Welcome
Autobiography
God
in All Things
- Preface
- Chapter
1
Oh God,
Why?
- Preface
- Chapter
1 - 6
Oh God, Why?
Chapter One
1
- Ways of using this book
Oh God, Why?
was originally written as a Lent book, and I was asked to provide Bible
readings for each day and to offer reflections on the readings and a prayer.
I was also asked to provide questions for discussion at the end of each
week for those who meet in parish or house groups.
This model works very well for someone who wants to go on a spiritual
journey at any time during the year—and it would also work for a
small group of people. So what I have done is to remove any particular
references to Lent and changed Oh God, Why? into a book that anyone can
use when they want to take their own spiritual journey more seriously.
As I worked
on the original book, I was remembering my own past attempts at praying
daily from the Scriptures, the initial good intention, then the inability
to concentrate, the mind fragmenting into countless distractions before
lapsing into sleep. When I did manage to keep awake and make some kind
of prayer, I often felt the activity was like riding a bicycle without
a chain, for what I was doing in prayer seemed to have little connection
with everyday life. For a long time I thought I was unique in my inability
to pray, a conviction confirmed by some sermons and books on the beauty,
value and necessity of prayer. Now I spend much of my time listening to
people describe their own experience of prayer, and I realize that I am
not unique, that the majority of people have a similar experience, each
believing that everyone else can pray better than they.
I decided the book would need a short introduction on ways of praying
and on the relationship between prayer and everyday life. The introduction
grew in the writing and now forms half the book, an outline of the spiritual
journey in which we are all engaged all the time, whether we want to be
or not. The introduction will, I hope, help you to see that Scripture
readings are not simply describing the actions of God in the past and
Israel’s response to them, but that they are given to us to enable
us to recognize God’s action on us now and our response. The God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, is
the same God who now holds us in being and is drawing us to himself through
the everyday circumstances of our lives, just as he guided Israel.
One of the essential events in the Christian life is repentance, which
means a change of mind and heart. Reading a book cannot change our mind
and heart any more than reading a map can take us to our destination,
but reading can initiate a process of change which continues long after
the content of the book is forgotten.
Our minds seem to be constructed in layers. There are top layers which
we use, for example, in making phone calls, when the mind takes the number,
transfers it to the dial, then quickly forgets it. This layer is very
useful for satisfying examiners, but the information can go in and out
of our minds without having any noticeable effect on our inner life or
ways of behaving. Some people have photographic memories, can become walking
encyclopaedias, yet can keep this information so well insulated from the
rest of their consciousness that it does not affect their behaviour. One
could be an expert on world hunger and be able to reel off all the horrifying
statistics, without feeling any compassion for its victims or any inclination
to work to change the economic structures which inflict such misery on
millions.
What is true of world hunger statistics is also true of religious knowledge.
It is unlikely, but possible, that someone should know the Bible by heart,
the Christian creeds, the works of all the commentators and theologians
who have ever lived, yet keep that knowledge sealed in the top layers
of the mind, so that it did not affect them at any emotional or gut level.
It is possible to read this book, even to know it by heart, without being
in the least affected by it. Repentance happens at another and deeper
layer of the mind.
In the preface
to his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola, a 16th-century Basque who
became founder of the Jesuit Order, gives a few instructions. They include
the warning that the giver of the Exercises should always be brief in
presenting and explaining passages for prayer, because what we discover
for ourselves is much more effective of change than what another tells
us, and also because ‘It is not much knowledge which fills and satisfies
the soul, but the inner understanding and the relish of the truth.’
The reason for this long introduction is to enable the reader, when he
or she comes to prayer each day, to gain from it an inner understanding
and relish of the truth which effects inner change.
Deeper layers of the mind are slower at assimilating knowledge and usually
more retentive, not only of factual knowledge, but especially of emotional
experience. Especially in childhood, this emotional experience has a profound
and lasting effect on how we perceive the world, how we relate to others,
how we react to circumstances and the reactions we provoke or elicit.
It is in these deeper layers of consciousness that real change occurs,
and any change which occurs in us affects, in some way, the whole of creation.
The Israelites’ journey was from Egypt to Palestine. Our journeys
are different for each of us, but there is a route common to us all. Some
have described it as the longest and most difficult journey in the world,
the journey from the top layer of our minds to the heart, where God is
waiting to welcome us.
Repentance means change at these deeper layers of consciousness. So how
can we use this book to get in touch with this deeper layer?
We cannot reach the deeper layer simply by an act of the will. Like anything
else worth doing, the journey from mind to heart takes time. But don’t
be disheartened: two or three minutes a day are better than nothing, so
here is a programme for the very busy.
For two-minutes-a-day people
At the beginning of each day in this book there is a first line
of Scripture references. The reflection on the readings is based on these
references, but as it would take at least two minutes to find and read
these texts, I suggest you ignore these references and just read the shortened
version, which is written out for each day, together with the reflection
and a prayer. When you have finished, give a few seconds to ask yourself
whether any word, phrase, or image in the readings has caught your attention,
however slightly, and underline it, or make a note of it. Without forcing
yourself, try and recall the word, phrase, or image to mind during the
day. Read the introductory chapters before you start doing the daily readings.
At weekends you may like to try the second method, below.
The most important element in this two-minute method is noticing the word/phrase/image
which has caught our attention. The deeper layers of our minds are usually
more intelligent and aware of our real needs than the top layer, and when
the deeper layer spots something important it tends to retain it in memory
and to register its importance in our feelings. I have learned the importance
of this short reflection through giving individual re-treats. When I see
the retreatant for the first time after giving them a passage or two of
Scripture to pray on, I listen very carefully for any word, phrase, or
image which has caught their attention and affected their feelings. Almost
invariably these words or images keep recurring and act like a thread,
guiding them through their lives, enlightening and encouraging them, bringing
them to a better understanding of God and of themselves. Today, as I write
this, I have just been talking with someone who made a retreat several
months ago, and he spoke of the continuing effect in his life of two images
which had come to him in the first day of his retreat, images which have
become like lifelines for him.
For fifteen-minutes-a-day people
It would be useful to read the introductory pages once before you start
using Oh God, Why? on a daily basis.
There is no need to look up all the Scripture references which are given
at the start of each day: they are given simply for those who would like
fuller Scripture readings. A shortened version of these readings is given
in the text for each day.
If you pray in the early morning, it is good to read the Scripture passage
and reflection through once on the previous evening. Our subconscious
mind works on the material while we sleep, and it is usually easier to
pray the next morning. At the start of your prayer, read the passage over,
several times if necessary, until you are very familiar with it. Notice
any word, phrase or image which catches your attention and focus on it.
You do not have to attend to every word of the passage. Ways of praying
from the Scripture are described in detail in a later chapter.
Before you begin your prayer, decide how long you are going to give to
it and keep to that length of time, no matter how bored you may feel.
The reason for this advice is that our minds seem so to be constituted
that before we reach a deeper layer of consciousness, we have to pass
either through a period of emptiness and dryness during prayer, or through
a period of agitation. If each time this occurs we abandon prayer in the
hope that things will improve later, we never reach the deeper layers
of consciousness where change occurs.
Use of this book at a weekly meeting
Many readers of this book may already belong to parish or other
home groups. In the remainder of this chapter I offer some general guidelines
for these meetings, which, if followed, can deepen the prayer of each
and show the close connection between prayer and everyday life. At the
end of each week, guidelines are offered for such meetings. If you do
not belong to any such group, suggestions are offered for starting your
own.
It has been said that at the Final Judgment God will say to the just,
‘Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the
kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world’. To
the others he will say, ‘Now split up into discussion groups’!
Discussion groups are welcomed by some, but to others, perhaps to most
of us, they are a form of torture. So the first suggestion is that your
group meetings should be listening, not discussion, groups.
Why are discussion groups so unsatisfactory? Briefly, it is be-cause we
do not listen to one another. We may hear the other’s words, and
possibly be able to repeat them, but we do not allow them entry to the
deeper layers of our consciousness, where change occurs. We fear change
more than death, a truth confirmed by our readiness to defend ourselves
as a nation by a system of nuclear defence, which threatens our own existence
as much as that of our enemies. Real listening demands openness and readiness
to change—in other words, listening is a form of penance. Prayer
is listening to God, but if the listening to God is genuine, it must also
be a listening to others. In discussion groups, we tend to listen only
to ourselves, to inflict our views on others and to repel any contrary
opinions. If our views are not accepted by others, we then accuse them
of not listening, our unspoken assumption being that our views are so
obviously right that any who disagree cannot have been listening. So listening
to others in groups is a very fitting exercise.
Most of us are so used to discussion groups in which we exchange ideas
and argue, that a group meeting which forbids all argument and theorizing
would reduce us to silence.
If there is no discussion, what then do you talk about?
The object of the weekly meetings is to share with one another,
in so far as you are willing, your own prayer experience during the previous
week, what you felt during and after the prayer, and the words or thoughts,
memories or images, which occasioned these feelings. Obviously, everyone
must do a little editing before the meeting, because there will not be
time for everyone to describe their own experience in detail. It is, therefore,
very useful to keep a brief record of your own prayer each day, just a
few jottings recording the predominant feelings and ideas, images or memories
which have lingered.
