves. [We minimize our sins and cling to the illusion of love]. Obviously we do not love, or the world would not be what it is today. Our bankruptcy of love proclaims itself in the [petty bickering], feuds, persecutions, discrimination, wars and chaos of our times. When St. Augustine said, "Love and do what you will," he meant, if you really love, you cannot do ill; all the things you wish to do, informed by [genuine] love, will be beneficent. Love, powerful healing, quickening, enduring, the bond of peace and all virtues, is of God. Lord, pour it into our hearts, in a generous life-giving flood, for we have more need of it.
[Rufus Ellis]—We thank thee for the dear and faithful dead ... whose truth and beauty are even now in our hearts ... Thou dost gather the scattered families out of the earthly light into the heavenly glory ... and the peace of eternity ... May we live together in thy faith and love and in that hope which is full of immortality.
Prayers for the dead went out of Protestant practice with the 1549 prayer book & the 39 Articles of Faith. Having thrown out the blasphemous fable & dangerous deceits of Purgatory & "paying to get out of it," our beloved dead [begin to fade] out of our religious practice. The All Saints Day that follows Halloween is almost for-gotten; All Souls Day that is next has faded even more. Traditional prayers for All Saints Day refer to the cloud of witnesses by which we are surrounded & to their virtue & unseen fellowship. The loss of All Saints is the loss of intimacy & opportunity to do something to help those whose passing has left such an aching emptiness behind.
China and Japan have a 3-day festival of the dead is held annually and is called "Feeding Hungry Ghosts." For 3 nights there is dancing before local shrines. The people of the neighborhood join in the Bon Odori, an all-ages, folk-circle dance. On the river their guests were sent down the river on a fleet of little candle-lit boats. Religious belief in the modern world has lost much of its old certainty of heaven. When speaking to the Roman abbot Augustine, the Northumbrians of England said: "The sparrow flies in at one door & tarries for a moment in the light & heat of the hearth-fire, & then fly forth from the other door & vanishes into the wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight, but what is before it, what after it, we know not. Let us follow this new teaching, if it tells us aught certainly of ["before" and "after."]
Now, we say little about the life of the world to come, stressing instead the teachings of Jesus and their bearing on social justice. [The "wintry darkness] has stars and universes of light in comparison with the hearth-fire in the hall, which is dim and smoky and brief as a candle's flame. Rufus Ellis' prayer reminds us to give joyous thanks for our beloved dead. We can remember their high moments and their sweet familiar homely ones. And there is continuing companionship that comes to us at times, and the deep conviction that beyond the separation and the mystery we shall find one another once again in God.
[Book of Common Prayer Collect (50th day before Easter)]—O Lord, who has taught us that all our doings without charity [love) are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity ... without it whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for Christ's sake. Amen.
This collect was written new for the 1549 prayer book, and is based on 1 Corinthian 13. When we put together love of God, neighbor, and enemy, the difficulty becomes acute. "Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; therefore it should be most our care to learn it." That we love is one of the illusions we moderns most cherish about our selves. [We minimize our sins and cling to the illusion of love]. Obviously we do not love, or the world would not be what it is today. Our bankruptcy of love proclaims itself in the [petty bickering], feuds, persecutions, discrimination, wars and chaos of our times. When St. Augustine said, "Love and do what you will," he meant, if you really love, you cannot do ill; all the things you wish to do, informed by [genuine] love, will be beneficent. Love, powerful healing, quickening, enduring, the bond of peace and all virtues, is of God. Lord, pour it into our hearts, in a generous life-giving flood, for we have more need of it.
[Prayer of Intercession]—PRAYER FOR OUR ENEMIES: Merciful & loving Father,/ We beseech Thee humbly, ... to pour out on our Enemies ... whatsover things Thou knows will do them good.// & chiefly a sound & uncorrupt mind, ... [that] they may know Thee & love Thee in true charity & with whole heart, & love us Thy children for Thy sake.// Let not their 1st hating of us turn to their harm, seeing that we can't do them good for want of ability.// Lord, we desire their amendment & our own. Separate them not from us by punishing them, but join & knit them to us by favorably dealing with them.// & seeing that we be all ordained to be citizens of 1 Everlasting City, let us begin to enter that way here already by mutual Love which may bring us ... forth thither.
[Prayers for] intercession find it ungenerous & lonely to enter alone into God's presence. They bring their loved ones, their friends, the suffering, the needy, the dismayed, the sinning, [even their enemies. The above prayer is from 16th century Elizabethan England]. [The best intercessory prayer] asks that God's will be done in their lives. There is too little of this kind of prayer, especially too little prayer for our enemies, national & personal, coming from our arrogant & hate-filled minds today. There is so much wrong that needs righting, so little we individually can do except to pray. Evelyn writes: "Perhaps the prayer we make here may find its fulfillment on the other side of the world. Perhaps the help we are given in a difficult moment came from [there]."
[Brief Prayers (Aspirations)]—Short prayers pierceth heaven. THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING O my God, why dost thou ever remember me whilst I, alas so often forget thee. ST. FRANCIS DE SALES My God, behold me wholly thine; Lord make me according to the heart. BROTHER LAWRENCE
Help me, O Lord God, in my good resolution and in your holy service. Grant me now, this very day, to begin perfectly, for thus far I have done nothing. "Imitation of Christ"
O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart; enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there thy cheerful beams. ST. AUGUSTINE
These prayers often arise out of our daily life, not merely in time of danger and crisis when even the most skeptical cry out for help. St. Francis de Sales likens it to a traveler pausing for a moment's refreshment. In our spiritually dryest periods it may be helpful to choose another's aspiration that ["speaks to our condition"] and carry it in our minds during the day.
[O God]—"Oh God," I said, and that was all. But what are the prayers of the whole universe more than expansions of that "O God?"It is not what God can give us, but God that we want. GEORGE MACDONALD
Do never pray/ But only say/ O Thou!// And leave it so,/ For He will know—Somehow—// That you fall,/ And that you call/ On Him now.
"Mean [God] and none of God's goods." CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
Francois de la Mothe Fenelon—O Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest what I need; thou lovest me better than I know how to love my self ... Give that which I know not how to ask for ... I simply present my self before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself ... I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me.
"Cheered by God's presence, I will do each moment, without anxiety according to the strength which God shall give me, the work that God's Providence assigns me."
The first quote seems to me to be the prayer of perfect commitment, of the complete yielding of one's own will to the divine will. It isn't an easy prayer to make sincerely. Dom John Chapman, Downside's abbot & [a spiritual guide to Evelyn Underhill said]: "It isn't necessary to 'want God & nothing else.' You have only to 'want to want God & want to want nothing else.' Few get beyond this." Fenelon's letters of spiritual counsel have become religious classics. 2 of his books are known to us as "Christian Perfection" and "Spiritual Letters of Fenelon."
Fenelon in his turn was guided by Madame Guyon, co-leader of the Quietist movement, which had so much influence on Friends. She wrote: "When the moment of duty & of action comes, you may be assured that God won't fail to bestow upon you those qualifications which are appropriate to the situation in which God's providence has placed you. A statement of Fenelon's, the 2nd quote listed above, [provides for me] a talisman sentence to release tension, to restore a sense of proportion, to distract one's attention away from one's self.
There are many ways to pray, and each soul must find its own. Gandhi wrote: "I am not a man of learning, but I do humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent to the form. Everyone is a law unto himself." Dom John Chapman wrote to "one living in the world," "Pray as you can, don't try to pray as you can't. The only way to pray is to pray, and the way to pray well is to pray much."
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
423. Queries as Prayers (by Ron B. Rembert; 2013)
About the Author—Ron B. Rembert teaches religion and philosophy at Wilmington, Ohio. He is a member of Campus Friends Meeting. His wife and son are active volunteers in community activities. Ron launched this work on queries as prayers while in a writing workshop at Collegeville, MN.
[Introduction]—In 2011, I participated in a writing workshop hosted by Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. Writing queries as prayers came from my needs to revive my answering of queries and to intensify my practice of prayer. The idea of approaching queries as prayers, however unusual, seemed intuitively rich. My wandering writing efforts pointed in no clear direction. I walked to the church of St. John's Abbey, where the Benedictine monks led praying in the ancient Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Office. Douglas Steere in 1963, collaborated with attendees of the 2nd Vatican Council in promoting ecumenical dialogues on the topic of prayer in this same church. The Ecumenical Institute of Spirituality was also formed then.
[The logical step of] tracing the historical development of the queries didn't ignite the needed muse. Recalling a query heard in meeting for worship, I began to write, the words began to flow & energy for the project began to increase.
"Do I live in thankful awareness of God's constant presence in my life?" [Excerpt] God of Light ... you draw us to the deepest levels of awareness./ Heighten my awareness as I reach for you through words ... How is it I am aware? How and when did I first receive awareness? ... How aware can I be? ... Always partial, never conclusive, this awareness that I love and fear ... Help me turn down the volume of my unlistening ... Help me soften the brittleness of my uncaring ... Forgive me for my failed moments past, when I lost awareness of your constant presence./ O God of Love,/ with some anxiety I imagine your awareness of me,/ the me you see, the one I may not wish or choose to see ... Thankfulness is my surest awareness.
Reading this prayer before that [writing class] audience emerged as a gift, with formidable questions [I will use in the following chapter]. Addressing queries has long been & remains a longstanding practice among Friends. Besides self-examination, queries have been used for: topics of debates with critics; administrative, info-gathering aids; guides for interpreting testimonies. Questions seeking clarification are a blessing.
I: Is there a difference between writing a poem and a prayer?—I was not trying to write a poem; I was using few words and carefully chosen ones. The words finally chosen were not necessarily the 1st ones to come to mind. Some appeared and disappeared; some changed places in the 2nd draft. Careful word-choice disciplined my writing of the prayer and praying while writing enabled me to discern the language I sought. My primary intent was to express my feelings about God in relation to myself. Expressive, descriptive, and analytical statements appear in the prayer, but expressive ones were meant to be the loudest. It is also meant to draw as much attention as possible to God. Recognizing and rejoicing in God's presence stood out as my all-consuming concern. Queries used by Friends assume God's presence, whether explicitly mentioned or not.
Is answering a query as prayer as much about oneself as about God?—For the peace testimony: Do I work toward creative, life-affirming ways of resolving conflict & avoiding violence & destruction? Do we recognize & face disagreement & other situations of conflict in our meetings & strive for reconciliation? Queries test the individual or community, not someone else or another community. Deeper reflection is required to address each query adequately. The peace testimony version I consider here begins "We utterly deny all outward strife, & fightings with outward weapons, for any end, under any pretence" (1661). How do I & my students understand the differences between outward & inward strife; between outward & inward weapons?
Going deeper in reflection regarding this query pushes my self-examination further to an embedded concern: Do I understand how inward strife in my own daily life generates outward strife with others? Do I use inward, spiritual weapons like forgiveness of myself and others to avoid adding to outward strife? What do I notice about myself from God's perspective? Self-examination is as much about one's self as about God, but never about one's self without God, which will likely result in self-deception. Writing a prayer as part of answering a query underscores God's presence as a fundamental part of the overall self-examination effort. When I am observing, am I observing the me I want to see or the me I may not wish to see? Authentic self-examination draws me inevitably into a more-than-human-experience.
Why record prayers in written form rather than experiencing them in silence?—When I yearned for a disciplined daily prayer practice, I turned to a Benedictine lay community with a similar yearning, I committed to praying the Liturgy of the Hours as often as possible during the day. Praying the Benedictine Breviary has increased and enlivened my efforts to offer other prayers at other times. I found that the repetition of the Lord's Prayer and the Psalms refreshing and reassuring. I have found that adding my writing exercise to my own reflection has helped that reflection become a more God-attentive enterprise. We use written prayers as: written documents to record some of the important interactions and sacred moments in our lives; evidence of thinking & actions at one point in time & the possibility to re-experience earlier prayerful moments; vehicles of our thoughts, feelings & prayers with others over time and distance; a means to make a public experience of prayer realizable; an enhancement of attentiveness through the rigors of the writing effort.