Most of us, when first introduced to this method of sharing, shy away
from it, because we are not accustomed to communicate at the deeper layers
of our consciousness where change occurs. We prefer to remain safely on
the surface, where we exchange weather reports, or discuss the ghastly
state of the economy, the world and our neighbours. A woman who was having
serious difficulties with her husband sat him down and told him that they
must talk. His first comment was on the unusual number of sparrows which
had appeared in the garden! It will not be easy, at first, to communicate
at a deeper level than sparrow statistics, and there will be a constant
tendency to avoid looking at your own experience, launching instead into
a theoretical discussion. Theoretical discussion has its place, but it
rarely leads to communication at the deeper levels of our minds and so
does not effect inner change.
In discussion, a hidden agenda begins to operate. We can appear to be
discussing, for example, the meaning of humility, but underneath the pious
phrases we start trying to show our superior knowledge, or wider experience,
or superiority in the practice of the virtue! If we can persevere with
the sharing, avoiding all theoretical discussion, we soon discover its
value, for it begins to deepen our understanding of ourselves, of others
and of God. In listening to one another, we are also listening to God,
who rewrites the gospel daily in the minds and hearts of each of us.
I once told a loquacious friend that she talked too much, and thought
too little, to which she replied, ‘How can I know what I think until
I’ve heard myself say it?’ What she said is true for all of
us. In putting our experience into words we can begin to see a little
more clearly what is going on in the complexity of our minds and hearts.
If we can express our fears and anxieties, for example, they no longer
have such a hold over us. When afflicted with sadness or grief, words
can enable us to survive the pain instead of being plunged into panic
or depression. Putting into words the joy, delight or peace that we feel
allows the joy to permeate the deeper layers of our consciousness and
so to affect us more deeply and lastingly.
We all suffer from not being listened to and, wittingly or unwittingly,
we damage others by our own unwillingness to listen to them. To the person
grieving over loss, instead of listening and entering into their pain,
we preserve ourselves and offer advice. ‘Come on, now, be brave.
You can’t go around moping for the rest of your life. Pull yourself
together and start living normally.’ This kind of advice, perhaps
given with the best of intentions, can be cruel and destructive to the
recipient, who will only be able to come to terms with their loss if they
are allowed to experience it. They cannot experience it fully unless they
feel safe enough to express it without being either judged weak for having
such feelings, or urged to get rid of them.
In the groups,
when one member is speaking about their prayer experience, the others
listen without interrupting, except for clarification, if something has
not been understood. There is no place for contradiction in this type
of discourse. If I say, for example, that I have been thoroughly bored
by most of the last week’s Scripture readings and prayer periods
and irritated by the rest of them, such statements cannot be contradicted
by anyone else, because they are descriptions of my own inner state, of
which no one else in the group has direct experience. I may then try to
explain why I felt bored, or irritated by the readings. As I do this,
I may begin to recognize that there were other feelings besides boredom
and irritation, and see connections between what I felt in the prayer
and what has been going on outside the prayer times, in my work and in
my relationships with others. If a group is really listening without interrupting,
giving advice, or making judgments, whether verbally or non-verbally,
the speaker begins to feel safe and can explore more easily the tangle
of their own mind and heart. It helps to build up this atmosphere of trust
within the group if all accept from the beginning that whatever is said
in the group is strictly confidential.
After someone has spoken, have a few moments of silence before the next
person is invited to speak. The silence is a mark of reverence for the
speaker, but it also allows what they have said to sink into deeper layers
of our consciousness where our attitudes to one another begin to change.
Listening to one another’s prayer experience, we soon learn the
very important lesson that no two people pray in the same way and that
the same Scripture text has a different personal message for each one.
This can set us free to pay more attention to our own experience. Until
we listen to other people’s prayer experience, most of us are convinced
that almost everyone else prays well and with ease, and that we are the
only ones afflicted with a mind which disintegrates into myriad distractions
as soon as we attempt prayer, the only ones who suffer boredom and emptiness.
It is encouraging to know that most people who attempt to pray regularly
are similarly afflicted. More important than this encouragement is the
trust which we begin to have in our own experience. Many of us have been
taught to ignore our own experience and trust the ‘experts’,
not only in religious matters but in every other human experience. So
we discount what is going on in us, pay it no attention, try to follow
the prescriptions of the experts, fail most of the time, and consequently
feel failures. We surrender our freedom to those who claim to know, perhaps
paying them large sums of money for their expertise, and ignore the wisdom
that God gives us. Listening to our own and other people’s prayer
experience encourages us to drink from our own wells, to listen to the
Holy Spirit at work in each of us. There is no such thing as failure in
prayer. If I feel bored, empty, or angry when I pray, this can be as much
a sign that I am in touch with God as when I feel full of peace, joy and
delight in God’s presence. Until we learn to listen to and accept
our own experience, we are incapable of repentance, of a change of mind
and heart, so attending a weekly group meeting is a good spiritual exercise!
Listening is perhaps the greatest service we can do for one an-other,
and this kind of listening, as you will discover, soon begins to affect
your own way of praying. Listening to others’ prayer experience
and describing your own to them, makes you more attentive to what is going
on within you. It is only by listening to ourselves that we can listen
to God, ‘closer to me than I am to myself’. We have no other
option! That is why God says, through the psalmist, ‘Be still and
know that I am God.’
Your meeting should so be arranged that when everyone has had the opportunity
to speak, there should be some time left to reflect together on what you
have heard. This will mean a time limit on any one person’s description
of their prayer. In the reflection time, you can say what has helped you
in what you have heard, and there may be questions or comments arising
with which you can help one another—referring, for example, to books,
articles, TV or radio programmes, or conversations you have had. God is
the God of com-passion. When the Spirit of God is at work in a group,
then the spirit of compassion takes hold of the members and they become
more aware of the need to serve the community in which they are living,
so time is needed at the end of the meeting to discuss practical matters.
It is also good to have a few minutes of silent prayer, whether at the
beginning or the end, when you pray for one another. Perhaps you could
sit in a circle with a lighted candle in the middle, the symbol of Christ,
Light of the World, who is, in fact, within each of you and among you.
It is important to do this in silence and to resist any suggestions that
the silence should be broken with vocal prayer or singing.
If possible, ensure that your group is ecumenical. Ignatius wrote, ‘The
more universal a work is, the more it is divine.’ Jesus prayed that
we all might be one. By sharing our prayer experience with Christians
of other denominations, we get a glimpse of the unifying work of God,
come to appreciate the special gifts of other denominations, and experience
the unity of Christ which holds all things in being. So make your group
as ecumenical as you can.
For each meeting, appoint a group leader, a task which should be taken
in turn. The leader has only two functions: firstly, to ensure that each
who wants to speak has the chance to do so, and secondly to ensure that
each one speaks out of their own experience and does not theorize. All
the group should share this responsibility with the leader.
If you do not belong to any group, or if there is no group in your neighbourhood,
than why not start your own with one or two other people? If the group
is healthy, participation will affect not only the prayer life of its
members, but every other aspect of their lives and the group will begin
to engage in some kind of corporate action.
A few final practical points about group meetings:
• The ideal size for a group of this kind is 6–8 people. If
there are more, listening becomes exhausting. Healthy groups increase
and multiply.
• Decide at the first meeting the starting and finishing times for
each meeting, and keep to them strictly.
• It is good to meet, if possible, in a different member’s
home each week. If refreshments are offered, keep them as simple as possible,
tea/coffee and biscuits, so that no one is put to undue expense.
2 - Why prayer, fasting and almsgiving?
I
said at the start of this book that Oh God, Why? was originally a Lent
book, and Lent is the most unpopular time in the Christian year. That
is because it is a time for prayer, fasting and almsgiving. In this chapter
we shall look briefly at the origins of Lent and its development to see
how important prayer, fasting and almsgiving are for Christians today.
There is an unhealthy dislike of the body which pre-dates Christianity.
Even so, the infection has remained and has flourished at certain periods
of Church history, in spite of official condemnation of the doctrine that
spirit is good and the body evil. This dualist doctrine has produced contrary
results among its holders. Some have concluded that as the body is evil,
one cannot be held responsible for its behaviour, so let the body follow
its inevitably evil ways while keeping the spirit pure. This is a very
convenient way of solving life’s struggle, permitting the holder
to practise base debauchery while retaining a sublime spirituality! This
dualist tendency is deep in human nature and survives in many forms, even
in those who reject, or are ignorant of the theory that spirit is good,
matter is evil. I saw it recently in a three-year-old girl who was giving
her doll a fierce telling off and spanking it for being naughty. The naughtiness
was her own, but she was obviously experiencing great relief in transferring
it to the dolly and relishing her own righteousness!
The same tendency remains with us in later life, but we substitute other
human beings for the doll. Christianity teaches that our spirits, and
not only our bodies, are inclined to evil. Pascal once wrote of a convent
of Religious Sisters that they were ‘as pure as angels and as proud
as demons’.
The other conclusion from a dualist doctrine is that the body, being evil,
must be constantly opposed, punished and kept in strict subjection. This
conclusion, while less damaging to the public interest, is hard on its
holders for it condemns them to a life of misery. Yet in past ages, severe
treatment of the body has often been considered not only an indication
of holiness, but holiness has been presented, in lives of the saints,
as being in direct proportion to the bodily austerities practised. One
saint’s life describes his early signs of holiness. As a baby, he
refused his mother’s milk on Fridays. But this was only a hint of
greater things to come. He went on to practise the most fierce austerities
before dying, not surprisingly, at an early age.
The effect of dualist doctrine is still with us and can be witnessed daily,
especially in city parks, where young and old jog with agonized expressions.
This is not a condemnation of jogging, or of bodily fitness, but only
noting that our dislike of the body is manifest in countless ways. Slimming,
dieting, and beautifying, like jogging, are good in themselves, but they
can also be expressions of self-rejection, of dislike of our own bodies.