Knowing that we are all ministers, am I open and obedient to God's promptings to speak?
... No one lays hands on my head./ No one grants me a special blessing./ Or do you God?/ [So] How do I know I am a minister?...Watch & learn to be...How do I know I am a minister? It seems as simple & complicated as faith,/it seems quiet & loud as hope...Obedience that sets one free/appears almost impossible to conceive./ Commands that nurture?/ Imperatives that liberate?...Forgive me for not speaking when you need words./ For-give me for not listening when you offer words./ I need your prompting, God./ How do I know I'm a minister?
II. [Renee Crauder: 6-step Awareness Exercise]—Renee Crauder's exploration of queries & prayer was similar to my own. Her integration of querying with prayer was a great source of encouragement and helped sustain my work. In her essay "Quaker Queries & the Awareness Exercise," she discusses almost 10 years of daily use of queries in a formalized prayer practice, adapted from examen prayer introduced by Ignatius of Loyola.
Crauder begins with a historical survey of some uses of queries over time. Then she asks: "How do we really use the Queries today? How important are they in the lives of Friends?" Crauder reports on a model of self-examination which might help others. Douglas Steere claims "the queries are the public equivalent of the Roman Catholic Examination of Conscience." I valued my discovery of Crauder's awareness exercise as a gift of confirmation. Now I was no longer working alone, but rather building on the work of Crauder and Steere as fellow seekers accompanying me on this path.
The steps of Renee Crauder's Awareness Exercise include: a cup of coffee, a place [of solitude], a prayerful posture [and attitude]; locating one's self single-mindedly in God's presence; asking for "light to see myself more clearly and wisdom to understand what I see"; thinking about "obeying the inner Light" in 1 or 2 events daily; read and [thoroughly] answer the monthly query; end with favorite prayer or sitting still until it seems right to get up." Her integration of querying with praying excited my efforts to make another proposal to enhance the use of a query, the writing of a prayer as part of addressing it. Renee Crauder says: "I find myself reflecting on the particular query at odd moments, quite without design. [The resulting] deepening may well enable me to answer that of God in others more easily." Does self-examination increase insight into one's relation to God?
[Awareness Exercise & Ignatian Examen Prayer]—Ignatius 1st calls for expression of "gratitude" as foundation for self-examination. Crauder seeks a prayerful attitude, one which includes [implicit] rather than explicit expression of gratitude. 2nd is a petition to God [e.g.] "What do you want me to see about this day?" This matches Crauder's "light to see myself more clearly..." The examen prayer practice seems more about what God does, which helps me be free of my tendencies to think that "I" am capable of self-examination ["all by myself"].
3rd, the Examen Prayer practice begins self-examination. Were there inclinations and thoughts this day that were not of God? Was I able to discern and resist them? Did I use my freedom in accord with God's loving desire for me? This step corresponds to the 4th step of Crauder's exercise. Her adding of a specific query is a practice not found in the examen prayer. A request for forgiveness combined with an expression of joy for the opportunity of self-examination is the 4th step of the examen prayer. "The examen in its 5th step is the prayer of spiritual progress. Thus far the examen has illuminated the past day. Now the examen becomes the cutting edge of spiritual growth for the day to follow." The examen prayer practice helps me look forward to a new day with a sense of appreciation for the past and anticipation for the future, inspired by the hope for renewal. Writing a prayer integrates 3 steps in the awareness exercise: self-examination; answering a query; closing with a prayer. That extra writing step adds a dimension that strengthens self-examination in the context of God-attention.
III: [Lectio Divina]—I sought my own framework for connecting queries and prayer in an adaptation of the Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina. It promotes reading as prayer, holy or divine reading, not for the sake of study, but with the purpose of transformation. The process is: read a Bible passage (lectio); meditate on a striking word or phrase (meditatio); talk, pray to God about your experience, from the heart (oratio); wait and listen for what comes in response to the word or phrase (contemplatio). Reversing the order seemed a way of conceiving the reading/prayer process in a new way, [beginning with the brief text of a query, continuing with contemplation, writing after each of the 4 steps and ending with a longer text in written prayer].
[Query & Reversed Lectio Divina]—Am I open to new Light and Truth from wherever it may come? Pulling key words & phrases, I get: am I open; new; Light; Truth; from wherever. In contemplation [I feel] required to wait & listen to the prompting of each part of it. It led to the following lines [excerpt]: Darkness conceals, Light reveals./ Darkness confuses, Light awakens ... Truth hurts, but Truth also heals./ Truth shows me my false self, but Truth also shows/ me my true self ... in the Light of your Truth. In prayer I consider: Am I open? I always assume that it is possible for me to be more open than I realize, but not without divine aid. [Prayer yielded the written words]: Can I will myself to be open, O God? Or Must I only rely on you, the Opener? [I am opened] like a wound or like a vault ... Perhaps being open to being closed is the honest place for me to start.
In meditation I consider "new" and the phrase "wherever it may come." If "old" means comfortable and convenient, then looking for a "new" may appear necessary. But it can feel so discomforting, O God,/ to look for Light and Truth where I often don't want to gaze. Finally at the point of reading a text, I aim to combine all these pieces in a final prayer: O God of Light and Truth,/ praise be to you/ who yearns for me to be open/ to these beacons of your guidance/ that help me love you and others./ Help me to face myself as honestly/ as you see me. The preliminary set of reflections can inspire future consideration of the same query.
IV: Limitations in writing a query prayer—1st, writing a prayer carries the risk of limiting our praying to just those words. We can still use words in a sensitive and broad manner. 2nd, a written prayer is not an end in itself, but a means to focus attention on God while practicing self-examination, and to develop a new way of life. 3rd, writing a prayer complements and does not replace spoken or silent prayer; it can provide additional opportunities to intensify the prayer experience. Finally, writing a prayer must be more about prayer than about writing. A final draft is not the objective of written prayer. My lack of a disciplined prayer practice had stifled my attentiveness to God, making "loving God" less realizable in my daily life. Prayer heightens power of discernment, helping to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic responses to God and others. The ultimate purpose for writing query prayers is not merely to produce well-written prayers or to achieve a satisfying self-examination, but "to position ourselves in that active cooperation with God where we may discern what is authentic and be ready to carry it out" (Douglas Steere)
Query and Prayer—Do I have a clear vision of what living in the "manner of Friends" means in our world today? Prayer: O God, our greatest Friend ... help me to grasp your call/ to embrace you as a Friend ...I choose personal friends/ to share my life./ You choose spiritual friends/ to share your life ... "love your enemy."/ presents a crucial test/ the world's laughable jest./ Isn't this where the "manner of Friends" begins?/ Thank you for leading ... simple saints/ living the light of integrity/ of simplicity, equality, and peace ... Do these testimonies still resonate today? ... Do I fear standing apart,/ or fear not being a part/ accepted, approved/ by giving up these standards/ giving into the mocking? / How well am I doing, O God?/ Only you in my heart of hearts knows ... Pray through me, O God/ that I may show your Light/ in the manner of Friends.
V: [Conclusion/ Queries]—At a meeting for worship immediately after my return from Collegeville, I sat with a copy of my written prayer, trying to discern whether to share it at meeting or not. [I wrestled back & forth with the decision]. Finally, I felt led to stand & read. Addressing a query as a prayer & reading it that morning helped me return from a period of lethargy & withdrawal & to recover a call to vocal ministry. By writing prayer in response to queries, I find myself open to other leadings that I am now ready to share with in meetings & beyond. This approach revived my use of queries & intensified my practice of prayer, for which I am [grateful].
Queries—What role have queries played in supporting your spiritual life and daily living? What is prayer and how do you pray? What kind of helpful or unhelpful structures for prayer or contemplation have you tried? After trying this approach, what did you find spiritually valuable about this approach? What to you is the value or limitation of writing your own prayers or on your spiritual life?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
369. Meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis (by Ann Curo; 2003)
About the Author—Anne Curo has been an active member of San Diego Friends Meeting for the past 13 years. She has been a journalist, early music performer, bookstore owner. She has also volunteered as activist for peace & homeless issues. She helped found & co-edit Street Light, San Diego's award-winning street newspaper. This pamphlet arose during a Quaker silent retreat at a Benedictine monastery, & was revised & edited during her 2002-2003 residence at Pendle Hill. She writes other literary pieces, draws, and paints.
Help me, O Lord God, in my good resolution and in your holy service. Grant me now, this very day, to begin perfectly, for thus far I have done nothing. "Imitation of Christ"
O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart; enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there thy cheerful beams. ST. AUGUSTINE
These prayers often arise out of our daily life, not merely in time of danger and crisis when even the most skeptical cry out for help. St. Francis de Sales likens it to a traveler pausing for a moment's refreshment. In our spiritually dryest periods it may be helpful to choose another's aspiration that ["speaks to our condition"] and carry it in our minds during the day.
[O God]—"Oh God," I said, and that was all. But what are the prayers of the whole universe more than expansions of that "O God?"It is not what God can give us, but God that we want. GEORGE MACDONALD
Do never pray/ But only say/ O Thou!// And leave it so,/ For He will know—Somehow—// That you fall,/ And that you call/ On Him now.
"Mean [God] and none of God's goods." CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
Francois de la Mothe Fenelon—O Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest what I need; thou lovest me better than I know how to love my self ... Give that which I know not how to ask for ... I simply present my self before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself ... I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me.
"Cheered by God's presence, I will do each moment, without anxiety according to the strength which God shall give me, the work that God's Providence assigns me."
The first quote seems to me to be the prayer of perfect commitment, of the complete yielding of one's own will to the divine will. It isn't an easy prayer to make sincerely. Dom John Chapman, Downside's abbot & [a spiritual guide to Evelyn Underhill said]: "It isn't necessary to 'want God & nothing else.' You have only to 'want to want God & want to want nothing else.' Few get beyond this." Fenelon's letters of spiritual counsel have become religious classics. 2 of his books are known to us as "Christian Perfection" and "Spiritual Letters of Fenelon."
Fenelon in his turn was guided by Madame Guyon, co-leader of the Quietist movement, which had so much influence on Friends. She wrote: "When the moment of duty & of action comes, you may be assured that God won't fail to bestow upon you those qualifications which are appropriate to the situation in which God's providence has placed you. A statement of Fenelon's, the 2nd quote listed above, [provides for me] a talisman sentence to release tension, to restore a sense of proportion, to distract one's attention away from one's self.
There are many ways to pray, and each soul must find its own. Gandhi wrote: "I am not a man of learning, but I do humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent to the form. Everyone is a law unto himself." Dom John Chapman wrote to "one living in the world," "Pray as you can, don't try to pray as you can't. The only way to pray is to pray, and the way to pray well is to pray much."
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
423. Queries as Prayers (by Ron B. Rembert; 2013)
About the Author—Ron B. Rembert teaches religion and philosophy at Wilmington, Ohio. He is a member of Campus Friends Meeting. His wife and son are active volunteers in community activities. Ron launched this work on queries as prayers while in a writing workshop at Collegeville, MN.
[Introduction]—In 2011, I participated in a writing workshop hosted by Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. Writing queries as prayers came from my needs to revive my answering of queries and to intensify my practice of prayer. The idea of approaching queries as prayers, however unusual, seemed intuitively rich. My wandering writing efforts pointed in no clear direction. I walked to the church of St. John's Abbey, where the Benedictine monks led praying in the ancient Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Office. Douglas Steere in 1963, collaborated with attendees of the 2nd Vatican Council in promoting ecumenical dialogues on the topic of prayer in this same church. The Ecumenical Institute of Spirituality was also formed then.
[The logical step of] tracing the historical development of the queries didn't ignite the needed muse. Recalling a query heard in meeting for worship, I began to write, the words began to flow & energy for the project began to increase.