Christian emphasis on self-denial can foster this spirit of self-rejection
so that the body itself becomes a constant source of guilt and misery.
The other extreme is to believe that care of the body constitutes the
whole of spirituality, so that having had my vegetarian meals, massage
and jacuzzi, I am now ready to meet my Maker!
Today, in Christian spirituality, there is much less emphasis on self-denial
and mortification. Matthew Fox’s book, Original Blessing, although
controversial, has been immensely popular in some circles. He writes of
the Church’s morbid preoccupation with Original Sin, which concentrates
the Christian mind on sin and punishment and so produces a guilt-ridden
people, instead of turning our mind to the goodness of God, manifest in
creation and in our own body, mind and spirit.
Should we not, then, scrap the season of Lent as a time for prayer, penance,
fasting and almsgiving and turn it into a time of celebration and thanksgiving—enjoying,
appreciating and relishing God’s gifts instead of denying ourselves
that enjoyment? Instead of deciding what to give up for Lent, should we
not decide what we are going to enjoy and relish, making Lent a happier
time for ourselves? This is a question readers must answer for themselves,
but first we shall look briefly at the origins and development of Lenten
practice and the reasons for it.
Healthy Christian spirituality has its roots in Judaism. The Jews have
a seven-day fast before the Passover, not in preparation for the feast
but as part of its celebration. Before the fast begins, all leavened bread
must be removed from the house. The unleavened bread, bitter herbs and
wine recall the anguish and the joy of the Israelite rescue from Egyptian
slavery. In Christianity, the fast is generally seen more as a preparation
for Easter rather than as a participation in the Passover mystery, which
can lead to the false conclusion that the Easter mystery begins on Easter
Sunday.
Whether Lent is to be considered as a preparation for Easter or as participation
in the mystery may seem an academic point. It is, however, a very practical
question, not only for Lent, but for our understanding of all our Christian
celebrations and their relationship to everyday life and behaviour.
In celebrating Easter, for example, we are not simply recalling Christ’s
resurrection two thousand years ago, but celebrating the mystery of our
own lives now. We are on a journey to a new life. Death is not the end,
but the beginning of a new phase, ‘when every tear will be wiped
away and we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you
and praise you forever through Christ, our Lord, through whom all good
things come’ (Eucharistic prayer, Roman Missal). Life is a journey
into death, a journey out of slavery into freedom, a journey made in hope.
We celebrate Christ’s resurrection to remind ourselves of our own
destiny, that we are not alone in our journey through life. For Christ,
who entered once into our humanity, our sinfulness, suffering and death,
is now out of time, and therefore continuously present in every moment
of our time—‘Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday
and as he will be forever’ (Hebrews 13:8). We are on the way to
share his resurrection. Lent is celebrated to make us more aware of the
nature of the journey on which we are all now engaged, and to give us
direction and hope.
The first mention of Lent in a Church document appears in the Council
of Nicaea (ad325). In early centuries, Christians probably followed the
Jewish custom of prayer and fasting for one week before the Passover.
Lent, as we know it, began as a time of special preparation for new converts
to Christianity, who were baptized on Holy Saturday. It also became a
time for the reconciliation of those Christians who, in time of persecution,
had denied their faith or had committed some other public crime, separating
themselves from the Church. The ceremony of reconciliation took place
on Maundy Thursday. The official prayers and readings for Lent still show
the origins of Lent as a time of preparation for baptism and of reconciliation
for public sinners, who began Lent by wearing ashes on their heads, a
sign of repentance. Soon the practice of Lent was extended to the whole
Church, for we are all sinners and in need of repentance. Lent became
a collective retreat in daily life for the whole Church, a time for entering
more consciously into the mystery of Christ’s passover from death
to resurrection, a time for imitating Christ in his forty days in the
desert when he faced the devil’s temptations. Jesus was ‘led
by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted’ (Matthew 4:1).
Lent was a time for fasting and meeting the demons, a time for spiritual
battle.
‘Meeting the demons’ and ‘spiritual battle’ are
unfamiliar terms to many Christians today, all too familiar to others,
but they were very familiar to fourth-century Christians when the Roman
Empire became officially Christian. Christian status changed. Clerics
be-came state officials. Being a Christian, formerly a risk to life, now
became a mark of respectability. Many Christians, especially among the
laity, were uneasy at the change, saw the subtle dangers of this apparent
victory and feared that imperial recognition could imperil the gospel
message more effectively than imperial persecution had done. That is why
so many thousands of Christians left the cities and went off to live in
the desert, for they believed that in the desert the hidden forces of
evil would be unmasked, stripped of their imperial plausibility and overcome
in spiritual battle. This Christian protest was the origin of the monastic
movement, but it was almost a hundred years before the official Church
recognized its importance and significance.
The Gospel readings for the first Sunday of Lent are always the accounts
of Jesus’ forty days in the desert. After his baptism by John, Jesus
‘was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted by
the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was
very hungry, and the tempter came… to him’ (Matthew 4:1–2).
The temptations are very subtle and are presented, with scriptural authority,
as good and reasonable. ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones
to turn into loaves.’ After all, God is the God who loves his creation,
the God of generosity, the God of com-passion, so why torture yourself?
Why not satisfy your own hunger and the hunger of thousands of others,
experience the goodness of God for yourself and let others know it, too?
Then the devil takes Jesus up to the parapet of the temple in Jerusalem
and suggests, ‘If you are the Son of God… throw yourself down;
for scripture says: “He will put you in his angels’ charge,
and they will support you on their hands in case you hurt your foot against
a stone”.’ This is also a very reasonable suggestion. Why
not take a leap off the temple pinnacle, preferably when lots of people
are around, for your safe landing will certainly convince them of your
unique status, so that they will listen respectfully and obediently to
your words of truth? Finally, the devil shows all the kingdoms of the
world and their splendour. ‘I will give you all these… if
you fall at my feet and worship me.’ Why not take over all the powers
and kingdoms and use your power and wisdom to protect people from their
own evil and destructive ways? If you do not take them over, then others
will, and will use that power for their own self-advantage, so why not
prevent them, for their own good and for the good of countless others?
In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has a chapter called ‘The
Grand Inquisitor’, in which he imagines Christ’s reappearance
in Spain and his trial before the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor condemns
Jesus to death because he gave all the wrong answers in the desert and
is, consequently, undermining the Church, whose vocation it is to save
human beings from the destructive effects of their freedom. According
to the Inquisitor, the Church should be giving the people food to eat
and miracles to strengthen their faith, and should exercise its power
to curb the people’s destructive will.
In the temptations, Jesus uncovers the deceits of the Evil One because
his whole being is at one with God: ‘You must worship the Lord your
God, and serve him alone.’ Lent is a time for prayer, so that we
can unmask the subtle and destructive forces masquerading under the appearance
of good in our own time, in our individual lives, in the life of the Church
and of the nation.
Lent is a time not only for prayer, but also for fasting and almsdeeds,
which Augustine called ‘the wings of prayer’, meaning, presumably,
that without the fasting and almsdeeds, our prayer remains earthbound
and ineffective. This touches on a problem of our spirituality today which
affects all Christian denominations and its importance cannot be exaggerated.
Briefly, the problem is that our spirituality is split: we have split
God off from life. We worry about our dwindling numbers and emptying churches,
blame secular values and the permissiveness of our age, but increase of
numbers and packed churches would not necessarily touch the problem. Perhaps
the dwindling numbers are a blessing, if we can use them to reflect on
why so many good, generous and intelligent people abandon the practice
of formal religious worship.
A few years ago, en route for Jerusalem I visited Medjugorje, a village
in what was then Yugoslavia. Our Lady was said to be appearing daily to
a group of children, declaring herself to be the Queen of Peace. Millions
of people have flocked there to pray. When I visited in May 1987, there
were thousands of visitors from USA, Europe, Ireland and Britain, all
praying for peace, but of the people to whom I spoke, most were stout
defenders of nuclear deterrence as a necessary policy for maintaining
peace and saw no inconsistency between holding these views while, at the
same time, praying for peace. This illustrates the split which, in the
Roman Catholic church, can be summed up as the split between the Rosary
Brigade on the one hand, and the activists on the other. The Rosary Brigade
believe that the most effective way of ensuring world peace is prayer,
and the activists, on the other hand, believe that without effective political
and social action peace remains an abstract ideal. This same split runs
through all the denominations, the charismatics versus the political and
social activists, the evangelizers versus the community developers. I
know that there are many Christians who both pray and act socially and
politically, but they are not the majority and they usually meet with
fierce opposition, not from unbelievers, but from their own Christian
brothers and sisters. The division has deep roots in our religious vocabulary
of grace and nature, natural and supernatural, terms which can easily
be misunderstood to support the split. The division does not allow God
to be the God who became one of us in Jesus: it keeps God at a safe distance
from our everyday behaviour and from our indivi-dual and national attitudes,
values and policies. Here are three illustrations of our split spirituality:
No Christian is likely to cause uproar in a church by praying ‘Lord,
grant peace to our world.’ It is a safe prayer to make, allowing
those who make it to continue pursuing peace by whatever means they think
effective. Let us suppose, for example, that I, in company with all the
political parties, the majority of Christians and of Christian leaders
in Britain, am a firm believer in our national defence policy as a means
of preserving peace. Why then should I not make the following prayer for
peace? ‘Dear Lord, inspire our scientists that they may invent yet
more lethal weaponry (for the more lethal, the more effectively it will
deter), preserve us from any unfortunate accident in its testing (lest
we suffer an even greater disaster than Chernobyl), bless our economy
that we may put these weapons into plentiful production (otherwise they
will fail to deter), succour the homeless, the unemployed, the sick and
elderly of our own and other nations until such time as our defence commitments
allow us to do more. Strengthen our leaders in a strong defence policy,
drive out from our midst any who by thought, word, or deed undermine our
national security, and grant us the protection of nuclear weaponry now
and forever, Amen.’ Some readers may dislike this prayer and consider
it a distortion of the views of those who believe in the morality of nuclear
deterrence, but the point of the prayer is to illustrate that our spirituality
has a split nature and that when we do bring our everyday actions and
attitudes into prayer, then our prayers disturb.
Recently, I met with a group of Christian psychotherapists, most of whose
clients were also Christian. I asked them whether, in the course of their
therapy, they ever asked their clients about their prayer, or encouraged
them to pray over the questions arising in their therapy sessions. They
replied that they did not, and gave as their reason that if they encouraged
their clients to pray over their problems, they would use prayer as an
escape from facing them. I could accept this answer, but what a commentary
it is on the split nature of our spirituality, that prayer can be used
as an escape from the facts in which we are living!
The third illustration is an imaginative exercise which you can try for
yourself. Imagine a ring at your doorbell one evening and on answering,
you discover the visitor is the Risen Lord himself. Somehow, you know
it is the Lord. How do you react, what do you do and say? Do you shut
the door on him, or tell him to come back on Sunday? Presumably, you welcome
him in, summon everyone in the house, and find yourself making such ridiculous
statements to the Lord of all creation as ‘Do make yourself at home
and stay as long as you like. Everything is yours.’ Now take a fortnight’s
leap in your imagination. Jesus has accepted your invitation and he is
still with you. How are things at home now? You remember that disturbing
passage in the Gospel where Jesus says, ‘I have come not to bring
peace, but the sword, to set daughter against mother, daughter-in-law
against mother-in-law, son against father.’
The letter to the Hebrews says, ‘Jesus Christ is the same today
as he was yesterday and as he will be forever’, so presumably there
has been a bit of friction over family meals in the last two weeks, some
members leaving the table, slamming doors, possibly the front door, never
to return. You invited Jesus to make himself at home, so he has begun
inviting his friends to your house. You remember what people said of his
friends in the Gospel, how he dined with sinners. What kind of people
do you see coming now to your house, what are the neighbours saying, and
what is happening to the local property values? Then you decide that you
must not keep Jesus all to yourself, so you arrange for him to give a
talk at the local church. You remember that scene in the Gospel where
he addresses the scribes, Pharisees and chief priests and assures them
that the criminals and the prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God
before they do. He gives the same message to a gathering of men and women
at St Jude’s parish and there is uproar, the parish losing its principal
benefactors.
You return home with Jesus, your saviour, who has now become your problem.
What are you to do? You cannot throw out the Lord of all creation. So
you look around the house, find a suitable cupboard, clear it out, decorate
it, sparing no expense, get a good strong lock on it and put Jesus inside.
Outside you can have a lamp and flowers, and each time you pass, bow reverently,
so that you now have Jesus and he does not interfere any more!
This is an image which you can use in your own prayer and reflect on afterwards.
Scripture is full of warnings against split spirituality. Most of the
Scripture readings during Lent are on this point, the Old Testament prophets
fulminating against lip service to God and against religious worship which
is not the true expression of the heart and soul of the worshipper.
I cannot endure festival and solemnity. Your New Moons and your pilgrimages
I hate with all my soul. They lie heavy on me, I am tired of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands I turn my eyes away. You may multiply
your prayers, I shall not listen. Your hands are covered with blood, wash,
make yourselves clean. Take your wrongdoing out of my sight. Cease to
do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be
just to the orphan, plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:13–17 - The practice of prayer alone is not sufficient
to heal the split in our spirituality and to unmask the subtle deceits
of the destructive spirit which is at work within and among all of us.
Nor will prayer alone enable us to recognize the creative action of God’s
Spirit, which is also working within and among us all. Therefore the Church
insists on the need for fasting and almsgiving if our prayer is to be
effective.
In early centuries, the Lenten fast was very severe, allowing only one
meal per day, towards evening, which could not include either meat or
any dairy products, a compulsory veganism for the one permitted meal.
In later centuries the discipline was relaxed, the main meal could be
at noon, could include dairy products, and a light meal was allowed in
the evening. Today, in the Roman Catholic church which used to be so precise
in its rules and regulations, fasting is imposed only on Ash Wednesday
and Good Friday, but there are no detailed fasting prescriptions. Fasting
is generally taken to mean only one main meal and two smaller meals in
the day, a prescription which would be undreamt-of luxury for many millions
of people today.
Fasting can be undertaken for a variety of reasons, for slimming, greater
fitness, better health, to save money, or out of necessity, so the practice
may have no spiritual motivation. Asceticism in general, that is the practice
of self-denial and bodily austerity, may be undertaken for many different
reasons and the practice may bear no relation to penance. Adolf Hitler,
for example, was a most abstemious man—vegetarian, non-smoking,
and teetotal. Yet in Christian tradition, fasting has always been recommended.
Why is this? Jeremiah writes, ‘The heart is more devious than any
other thing, perverse, too: who can pierce its secrets?’ (Jeremiah
17:9). Fasting can help to clear the mind so that we can recognize more
quickly the deceits which operate in us. The physical effects of fasting
vary from person to person, but for many, provided it is not too prolonged
or severe, it has an energizing effect. Fasting enables us to feel more
compassion for the millions who fast daily of necessity, and sharing their
hunger we are more likely to respond, by contributing to aid organizations
and trying to find out what we can do politically to alleviate the problem.
What form our fasting should take is for each one to decide. We are not
going to do ourselves any harm by avoiding luxuries and junk food. Fasting
is a means to an end, not an end in itself, so practise whatever form
of fasting enables you to pray more regularly and wholeheartedly, but
do not allow the fasting to become an endurance test or a way of boosting
your ego.
Like prayer alone, fasting alone does not necessarily bring us nearer
to God, and the prophets denounce fasting which is not springing from
compassion and a hunger for justice. ‘Fasting like yours today will
never make your voice heard on high… Is not this the sort of fast
that pleases me—it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks—to break
unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go
free, and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter
the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn
from your own kin?’ (Isaiah 58:4, 6, 7).
Fasting from wrongdoing is more important than fasting from food, but
fasting from food can help us to fast from wrongdoing, from oppressing
your workmen, as Isaiah says, from quarrelling and squabbling.
There is also an inner fasting of the mind, fasting from walking along
those dark inner paths of self-pity, of blaming others, of relishing the
failures of others, of nursing grievances. We have to walk some path in
our inner minds and that is why the habit of thanking God for everything
we have enjoyed in a day is so important.
‘Almsgiving’ is an unfortunate word, for it implies giving
of our plenty to the less fortunate, a giving which can humiliate the
receivers, estrange them even more from their benefactors, and can perpetuate
an unjust system of haves and have-nots which should never have existed
in the first place. Like fasting, almsgiving is both a means which helps
us to pray, and also the result of prayer. If our prayer is genuine, then
the Spirit of God, the God of tenderness and compassion, takes hold on
us and we shall begin to feel more at one with him and with creation.
Our hearts, like Christ’s, will be ‘moved with pity’,
and we shall begin to feel for our neighbour as we feel for ourselves.
Almsgiving is a generic term which expresses the practical nature of our
love for others. We do not just pray and fast for them, but give practical
proof of our love. This may take a variety of forms. It includes the corporal
works of mercy, caring for the sick, homeless, feeding the hungry, and
this work, too, may take many different forms. In many of our cities,
volunteers organize soup kitchens and night shelters for the homeless,
which is excellent work, but supplying the soup and a bed for the night
may not be touching the root of the problem of hunger and homelessness.
Voluntary help may cover up the problem. Almsgiving means not only giving
handouts, but the more fundamental problem of addressing the root causes
of this hunger and homelessness. This is a less favoured occupation by
Christians because examination of the causes may reveal the need for radical
change in our own lifestyle, loss of privilege and status, and discovery
of our own inner poverty. The book of Revelation warns the people of Laodicea,
‘You say to yourself, “I am rich, I have made a fortune, and
have every-thing I want”, never realizing that you are wretchedly
and pitiably poor, and blind and naked, too’ (Revelation 3:17).
‘Almsgiving’ not only includes the corporal works of mercy
both at the level of individual help and the level of structural change,
but it also includes what is, for most of us, a much more difficult giving,
namely forgiving. Lent is a time of forgiveness from God, but therefore
also a time for our forgiveness of one another, a time for letting go
past resentments, for breaking down the barriers which separate us.
Traditionally, Lent has been a time for prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
In Christianity we have emphasized original sin more than the original
blessings of God, so that spiritualities which are suspicious of pleasure
and enjoyment have developed, presenting God as he who disapproves of
almost everything, certainly of everything we like. It is right that we
should turn away from such an appalling picture of God. Yet prayer, fasting
and almsgiving have been constantly advocated by the prophets, by Jesus,
by all spiritual teachers in the Church and we would be fools to ignore
this teaching. It is not our prayer and fasting which have given us this
false image of a punishing God: it is neglect of prayer and of love for
our neighbour which allows this forbidding view of God to flourish within
us and within the Church, to our own and everyone else’s detriment.
3
- Where is our destination?
The meaning of penance
The words ‘penance’ and ‘penitence’ have gone
out of fashion in religious circles and have been replaced by the word
‘renewal’. Countless courses are offered in the churches,
promising to renew us, individually and corporately.