"Do I live in thankful awareness of God's constant presence in my life?" [Excerpt] God of Light ... you draw us to the deepest levels of awareness./ Heighten my awareness as I reach for you through words ... How is it I am aware? How and when did I first receive awareness? ... How aware can I be? ... Always partial, never conclusive, this awareness that I love and fear ... Help me turn down the volume of my unlistening ... Help me soften the brittleness of my uncaring ... Forgive me for my failed moments past, when I lost awareness of your constant presence./ O God of Love,/ with some anxiety I imagine your awareness of me,/ the me you see, the one I may not wish or choose to see ... Thankfulness is my surest awareness.
Reading this prayer before that [writing class] audience emerged as a gift, with formidable questions [I will use in the following chapter]. Addressing queries has long been & remains a longstanding practice among Friends. Besides self-examination, queries have been used for: topics of debates with critics; administrative, info-gathering aids; guides for interpreting testimonies. Questions seeking clarification are a blessing.
I: Is there a difference between writing a poem and a prayer?—I was not trying to write a poem; I was using few words and carefully chosen ones. The words finally chosen were not necessarily the 1st ones to come to mind. Some appeared and disappeared; some changed places in the 2nd draft. Careful word-choice disciplined my writing of the prayer and praying while writing enabled me to discern the language I sought. My primary intent was to express my feelings about God in relation to myself. Expressive, descriptive, and analytical statements appear in the prayer, but expressive ones were meant to be the loudest. It is also meant to draw as much attention as possible to God. Recognizing and rejoicing in God's presence stood out as my all-consuming concern. Queries used by Friends assume God's presence, whether explicitly mentioned or not.
Is answering a query as prayer as much about oneself as about God?—For the peace testimony: Do I work toward creative, life-affirming ways of resolving conflict & avoiding violence & destruction? Do we recognize & face disagreement & other situations of conflict in our meetings & strive for reconciliation? Queries test the individual or community, not someone else or another community. Deeper reflection is required to address each query adequately. The peace testimony version I consider here begins "We utterly deny all outward strife, & fightings with outward weapons, for any end, under any pretence" (1661). How do I & my students understand the differences between outward & inward strife; between outward & inward weapons?
Going deeper in reflection regarding this query pushes my self-examination further to an embedded concern: Do I understand how inward strife in my own daily life generates outward strife with others? Do I use inward, spiritual weapons like forgiveness of myself and others to avoid adding to outward strife? What do I notice about myself from God's perspective? Self-examination is as much about one's self as about God, but never about one's self without God, which will likely result in self-deception. Writing a prayer as part of answering a query underscores God's presence as a fundamental part of the overall self-examination effort. When I am observing, am I observing the me I want to see or the me I may not wish to see? Authentic self-examination draws me inevitably into a more-than-human-experience.
Why record prayers in written form rather than experiencing them in silence?—When I yearned for a disciplined daily prayer practice, I turned to a Benedictine lay community with a similar yearning, I committed to praying the Liturgy of the Hours as often as possible during the day. Praying the Benedictine Breviary has increased and enlivened my efforts to offer other prayers at other times. I found that the repetition of the Lord's Prayer and the Psalms refreshing and reassuring. I have found that adding my writing exercise to my own reflection has helped that reflection become a more God-attentive enterprise. We use written prayers as: written documents to record some of the important interactions and sacred moments in our lives; evidence of thinking & actions at one point in time & the possibility to re-experience earlier prayerful moments; vehicles of our thoughts, feelings & prayers with others over time and distance; a means to make a public experience of prayer realizable; an enhancement of attentiveness through the rigors of the writing effort.
Knowing that we are all ministers, am I open and obedient to God's promptings to speak?
... No one lays hands on my head./ No one grants me a special blessing./ Or do you God?/ [So] How do I know I am a minister?...Watch & learn to be...How do I know I am a minister? It seems as simple & complicated as faith,/it seems quiet & loud as hope...Obedience that sets one free/appears almost impossible to conceive./ Commands that nurture?/ Imperatives that liberate?...Forgive me for not speaking when you need words./ For-give me for not listening when you offer words./ I need your prompting, God./ How do I know I'm a minister?
II. [Renee Crauder: 6-step Awareness Exercise]—Renee Crauder's exploration of queries & prayer was similar to my own. Her integration of querying with prayer was a great source of encouragement and helped sustain my work. In her essay "Quaker Queries & the Awareness Exercise," she discusses almost 10 years of daily use of queries in a formalized prayer practice, adapted from examen prayer introduced by Ignatius of Loyola.
Crauder begins with a historical survey of some uses of queries over time. Then she asks: "How do we really use the Queries today? How important are they in the lives of Friends?" Crauder reports on a model of self-examination which might help others. Douglas Steere claims "the queries are the public equivalent of the Roman Catholic Examination of Conscience." I valued my discovery of Crauder's awareness exercise as a gift of confirmation. Now I was no longer working alone, but rather building on the work of Crauder and Steere as fellow seekers accompanying me on this path.
The steps of Renee Crauder's Awareness Exercise include: a cup of coffee, a place [of solitude], a prayerful posture [and attitude]; locating one's self single-mindedly in God's presence; asking for "light to see myself more clearly and wisdom to understand what I see"; thinking about "obeying the inner Light" in 1 or 2 events daily; read and [thoroughly] answer the monthly query; end with favorite prayer or sitting still until it seems right to get up." Her integration of querying with praying excited my efforts to make another proposal to enhance the use of a query, the writing of a prayer as part of addressing it. Renee Crauder says: "I find myself reflecting on the particular query at odd moments, quite without design. [The resulting] deepening may well enable me to answer that of God in others more easily." Does self-examination increase insight into one's relation to God?
[Awareness Exercise & Ignatian Examen Prayer]—Ignatius 1st calls for expression of "gratitude" as foundation for self-examination. Crauder seeks a prayerful attitude, one which includes [implicit] rather than explicit expression of gratitude. 2nd is a petition to God [e.g.] "What do you want me to see about this day?" This matches Crauder's "light to see myself more clearly..." The examen prayer practice seems more about what God does, which helps me be free of my tendencies to think that "I" am capable of self-examination ["all by myself"].