Participants in such courses may be very satisfied with them, but to the
outside observer, renewal courses have not enlivened church services,
nor increased the numbers attending, nor have the renewal effects been
of any obvious benefit to anyone outside the renewal group. There is always
a risk when any Christian individual or group attempts to renew, reform
or convert itself, and the more they appear to succeed, the greater the
danger.
Renewal, if it aims at self or group improvement, will probably do far
more harm than good to the individual, group and society around them.
This may seem a very cynical remark and a very unjust condemnation of
many sincere individuals and groups within the Church. The reason for
such a sweeping statement is that the more effort we make to be ‘good’
Christians, the more we are bound to fail. Either we succeed, in which
case our ego is boosted, and our ego is our greatest obstacle to finding
God, or we fail, in which case we feel demoralized, confirmed in our own
feelings of uselessness and failure, and surrender our lives to our own
feelings of inferiority. Of the two alternatives, this latter is probably
the safer to fall into, because we are normally closer to God in our feelings
of inadequacy than we are when we feel complacent. In the Gospels, Jesus
never condemns the dispirited, but he is vitriolic in his condemnation
of those who claim to have a monopoly of God.
Our renewal, like our good resolutions, is always doomed to failure as
long as the focus is on self-improvement. All Christian renewal, if it
is to bring about a real change of mind and heart, must start not from
effort, but from attentiveness to God, who alone is good. We pay lip service
to this truth in so much of our renewal attempts, praying for God’s
blessing on our endeavours, and then concentrating our minds on the latest
technique for self-betterment. We can try so hard to make a success of
our prayer that we leave no room for God to pray in us: ‘Be still,
and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10).
All the great
feasts of the Church—Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas—are
celebrated not primarily to remind us of past events, but to help us celebrate
our present existence. Jesus is not born again every Christmas, nor does
he rise every Easter Sunday, nor does the Holy Spirit appear like a dove
every Pentecost. We celebrate these feasts to help us understand, appreciate
and relish the mystery of our present existence. There is an ancient homily
by an anonymous author, which appears in the Roman Office readings for
Holy Saturday. The author imagines Jesus going down to hell after his
death, knocking on the door and summoning Adam. The conversation ends
with the astonishing sentence, ‘Adam, arise, come forth. For henceforth
you and I are one undivided person!’ God is calling you and me to
arise and live in this way. That is the meaning of the call to repentance.
A friend of mine came to see me after attending a meeting in which all
present had to introduce themselves to one another. Each identified themselves
first with name, then with occupation. When it came to my friend’s
turn he was tempted to introduce himself as: ‘I am Donald. I am
a unique manifestation of God.’
We become so absorbed in the details of our religion that we lose sight
of the astonishing truths on which it is all based. We are, each one of
us, a unique manifestation of God, who is ‘closer to me than I am
to myself’. Jesus said of his relationship to us, ‘I am the
vine, you are the branches’ (John 15:5), and he prayed ‘may
they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you… that they may
be one as we are one’ (John 17:21–22). And Paul says that
even before the world began God had us in mind: ‘Before the world
was made he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and
to live through love in his presence’ (Ephesians 1:4). Our faith
is certainly not short in wonderful statements: the problem is appropriating
those statements to ourselves, making them real to ourselves, really believing
them, as distinct from mouthing them piously. What an enormous difference
it would make to our lives if we did believe that our ultimate identity
is in God, that we are one undivided person with Christ. If with that
conviction we were insulted, criticized, or overlooked, we could remain
unperturbed, even grateful for the criticism! Similarly, we would not
be shattered if we were to lose what wealth we had, or our job.
If statements like ‘our ultimate identity is in God’, remain
abstract for us, it is good to be attentive to the mystery of ourselves.
Our conscious minds can grasp only a very tiny fraction of the reality
in which we are living. How conscious, for example, are any of us of the
billions of cells which make up our bodies, each cell as complex in its
construction as a galaxy, each cell unique and containing within it the
construction plans for the whole body? The cells communicate with one
another and provide an ingenious transport system for all the air, food
and drink that we consume, apportioning it in such a way that the whole
body grows in proportion, so that the bread eaten gives sight to our eyes
but also enables our toenails to grow. And how far are any of us conscious
of how each of these cells is interrelated to every other particle of
matter in the universe? Scientists say that when a baby throws its rattle
out of the cradle, the planets rock! We live, most of the time, totally
unaware of how we are essentially interrelated with every-thing else in
creation. Our minds, which have the potential to hold all knowledge, are
liable to be totally preoccupied with the pain of a mild headache, or
the wound inflicted on us by someone’s criticism!
Pondering the mystery of our being helps us live and see in perspective,
and gives space in our minds for the exercise of wonder, the beginning
of wisdom. When we wonder, we are like that famous painting of Adam in
the Sistine chapel: we stretch out our finger to touch the finger of God
and catch a glimpse of who we are and what we are called to be.
Religious language is wonder language, opening up our minds to the extraordinary
mystery that we are: ‘…it is in him that we live, and move,
and exist’ (Acts 17:28). We are images of God. Because God is eternal,
that is, always in the now and without past or present, therefore we are.
God is, therefore I am. This God cherishes us, considers us precious in
his eyes, so identifies with us that he considers whatever is done to
us as also being done to him: ‘as you did this to one of the least
of these brothers of mine, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40). As
Christians we believe that the Spirit who lived in Jesus and raised him
from the dead lives now in us. We celebrate the resurrection to remind
ourselves that the Spirit of the risen Jesus is with us. God never leaves
us, no matter what we may do, or not do. ‘Where could I go to escape
your spirit? Where could I flee from your presence? If I climb the heavens,
you are there, there too, if I lie in Sheol’ (Psalm 139:7–8).
Christ manifests himself differently in each of us. Each of us has a unique
role in the life of the universe, to let God be God in our particular
circumstances, in our time, in our circle of people. No one can take our
place. There is no higher destiny possible. What is astonishing is the
way in which we manage to distort, discount and disguise this message
and turn our Christian life into some-thing grim, grey, drab and dreary
which leaves us suspicious of life rather than delighting in it, guilty
and afraid rather than happy and courageous. We can mouth the glorious
words which express our faith, but our hearts are not at one with the
heart of God’s kingdom. They remain firmly lodged in our own kingdom,
preserving it, defending it, extending it.
When Jesus began his public life and preaching, his first message was
not ‘Love one another’, or even ‘Love your enemies’,
it was ‘The kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent’ (Mark
1:15).
The meaning of repentance
The English word ‘penance’ is the translation of a Greek word
metanoia. The root of ‘penance’ is the Latin word poena, meaning
punishment, penalty, pain, grief. It is not surprising that Lent, time
for penance, is not our favourite time of the year. Metanoia, however,
does not mean punishment or pain: literally, it means a change of mind.
So Lent is not meant to be a time for punishment and pain, but a time
for changing our minds, changing our outlook and attitudes, a time for
change of heart. This point is vividly illustrated by the first reading
of Ash Wednesday when the prophet Joel tells Israel, ‘Let your hearts
be broken, not your garments torn’ (Joel 2:13).
As we think,
so we are. If we were to believe that every other human being is out to
get us, then on that assumption it would be reasonable for us to walk
very carefully along the road, keeping as far away from the pavement edge
as we can, lest someone push us into the oncoming traffic. It would also
be reasonable to look round frequently to see if we are being followed,
inspect every doorway with care lest an assailant be lurking and take
especial care at road corners and crossings, when enemy cars can come
from four different directions. It would also be very reasonable to spend
a large proportion of our income on security gadgets and defence weapons
for our home, and perhaps purchase a grenade or two for our pockets when
we do venture out of doors. To be told ‘For God’s sake stop
behaving so stupidly’ is useless exhortation as long as we are still
convinced in our minds that every passer-by is our enemy. We may also
be of a religious disposition, beseeching the Almighty daily with an hour’s
prayer to protect us from our enemies, and we may fast regularly to give
top spin to our prayer. What we need is penance, a change of mind and
heart, not to make life harder or to inflict more pain on ourselves, but
to free us from the intolerable burden which our imaginary fears are imposing
on us.
In the Scripture
readings in this book you will find many examples of penance described
as a change of mind and heart which brings freedom, life, joy and light.
‘Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will
give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28). ‘Come now, let us talk this
over, says Yahweh. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow… If you are willing to obey, you shall eat the good
things of the earth’ (Isaiah 1:18, 19). ‘Pay attention, come
to me; listen, and your soul will live’ (Isaiah 55:3).
What does
a change of mind and heart mean, and how can we make it? There is a sense
in which we cannot effect it: all that we can do is be attentive to God
and let him do the transforming. In a later chapter we shall look in more
detail at this question of how we can know that a change of mind and heart
has taken place and that it is a turning to God and not a turning in on
my own ego.
A real change of mind and heart means an inner surrendering of my own
mind and heart to God, so that whatever I do, I do in his Spirit: with
him, for him and through him. We can want to surrender in this way and
be sincere in our wanting, but the actual transformation is a lifelong
process and probably completed by few, if any, this side of death. The
nearer we approach this surrender, the more we become conscious of layer
upon layer of resistance in our own spirit. That is why so many of the
saints, who seem to have lived irreproachable lives, do tend to go on
and on in their writings about their sinfulness. It is only those who
are near to God who know what sin is. That is why one of the marks of
holiness is humility, an unwillingness to condemn or even to judge anyone,
a great compassion and understanding for the sinner. Such attitudes are
called ‘wet’ and ‘soft liberal’ by hardliners
who, having no knowledge of their own sinfulness, see it clearly in everyone
else.