3rd, the Examen Prayer practice begins self-examination. Were there inclinations and thoughts this day that were not of God? Was I able to discern and resist them? Did I use my freedom in accord with God's loving desire for me? This step corresponds to the 4th step of Crauder's exercise. Her adding of a specific query is a practice not found in the examen prayer. A request for forgiveness combined with an expression of joy for the opportunity of self-examination is the 4th step of the examen prayer. "The examen in its 5th step is the prayer of spiritual progress. Thus far the examen has illuminated the past day. Now the examen becomes the cutting edge of spiritual growth for the day to follow." The examen prayer practice helps me look forward to a new day with a sense of appreciation for the past and anticipation for the future, inspired by the hope for renewal. Writing a prayer integrates 3 steps in the awareness exercise: self-examination; answering a query; closing with a prayer. That extra writing step adds a dimension that strengthens self-examination in the context of God-attention.
III: [Lectio Divina]—I sought my own framework for connecting queries and prayer in an adaptation of the Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina. It promotes reading as prayer, holy or divine reading, not for the sake of study, but with the purpose of transformation. The process is: read a Bible passage (lectio); meditate on a striking word or phrase (meditatio); talk, pray to God about your experience, from the heart (oratio); wait and listen for what comes in response to the word or phrase (contemplatio). Reversing the order seemed a way of conceiving the reading/prayer process in a new way, [beginning with the brief text of a query, continuing with contemplation, writing after each of the 4 steps and ending with a longer text in written prayer].
[Query & Reversed Lectio Divina]—Am I open to new Light and Truth from wherever it may come? Pulling key words & phrases, I get: am I open; new; Light; Truth; from wherever. In contemplation [I feel] required to wait & listen to the prompting of each part of it. It led to the following lines [excerpt]: Darkness conceals, Light reveals./ Darkness confuses, Light awakens ... Truth hurts, but Truth also heals./ Truth shows me my false self, but Truth also shows/ me my true self ... in the Light of your Truth. In prayer I consider: Am I open? I always assume that it is possible for me to be more open than I realize, but not without divine aid. [Prayer yielded the written words]: Can I will myself to be open, O God? Or Must I only rely on you, the Opener? [I am opened] like a wound or like a vault ... Perhaps being open to being closed is the honest place for me to start.
In meditation I consider "new" and the phrase "wherever it may come." If "old" means comfortable and convenient, then looking for a "new" may appear necessary. But it can feel so discomforting, O God,/ to look for Light and Truth where I often don't want to gaze. Finally at the point of reading a text, I aim to combine all these pieces in a final prayer: O God of Light and Truth,/ praise be to you/ who yearns for me to be open/ to these beacons of your guidance/ that help me love you and others./ Help me to face myself as honestly/ as you see me. The preliminary set of reflections can inspire future consideration of the same query.
IV: Limitations in writing a query prayer—1st, writing a prayer carries the risk of limiting our praying to just those words. We can still use words in a sensitive and broad manner. 2nd, a written prayer is not an end in itself, but a means to focus attention on God while practicing self-examination, and to develop a new way of life. 3rd, writing a prayer complements and does not replace spoken or silent prayer; it can provide additional opportunities to intensify the prayer experience. Finally, writing a prayer must be more about prayer than about writing. A final draft is not the objective of written prayer. My lack of a disciplined prayer practice had stifled my attentiveness to God, making "loving God" less realizable in my daily life. Prayer heightens power of discernment, helping to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic responses to God and others. The ultimate purpose for writing query prayers is not merely to produce well-written prayers or to achieve a satisfying self-examination, but "to position ourselves in that active cooperation with God where we may discern what is authentic and be ready to carry it out" (Douglas Steere)
Query and Prayer—Do I have a clear vision of what living in the "manner of Friends" means in our world today? Prayer: O God, our greatest Friend ... help me to grasp your call/ to embrace you as a Friend ...I choose personal friends/ to share my life./ You choose spiritual friends/ to share your life ... "love your enemy."/ presents a crucial test/ the world's laughable jest./ Isn't this where the "manner of Friends" begins?/ Thank you for leading ... simple saints/ living the light of integrity/ of simplicity, equality, and peace ... Do these testimonies still resonate today? ... Do I fear standing apart,/ or fear not being a part/ accepted, approved/ by giving up these standards/ giving into the mocking? / How well am I doing, O God?/ Only you in my heart of hearts knows ... Pray through me, O God/ that I may show your Light/ in the manner of Friends.
V: [Conclusion/ Queries]—At a meeting for worship immediately after my return from Collegeville, I sat with a copy of my written prayer, trying to discern whether to share it at meeting or not. [I wrestled back & forth with the decision]. Finally, I felt led to stand & read. Addressing a query as a prayer & reading it that morning helped me return from a period of lethargy & withdrawal & to recover a call to vocal ministry. By writing prayer in response to queries, I find myself open to other leadings that I am now ready to share with in meetings & beyond. This approach revived my use of queries & intensified my practice of prayer, for which I am [grateful].
Queries—What role have queries played in supporting your spiritual life and daily living? What is prayer and how do you pray? What kind of helpful or unhelpful structures for prayer or contemplation have you tried? After trying this approach, what did you find spiritually valuable about this approach? What to you is the value or limitation of writing your own prayers or on your spiritual life?
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
369. Meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis (by Ann Curo; 2003)
About the Author—Anne Curo has been an active member of San Diego Friends Meeting for the past 13 years. She has been a journalist, early music performer, bookstore owner. She has also volunteered as activist for peace & homeless issues. She helped found & co-edit Street Light, San Diego's award-winning street newspaper. This pamphlet arose during a Quaker silent retreat at a Benedictine monastery, & was revised & edited during her 2002-2003 residence at Pendle Hill. She writes other literary pieces, draws, and paints.
[Prayer of St. Francis]: Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace./ Where there is hatred, let me sow love,/ Where there is injury, pardon,/ Where there is doubt, faith,/ Where there is despair, hope,/ Where there is darkness, light,/ Where there is sadness, joy./ O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much/ seek to be consoled as to console,/ to be understood as to understand,/ To be loved as to love./ For it is in giving that we are given,/ It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,/ And it is dying that we are born to eternal life.