Beware of religious men and women who know all about God and his ways,
especially for others, and lack gentleness! Rabbi Lionel Blue, in the
radio programme ‘Thought for the Day’, once described the
genuinely religious person as one who has a care for their own soul, but
for everyone else’s body, while the hypocrite has a care for everyone
else’s soul and their own body.
God is constantly nudging us to this change of mind and heart. Our difficulty
is in recognizing his nudging. Deep within us, no matter how irreligious,
unspiritual, or unprayerful we may feel or think ourselves to be, there
is an innate longing for God, the longing Augustine recognized as he looked
back on his life and wrote, ‘Lord, you created me for yourself,
and my heart is restless until it rests in you.’ In our consciousness,
this drawing of God may feel very ungodly; there may be feelings of boredom,
dissatisfaction, disappointment, disgust, emptiness, darkness, isolation,
and estrangement even from those closest to us. God is in all things,
and if we can allow these negative feelings to come into our prayer, then
we can begin to see them as God’s invitation to us to change. In
some Christian circles the impression is given that those who are close
to God live in a constant state of bliss, full of the love of God and
his creation, safely cocooned from any negative emotions. This is not
the experience of the saints. Those who preach that those who have turned
to God no longer experience darkness, nor any negative emotions, can never
have met God in their own prayer, cannot know themselves, but they can
prevent others from finding him. That is why it is so important, as we
shall see later, to bring all our moods and feelings into prayer, so that
we can recognize God’s nudgings in all our experience.
What is this God, whom we are to allow to be in us, like? Only God can
teach us who God is, and he teaches each of us in a different way, for
he teaches through the circumstances of our own lives and we have no other
way of knowing him. We can learn about him from books, teachers and from
other people, but we can only know him with our own hearts. That is why
prayer has been described as ‘heart speaking to heart’. This
is a better description of prayer than the more common ‘raising
the mind and heart to God’. In prayer, we do try to raise our minds
and hearts to God, but the very word ‘raise’ can mislead us
into thinking of God as above and beyond, which he is, but he is also
within, more present to us than we are to ourselves. By concentrating
on God above, we tend to think of him as apart from our daily concerns,
and this is one of the fundamental difficulties most of us experience
when we try to pray. We try to raise our minds and hearts to God beyond
us, try to banish what are called ‘distractions’, as though
God cannot be interested or present in our preoccupations. We find nothing
in the beyond, and soon find our minds filled with a torrent of thoughts,
imaginings and emotions which are all very earthy and seem to have nothing
to do with God above, or are even opposed to him.
The circumstances of our lives are not ‘distractions’. The
word distraction is from a Latin root meaning ‘to draw apart’
or ‘drag away’. The facts of our lives are not distractions:
they are the place, and the only place, where we can meet God, for that
is where he is for us. Outside of the facts of our existence, all that
we meet is an abstraction. Therefore to try and raise our minds and hearts
to God, as though he were not in the facts, is a distraction, and to attend
to what is going on within and around us is attraction to God! It is only
through reflecting on the circumstances of our own lives and on the reality
around us that we can begin to get on the track of God, and then come
to know that he is also beyond us. Just as the first disciples only came
to a knowledge of Jesus as the Christ, Son of the living God, through
first knowing him as a human being, so we can only come to know God within
and around us through our own human experience. The early Church writers
spoke of creation itself as a sacrament of God, that is, a sign and an
effective sign of his presence.
There is, therefore, nothing in creation, no experience of life, which
is necessarily a distraction. Everything that happens to us is an invitation
from God to turn to him. So prayer is as wide as creation: there is no
experience which cannot become a prayer.
It is because we have forgotten this fundamental truth that our Christian
spirituality so often seems artificial, out of touch, contrived, the private
property of a few, a treasured possession which can encase us in unshakeable
self-righteousness, concerned with everyone else’s spiritual welfare
and our own material security.
God is both beyond us and within us. Theologians speak of God as transcendent
and immanent. Briefly, transcendent means that God is always greater,
too great for our finite minds to grasp adequately, to define, to contain.
For us, God must always be mystery, which means that the more we come
to know him, the more we know there is to know. ‘My ways are above
your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts’ says the Lord God (Isaiah
55:9). Our temptation is always to cut God down to our size, to make him
in our own image and likeness, to control him, domesticate him, so that
he always acts predictably and is always on our side. In all war memorials,
the dead of both sides gave their lives Pro Deo et Patria, ‘for
God and country’. But God cannot be controlled in this way, cannot
be held within any human definition. He is always greater, unpredictable
and surprising. This truth is often very disturbing and painful for us.
When afflicted with tragedy we ask, ‘How could God allow this to
happen to me?’
The Church is the sacrament of God in the world, an effective sign of
his presence with us. Consequently, the Church must reflect this transcendent
quality of God, this characteristic unpredictability, this surprise element.
It must therefore be a developing Church, or, as the early Church described
itself, ‘a pilgrim Church’, always on the move, a Church on
a journey out of the slavery of Egypt through the wilderness and into
the Promised Land. This truth about the Church can also be very painful
and disturbing to us and is the root cause of much bitterness, animosity
and division between and within Christian churches. Even the slightest
change can cause a major disturbance within church congregations and there
is nothing more divisive in most than a change in divine service! We all
fear change, long for security, but a church which offers us unchanging
stability has ceased to be the Church and is no longer a sign of the transcendent
God.
But God is also immanent, present in all things, but contained by none:
‘…it is in him that we live, and move, and exist’ (Acts
17:28). The Bible is the story of the immanence of the transcendent God
in the history of Israel, a very messy, often shameful history of an obscure
and troublesome Middle Eastern nation, destined by God to be a light to
all nations. ‘At various times in the past and in various different
ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own
time, he has spoken to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed
to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is. He
is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his
nature, sustaining the universe by his powerful command’ (Hebrews
1:1–3).
The transcendent God, expressed in Jesus, is a light that shines in the
darkness, but the darkness could not understand it, so the darkness tried
to get rid of the light. ‘It is better for one man to die for the
people,’ said Caiaphas (John 18:14). But the darkness could not
overpower the light, for God, in Jesus, entered into our death, became
sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and is risen from the dead. The Spirit,
which lived in Jesus and raised him from the dead, now lives in us. How
do we recognize his Spirit within us? We have looked at God’s transcendence
and his immanence, but that has still not answered the question, ‘What
is God like?’ John gives the astounding answer, ‘God is love.’
In a school where I once taught, an infuriated teacher of religion ordered
the class to stay in and write out a hundred times, ‘God is love.’
We can hear the phrase, or even write it out a thousand times, but it
bounces off the top layer of our minds without effecting any change of
heart. Penitence is about letting these phrases sink into those levels
of consciousness where change occurs. And that is the subject of the next
chapter.
4 - On some ways of praying
There are as many different ways of praying as there are human beings.
Prayer is about being ourselves before God. He creates each of us uniquely,
distinguishable from every other human being, for example, by our finger
prints, voice prints, cell prints, handwriting, mannerisms, so it is not
surprising that we should each pray in a different way. Yet this obvious
truth has been forgotten and some books on prayer still give the impression
that prayer is like operating a washing machine: if you follow the instructions,
you will get the desired results. If you do not, then there is something
wrong with you, so you had better consult a psychologist, a healer, or
possibly an exorcist!
This chapter contains not the last word on ways of praying, but only some
suggestions which many people have found helpful in enabling them to find
their own unique way of praying. I have met so many people who say ‘I
can’t pray,’ or ‘I find it boring and do not know what
I am meant to be doing,’ or ‘I recite prayers, read the Scripture,
and feel as though nothing is happening. It gets me nowhere.’ Yet
so many of these same people, once they have been encouraged to experiment
with new ways of praying, find prayer absorbing, fascinating in itself
and in the effect it has on their lives. It is also only fair to say,
before you read further, that they also wish, at times, that they had
never started, because God can sometimes be very uncomfortable to live
with, while at other times he seems to be profoundly deaf!
One of the major obstacles to prayer is our image of God. We can only
come to know God through our human experience. It is easy to say, ‘God
is love,’ but my experience of love may have been traumatic, an
experience of pain, betrayal, rejection. It is questionable whether any
human being is capable of unconditional love. Even the most perfect parents
and teachers tend to place conditions on their love. Mummy loves a good
boy or girl, but she is less keen on the bad one, so we learn at a very
early age that love is to be earned: like everything else it is subject
to market forces!
In the late sixties and early seventies, I was a university chaplain and
spent much of my time talking with students who had either rejected their
faith, or were thinking about doing so. After many conversations an identikit
picture of God formed in my imagination. God became ‘good old Uncle
George’, the favourite of the family, wealthy, powerful, influential,
wise and loving to us all. As children we are taken to visit him in his
mansion, an old man with a deep voice. At the end of the visit he turns
to us and says, ‘I want to see you here, dear, every Sunday, and
if you don’t come, I’ll now show you what will happen.’
He leads us to the basement, which is very dark and hot, and we hear bloodcurdling
screams. There are rows of steel doors. Uncle George opens one, a huge
room, full of furnaces, into which long rows of men, women and children
are being hurled by little demons. ‘And that, my dear, is what will
happen to you if you don’t visit me regularly.’ We are delivered
back, shaking with terror, to our loving parents. Clutching both of them
we proceed home. Mummy bends down to us and says, ‘Now don’t
you love Uncle George with all your heart and soul and strength?’
And we, remembering the furnaces, answer ‘Yes, I do.’ In our
hearts we loathe him as a monster, but our hearts will put us in the furnace,
so we agree with Mummy.
This is a caricature, but it illustrates a truth, namely that we have
inherited very deformed images of God. The image will differ for each
one. God may be Uncle George for one child, a vague Santa Claus figure
for another, to be called on at Christmas, Easter, baptisms, weddings
and funerals, but safely ignored the rest of the time. As we grow up,
we may see the deformity of our image of God, but a felt knowledge remains
deep in our subconscious minds and affects our mental and emotional states,
leaving us addicted to anxiety-ridden religious observance, or with a
deep distaste for anything religious. Our religious vocabulary often reflects
the deformity. We talk of Lent, for example, as a time for penance, for
turning back to God. The Latin root of the word is poena, meaning pain,
punishment, suffering, penalty, grief, so God is associated with all those
states. Yet the New Testament word, as we have seen, is metanoia, a change
of mind and heart, a turning back to God, who is described as our freedom,
delight, he for whom my soul longs, joy of our desiring.
We may know intellectually that God is not cruel, sadistic or capricious,
or that he is not like Santa Claus, but when we try to pray, that is the
kind of God whom we may meet, for our childish impressions are not easily
eradicated. God can be known by God alone, and God tells us, through the
psalmist, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10),
so if we are to recognize God in our lives, we must learn to be still.
It is difficult enough for most of us to be physically still for any length
of time, but it is even more difficult to be mentally still. Fortunately,
our mind is so constructed that we can only concentrate on one thing at
a time. If I can concentrate my whole attention on what I am feeling in
my big toe, I cannot be thinking about God, or anything else, at the same
time, so here is a first exercise in being still:
Sit, on a chair or on the floor, in as relaxed a way as you can, keeping
your back straight without being rigid. Now focus your attention on what
you can feel in your body. You might start with your right foot, then
travel slowly round your body, not thinking about what you are feeling,
but just feeling. This exercise could not be simpler, yet most of us find
it very difficult, for no sooner have we begun than our thinking mind
distracts us, asking us if we are not wasting our time, reminding us of
the things we have to do and of those we have left undone, wondering what
this exercise has to do with prayer in general, and with our spiritual
journey in particular!
As soon as you become conscious of the mind’s activity, acknowledge
the thoughts and questions as interesting, but bring your attention back
to what you are feeling. Similarly, if you feel uncomfortable, or itchy,
acknowledge the discomfort, but return to feeling the body. The longer
you can spend concentrating on one part of the body, the better. Experts
in this art of being still can sit motionless for an hour or more, concentrating
their whole attention, for example, on their upper lip, but there is no
need for us to be ambitious, and even a few minutes can be helpful.
Once you feel relaxed in this exercise, you may like to make it more explicitly
a prayer, using that phrase which Paul used, ‘it is in him that
we live, and move, and exist’ (Acts 17:28). Where is God? God is
where we are. He is our life and our consciousness, nearer to us than
we are to ourselves. This truth is the basis of all the prayer methods
described in this chapter. God is where we are.
In doing this exercise, it is interesting to note how our thinking mind
will not allow us to concentrate on the immediate present, but is constantly
drawing us into the future, or the past. We then begin to see how destructive
of life this habit is, because we only give a fraction of our attention
to the immediate present, which is the only reality we have at the moment.
The past is gone, the future not yet, so we tend to spend most of our
time escaping from reality. A very good spiritual exercise would be to
try and live as fully as possible in the present moment.
God is where we are, and there is no other place where we can find him.
This is another obvious truth which we so often forget in practice, putting
God out there, or in the Church, or in some other holy place. Because
we externalize God and live in the past, or in the future, we can waste
our lives in fruitless regrets about what we might have been, or could
become, if only our circumstances were different.
What is God’s will for you now? It is precisely where you are at
the moment, in this place, in this family, community, work, with this
temperament, these gifts, abilities, disabilities, and sinful tendencies.
It is from this point, and from no other, that you are to find him and
it is from these circumstances that you shall be glorified and from no
others. This does not mean that we have to stay where we are and as we
are. Our feelings of discontent are his nudgings, encouraging us either
to change our situation, or to change the way we perceive it. The only
way we can find him is by starting from where we are, otherwise we are
like the person who, on being asked directions to a village, began with,
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.’
Another stillness exercise is to sit as for the previous exercise, but
concentrating this time on your breathing, the physical feeling of breathing
in and breathing out. Breathe naturally: you may find that your breathing
deepens. Some people find the conscious attention to their breathing quickens
the breath. If this persists and causes breathlessness, then abandon the
exercise. When you feel still, this exercise, too, may be turned into
a prayer. Let the in-breathing express all that you long for.
Scripture describes God as the breath, the Spirit, giver of life. You
are meeting him in your breathing, so let his life flow into you, to every
part of your body and into the recesses of your mind and heart. Let God
be God to you. Let the breathing out express your longing to hand yourself
over to him, with all your worries, anxieties, fears and guilt feelings.
Don’t judge yourself, just hurl yourself at him.
It is good to begin each prayer period with one of these stillness exercises
and if you find them helpful, and do not want to do anything else in the
time you have set for your prayer, then continue with them. This is another
useful guideline for prayer: that we should always follow our instincts
and pray as we can, not as we can’t. Most of us can easily agree
with this advice and readily give it to others, but we find it very difficult
to follow ourselves because we have been assured from an early age that
others know best, that we must follow the rules which the more learned
or experienced lay down for us. While it is wise to take note of the learned
and the wise, it is also important to listen to our own wisdom, for to
ignore or discount it can be to ignore the promptings of God dwelling
within us. We should listen to our own wisdom not only in deciding what
to pray, but also in how to pray, whether kneeling, sitting, standing,
lying down, or walking, and for how long.
All the Scripture readings in this book are chosen to help us turn back
to God, or as the Gospel translation puts it, to repent of our sins. An
ancient theologian, Evagrius, said, ‘Sin is forgetfulness of God’s
goodness.’ All sin is an offence against goodness, against love,
and love alone can overcome sin. That is why the first step towards repentance
is not to berate ourselves, or punish ourselves. Self disapproval usually
locks us more securely in our own destructiveness. The first step to repentance
is to turn our attention to God’s goodness. God alone can teach
us what sin is.
How are we to focus our attention on the goodness of God? God, and still
more his goodness, can seem very abstract concepts, especially when we
are the victims of other people’s meanness or cruelty or feel caught
in our own.
Before going to sleep we tend to recall events of the day, especially
if we have had a row. We replay the incident, adjusting it to our advantage,
kicking ourselves for having been so slow-witted at the time, for now
we have thought of the cutting remark which would have demolished the
opposition. Use this natural tendency to recall the good moments of the
day, the moments you enjoyed; relish and appreciate them, no matter how
trivial they may seem. What surprises most people, when they first do
this exercise, is the large number of incidents they discover in the day
which were enjoyable and for which they are grateful. It is only by looking
at, appreciating and relishing such moments in our lives that we can come
to any real notion of God’s goodness. See these moments as God’s
gifts to you, not because you have been good or worked hard, have been
virtuous or loyal, but because you are precious in God’s eyes and
he loves you (Isaiah 43:4). Doing this exercise once may have little after-effect,
but if it becomes habitual, it begins to change our perception, the basis
of all change. We begin to see the reality in which we are, not simply
as an impersonal set of circumstances set up to try us, a kind of divine
obstacle race with eternal penalties awaiting the losers, but as a presence,
the presence of a beckoning and loving God, a God who delights in giving,
who is much more for us than we can possibly be for ourselves. When we
can begin to perceive in this way, it is as though everything is transformed,
as though we have moved from an impersonal institution to home, where
everything speaks of those we love. The change is well expressed in a
poem by Joseph Plunkett, ‘I See His Blood upon the Rose’:
I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see His face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but His voice—and carven by His power
Rocks are His written words.
All pathways by His feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
It is by thanking God for his gifts that we come to know him, the giver,
and it is only through knowing his goodness that we can begin to know
what repentance means. So thank him each evening for the people and events
you have enjoyed each day.
For each day in this book Scripture readings are given for your own prayer
and reflection. It is good to read over the next day’s readings
before you go to bed. You don’t have to analyze or study them, just
read them. Many find that by so doing the reading seems to ferment, as
it were, in their subconscious minds during sleep so that it is easier
to pray on the readings next day.
Before prayer, it is good to stand for a moment a step away from your
prayer place, to think on what it is you are about to do. Then in whatever
posture enables you to be both relaxed and attentive, beg God that everything
within you may be directed to his praise and service.
As Christians, we pray from the Scriptures in the belief that these books,
although written by very different people, at different times, in very
different styles, are God’s communication to us now. We read them,
not primarily to learn what God was doing with Israel two or three thousand
years ago, but to understand, through the medium of these readings, what
God is doing with us now. There is a sense in which the Bible is of secondary
importance: what is of primary importance is the present, what God is
doing now. In the light of the Scripture texts we can begin to recognize
God in our ‘now’.
There are different ways of praying the Scriptures. In monasteries, before
there were printed texts, the monks used to gather and one of them would
read a passage from a manuscript. He would choose a short passage, read
it slowly, and keep repeating it. As he read, monks would get up and leave
to return to their private cells. They were leaving, not because they
were bored, but because they had found a word or phrase in the readings
which they liked, and on which they could pray. They would then focus
their attention on this word or phrase, hear it speak to them, relish
and savour it, and then speak from their hearts to God the thoughts and
feelings which the word had evoked.