I. Each phrase holds a depth of meaning that, with contemplation, can bring deep insights into ways we live lives of peacemaking. In the 1st phrase, if we are instruments, then it is not up to us how we are used; God creates through us. In the hands of a master musician, [any instrument] may produce beautiful music. But no stringed instrument can be played until it has been well-strung and well-tuned.
We do our meditations & spiritual exercises to present God with opportunity to string & tune us, making us ready for performance; this may be a long process. Performing may not be deferred. At some point it must begin, whether stringing & tuning are perfect or not. I have since found working for social justice with homeless people stretched my strings in ways that I never imagined possible; painful wishing is gone. The homeless turned out to be some of the most difficult people to be in relationship with that I have ever known, but also fertile ground for learning about myself and experiencing God within all of us. We are called to be patient, to allow God to re-string and re-tune.
II. In St. Francis' prayer, it is peace that God wishes to achieve through the instruments of our minds & bodies. We may feel we are being pushed farther than we can cope, but we grow by venturing just a little farther each time than we have gone before. Although between 100-200 people wait for a meal at the homeless food line I serve in, only once or twice did we need police help to deal with a violent individual. Agencies that employ security guards while feeding the same people have more fights & call the police more. In our line, sometimes a homeless person who understood [our philosophy] would step in between 2 others & persuade them to drop their argument, "a least here and now." Too often peace is deferred in the hope of some future settlement of a dispute. [Someone is expected to "win" in a conflict]. What is actually achieved is only an uneasy truce in world conflicts or in smaller personal ones. Peace can be maintained in the present moment through God's peacemakers.
III. "Where there is hatred, let me sow love/ where there is injury pardon"—The very 1st request St. Francis puts into the words, "Where there is hatred, let me sow love," offers us the most essential component. We must allow God's love to shine on those hidden places where residues of hatred may remain from our past experiences. We find hatred is the result of injuries suffered in the past. I was unable to forgive my mother for the injury I felt as a child. I gave myself permission not to forgive, & I discovered that my mother was forgiven not by my effort, but by God.
[Forgiveness of injury led to pardon, the prayer's 2nd request]. The longer pardon is deferred, the greater the danger of forming hatreds in our hearts. When Jesus tells us to "turn the other cheek" after we have been hit, I think he is giving us a non-verbal way of showing the other person that they are forgiven and we don't expect they will do it again. Forgiveness means we need to forget, not the incident, but the feeling of being injured, offended, or hurt in any way. A minor, accidental injury is easy to forget. A severe injury, even though accidental, is not as easy to pardon. Where pain continues pardon is difficult, but not impossible. It helps to remember that they were accidental, done through ignorance or a compulsion that the person could not help.
Those scarred from past wounds are easily wounded again & again. I once made a remark that connected race with poverty, & an African-American woman took great offense. She wouldn't listen to me further & lectured & accused me of being wrong. I was reduced to the condition of little girl whose truth was denied. I gradually recognized the woundedness of my attacker, & the likelihood of childhood issues she was dealing with. I was still in this disturbed condition at meeting for worship the next morning. I saw my African-American friend, & without hesitation, I sat down next to her & took her hand. Where language was inadequate & even dangerous because of cultural differences, holding hands was the only healing act available for both of us at that time.
What is perceived as deliberate injury is the most difficult to pardon. The person who injured you was more the victim than you were, acting under an uncontrollable compulsion, prejudice, or rage that hurt him more than it hurt you. When Jesus says "[Forgive] 70 times 7," he is reaching poetically for the highest number he can think of. We need to pardon again and again, because injury, if held onto, causes hatred. Peace does not thrive in a heart filled with many pieces of hatred, where love is denied and God's love can't get through.
IV. "Where there is doubt faith"/ "Where there is despair, hope"—Faith is ability to accept whatever happens when we know we're doing the right thing. Doubt occurs when we have built up expectations of God & we wonder if our expectations will be fulfilled. If they're not, we feel we have somehow failed in faith; that leads to further doubt. The experience of God may be rare or frequent; few of us experience God at all times. During the intervals we need faith. Faith requires us to act like we're aware of God's presence at all times. I know atheists & agnostics who have faith in universal goodness. Others profess a strong conviction of God seem faithless.
The total failure of faith leads to despair. St. Francis suggests we counter it with hope. How do we plant hope where none exists? Why does faith fail? It fails when it has hidden expectations, or as I prefer, "desires." Christianity tells us "what" to do; Buddhism tells us more about the "how," through removing desires & attachments. The thing doesn't cause the pain; it is the desire or attachment to it that leads to the suffering. The stronger the desire for success & the tighter the attachment to an outcome, the greater the despair when failure occurs.
With the denial of the objects of our desires & attachments comes also the realization of the futility of these desires & attachments. St. Francis calls on us to plant hope. There is an important difference between "hope" & "desire." Hope is open to a variety of outcomes, a wealth of possibilities, the many ways that are open. Desire & attachment are narrowly focused & unable to accept alternatives. Despair counteracted by desire will lead only to a temporary fix. All the energy of the ego bound up in its desires & attachments has turned against itself in despair. If we have hope, the energy that was bound in the ego is given its freedom, we have set free God within us.
V. "Where there is darkness light"—Many people are afraid of the dark. Where they're unable to see, anything may be lurking. Illumination saves us from fears, from the mysterious unseen. Bringing the unconscious contents of our minds to light is deemed necessary for healing & growth. Christianity doesn't strongly emphasize knowing oneself, but on knowing Jesus. We imagine he was praying during his time alone, & he brought back what he had learned. How did Jesus come to the profound certainties he brought back, taught & lived?
It is important for ordinary people living and working in the world to take time alone also. We can draw on the writings of saints and mystics who have explored their inner lives, to learn how to use this time. To be alone with our own selves is scary, because, aside from death, it is the greatest unknown. According to Jung, the "collective unconscious" is rich in the wisdom and symbolism of the human race. To be "individuated" (enlightened), we must bring it into full consciousness. As we begin to learn enlightenment, we will want to share with and motivate others whom we see living in darkness to do the same.
VI. "Where there is sadness, joy"—As we become more conscious of the connection between God, ourselves, & all creation, we feel joy. "We are all one" becomes a strong conviction when God is working in us, & we "recognize that of God in every one." We recognize sadness in people around us, a profound sadness born of hatred, injury, doubt, despair, & darkness. [My joy isn't always sufficient to withstand this profound sadness]. To not be brought low by suffering we see in others, our personal sadness must be fully felt, then let go of, & replaced with joy. Seeking pleasure is merely a distraction from sadness, not a replacement. Joy replaces sadness & is attained only when we have accessed the God part of ourselves. By speaking not about God, but to that of God in someone, we are bypassing the surface layers of hurt, hatred, doubt, & despair that cause them to be difficult. We are expecting to find that which is fine, loving, & joyous deep within them, & are addressing that.
VII. "O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console"—When we invite the "Divine Master," we are juxtaposing the holy teacher within with that other part of oneself, our needy childlike ego. If, as adults, we keep expecting the same kind of consolation from those around us that we received as a child, we are often disappointed. [On the other hand,] when we console others we are, at the same time, consoling ourselves, feeling their pain and ours as well. I have witnessed misery contests between 2 people in which no resolution occurred, and both parties felt worse and were even angry with each other at the end of it. If we can't remove the other person's pain, what can we do about it? What we can all do for others is simply to acknowledge their pain and then let it go, in hopes that they too can let it go. If we can let go of our own pain, we won't be tempted so often to seek consolation from others.
VIII. "... To be understood, as to understand"—The harder we seek to be understood by arguing, the more the other person feels they are misunderstood. If we have experienced misunderstanding as a child, we may retain a sense of urgency about being understood as an adult. I am writing these meditations to try to understand myself & to share some of my understanding of how I am learning from this prayer. We must not hold on to the illusion that we have reached a final and total understanding of anything or any person. An understanding that is not open to correction is a misunderstanding. It's very dangerous to [seek understanding] by labeling ourselves & others. The process of understanding a person, then, is more the act of paying attention & allowing one to un-fold before us. A person has a right to hide things from us and even to misrepresent things. We are not in a court of law. It is useful to know that we need to not act on someone's information before we have checked it out. If we allow our fellow humans to unfold before us, we allow God to unfold. We let understanding grow in us.
IX. "... not so much seek to be loved as to love—Parental love is one analogy to divine love we can find in human life. I draw on my experience as a child and mother to begin to explore it. By conventional standards, [my parents switched roles]. How is my father's "motherly" love different from "fatherly" love? With him, I always felt that I was okay as is, that there was a basic goodness about me that didn't need to be corrected. If punishment were ever administered, it was my mother who gave it.
Because he went to so much trouble for me, did lots of little things for me, & liked having me with him in the morning, I had no doubts about his love. Although I hated any restrictions, I fully understood the reasons—it was because he loved me. I learned how to be a mother from my father. The biggest difference between parental love & divine love is that parental love involves ego attachment & is possessive; God's love is not. Once we have found that place in our hearts where we are loved, it is our task in life to give it away. We show love for the unlovable by the way we accept them as is. Love takes care of the other without expecting anything in return.
X. "For it is in giving that we receive—This phrase applies to just about anything that we freely offer with a generous heart to anyone. Greed and competition are accepted as natural, and generosity is seen as an anomaly. Often when we give something they are suspicious; they think we expect something from them. We should make sure there is no such motive in our hearts. If you receive gratitude, receive it as a gift, not a payment of giving and receiving turns giving into a transaction. We give without expecting a return. We receive simply because we have needs. I have learned a lot about giving from them, because they have practically nothing, yet can turn around and be generous when you least expect it. It was hard for me to let her wear my favorite shoes. When she left, I let her take them; I felt a tremendous relief. St. Francis is saying: "Do be afraid to give away even what you believe you need, because your needs will be supplied."
XI. "For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned"—It's clear that St. Francis wants us to be the one to initiate the forgiveness. It's interesting that he hasn't included in his prayer the concept of sin. [Every time] we break a Commandment or any other moral principle, we are sinning. We are exercising free will, so it is always a "willful act." Knowing this and accepting the idea of sin, we are full of guilt, [which quickly turns into shame].
[Editor's Note: The author uses "guilt" in the following passage to describe feelings more properly attributed to "shame."] Guilt is a very debilitating state. We feel unworthy, unlovable, & just plain bad. Guilt isn't something that's going to make us improve our behavior. [If children are told often enough they are bad, they may come to the very logical, but wrong conclusion about themselves, [& carry that wrong conclusion well into adulthood]. St. Francis bypasses the whole triad of sin/guilt/fear; he gets to the problem's heart by emphasizing pardon—a positive state. By going inside, noticing what we are doing, & forgiving ourselves for those behaviors, we can also forgive others.
XII. "And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life—St. Francis is speaking of "dying in 2 senses. In Tibetan Buddhism & in Mexico, there are constant reminders that the body dies; death is honored & the dead remembered. A culture that hides death makes it more fearsome than it actually is. Thich Nhat Hahn suggests that we meditate on our dead, corrupting, rotting bodies. St. Francis' words are a reminder that we must die to many things in this life to which we are attached. We die a little every day to our old selves by throwing off old habits of thinking, feeling, & behaving & opening ourselves to the eternal moment. Using the knowledge of near-death experiences, if every day we face our death deliberately, we can partake of life more fully. Occasion-ally, Eternity is happening right now; it doesn't refer to past or future, it is freedom from past & future.
Perfect, harmonious, right moments are glimpses of eternity. St. Francis is reminding us that it is possible to experience our lives this way at all times. Constantly thinking of the past keeps us stuck spiritually in the same place we were then. Thinking of the future even after completing our plans, speculating how things will be 5 minutes or 20 years from now is less important than being involved in what is happening right now. Longings for the future and regrets for the past must die for us to fully experience this sacred now. The best use of this prayer is as a pointer to God, who affirms its wisdom in our hearts and points us toward further wisdom.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
Comments
Post a Comment