To illustrate this method, let us consider 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2,
‘We are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing
through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be
reconciled to God. For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so
that in him we might become the goodness of God. As his fellow workers,
we beg you again not to neglect the grace of God that you have received.
For he says: “At the favourable time, I have listened to you; on
the day of salvation I came to your help.” Well, now is the favourable
time; this is the day of salvation.’
Read the passage over several times. Make no attempt to analyze it, but
notice whether any word or phrase stands out for you. Suppose the phrase
is ‘For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him
we might become the goodness of God.’ Keep hearing it spoken to
you, as though God is now saying, ‘It was for your sake… so
that you might become the goodness of God.’ How do you react to
this? With disbelief, amazement, bewilderment, doubt, delight, anxiety?
There is no right or wrong response; what-ever your felt response, whatever
the thoughts or reflections arising from the passage, present them to
God and talk to him about them. Your prayer cannot be too simple, too
direct, too childlike.
Each person’s prayer is different, but most of us find that although
we may start well, after a minute or two our mind begins to fragment into
thoughts and images which have nothing to do with becoming the goodness
of God. We are deep into feelings of resentment against someone, or we
may be worrying about our health, or money problems, or thinking about
the latest TV programme. Such wanderings of attention are sometimes called
‘distractions’, and we are often told that we should get rid
of them. The trouble with distractions is that the more we try to get
rid of them, the more they pester us, so let the distractions come into
the prayer: there is nothing which cannot be used in prayer.
In this method of prayer, the word or phrase which has caught our attention
may be compared to a searchlight. We focus on it for a while, but soon
become aware of this flow of consciousness in us. It is a stream of thoughts,
feelings, desires, which seem at first to be distractions, but can become
the very substance of our prayer if we let the phrase, or word, play on
them like a light, then pray to God out of the admixture.
For example, I may like the phrase, ‘You are to become the goodness
of God’, then find myself sunk in a mood of resentment against someone.
By letting the phrase ‘you are to become the goodness of God’
hover over my feelings of resentment, I begin to feel uncomfortable and
want either to stop hearing the phrase, or to stop thinking about my resentment.
What I have to do is to try and hold the two of them together. This is
uncomfortable, for I may find that the resentment is much more powerful
and attractive to me than any hope of becoming the goodness of God.
Before my ‘distraction’, I felt moved by this phrase: once
I apply the phrase to my distraction I begin to realize the strength and
power of my resentment, and the unreal nature of my attraction to God,
strong enough in my holy moments or when I am singing a hymn, but quite
useless in everyday life. This is an unpleasant discovery to make. It
may feel like spiritual failure: in fact, the prayer is working very well
for me.
What is happening is that the word of God really is beginning to act like
a two-edged sword, penetrating the top layer of our consciousness to the
deeper layers below, revealing what is there. We may not like what we
see; we may be horrified to discover that we are not the objective, fair
and noble-minded person we thought we were, but that there are dark areas
within of meanness, lovelessness and distrust in which we dwell and out
of which we act. In prayer it is important to let these areas come to
the surface and expose them to the word of God. This is the spiritual
struggle, the unmasking of the demons. We experience our own helplessness
and we are forced to pray out of our need. We begin to see that the behaviour
of the person who has caused us such feelings of resentment is our problem,
too. The splinter in our brother’s eye has become the beam in our
own, but if we can acknowledge it and show it to God, we shall find him
the God of mercy and compassion, much gentler towards us than we can ever
be to ourselves.
There is a Bible reading for every day in this book. Any passage of Scripture
can be prayed imaginatively, but Gospel passages are especially suitable
for this kind of prayer. Imagine the scene is happening now. You are not
simply observing it: you are an active participant in the scene, so you
can talk to the characters in it and talk to Jesus.
As in the previous method of prayer, begin by pausing for a moment by
the place where you are going to pray and beg God that everything within
you may be directed to his praise and service. Read over the passage several
times until it is familiar to you, then put it aside and try to imagine
the scene. Here is a short passage to illustrate the method:
In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors
were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.
Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with
you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were
filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace
be with you. As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’ (John
20:19–21)
Imagine yourself walking up stairs outside the house to an upper room.
It does not matter if you have no idea what Jerusalem looks like now,
or two thousand years ago. See what picture presents itself, however vaguely.
The door is opened to you and you enter a room. What kind of room do you
see? Don’t be in a hurry—let the picture come to you gradually.
Can you see people in the room? What are they doing, what are they saying,
or are they in silence? What is the mood of the room? You might like to
talk to some of the characters. They are afraid. You can share with them
your own fears, whatever they are. Take time over this and do not be in
a hurry.
‘Jesus came and stood among them.’ Can you see the sudden
change in the disciples? Can you hear Jesus say, ‘Peace be with
you’ to you and see him showing you his hands and side? Listen,
watch, be silent or speak, do whatever you feel prompted to do. Be simple,
childlike, spontaneous and let your imagination take you where it will,
as long as it is helping you to pray. If you catch your attention straying
from the scene, or your mind leading you apart from it with speculative
questions like ‘How do we know what really happened? Is there really
a physical resurrection?’, acknowledge these as interesting questions,
but bring yourself back into the scene. What you are doing is encountering
the Risen Lord, present within you, through the medium of your imagination.
When you talk with him in imagination, the scene may disappear altogether
and you find yourself talking to him now, which is where he is for you.
Many people, on being first introduced to this way of praying, reject
it before trying, saying, ‘But I have no imagination’. Everyone
has an imagination of some kind, so give it a try. Your imagination may
not be very visual and you may not see details with any clarity, but you
can say to yourself, ‘Peace be with you,’ knowing it is Christ
speaking to you now, and you can respond, perhaps with thanks, or maybe
with disbelief, or irritation, or anger. Whatever happens within you,
show it to Christ and talk with him about it. In this way you are letting
his presence and his peace enter into the deeper layers of your mind and
heart where change occurs.
Our imagination does not present truth, but it reflects aspects of ourselves,
often aspects of which we were previously unaware. This is an important
point, because otherwise we can misinterpret what imagination reveals.
For example, one person doing this passage found that Jesus, instead of
turning to her to say ‘Peace be with you’, turned away from
her instead, which caused her great distress. What her imagination was
showing was not Christ’s rejection of her, but reflecting an aspect
of herself. Because she had experienced rejection by her parents in the
past, she found it hard to believe that there was anyone who would not
reject her, God included. That is why it is important to return to those
moments in prayer where we have experienced feelings of rejection or isolation
and to pray with the psalmist, ‘Lord, show me your face.’
Prayer is not always a beautiful experience: it can be a very stormy one,
but this is a sign that we really are engaging with God. In the next chapter
we shall look at these variations in mood, what they mean and how to cope
with them.
When you have finished praying, it is good to spend a few minutes reflecting
on what happened, noting what you felt and what caused those feelings.
Were the feelings of peace or agitation, of happiness or sadness, of hope
or hopelessness, of love or hate, of interest or boredom? Let us suppose
I have felt thoroughly bored and distracted throughout the prayer period.
I notice this is the reflection, then ask what caused the boredom. I look
more closely and realize that once the prayer began, I hardly gave God
a thought, but my mind was hopping over my many preoccupations and worries.
Whose kingdom has preoccupied me, Christ’s or my own? I realize
it was my own and that I never even referred them to Christ. The prayer
period has not been a failure, provided the next time I pray I try to
refer all these preoccupations to God.
If I have experienced moments of peace, happiness, hope and strength during
the prayer, then notice what gave rise to those feelings, whether a phrase
or word of Scripture, an image or a memory. In your next prayer period,
go back to that phrase or word, and stay with it for as long as you can.
This habit of reflecting on your prayer and returning to its good moments
first in your next prayer period, and then returning to its less good
moments, is a way of inviting God to enter the deeper layers of our consciousness.
In the next chapter we shall look at these variations in mood and feeling
more closely to understand their meaning and how to cope with them.
5 - On finding direction through prayer
As I am writing, there is a fierce wind blowing through the closed, single-glazed
window. Outside, the sky is dappled shades of grey, dark and light, with
short-lived patches of blue. It is a welcome sight after the monochrome
grey of January and February.
The sky reflects our inner landscape, the moods and feelings which arise
in our consciousness, affecting our perception of life around us and our
reaction to it. In our inner journey there is darkness and light, blizzards
and sunshine, hail and rain, gales and calm. What do these inner states
mean and how are we to react to them? On a walking pilgrimage, if I am
only willing to walk when the temperature is above sixty degrees, but
below eighty, the wind at my back and the sun shining, then I am not likely
to make much progress towards my destination on most days of the year.
So, too, on our inner journey: if we can only operate when feeling well
and full of enthusiasm, many of us would be doomed to lives of inactivity.
Prayer puts us in touch with our inner landscape, but if I only pray when
the weather is favourable, that is, when I feel good about it and experience
peace, assurance, happiness and confidence, then I shall learn little
about the inner journey and remain imprisoned behind the bars of my unquestioning
mind.
These inner moods and feelings are direction signs for us. To ignore them
is like setting out on a journey to an unknown destination without maps
or compass. Who could be such a fool? Yet this folly is considered wisdom
by those who teach us to ignore our feelings in prayer and out of it.
On a journey, it is folly to follow every signpost, but it is still greater
folly to ignore them all. Wisdom lies in deciding which to follow.
A good example of the significance of feelings is in the conversion story
of Inigo of Loyola, a Basque nobleman of fiery temperament and uncertain
morals, who later founded the Jesuit Order and is now known as St Ignatius
Loyola. In his late twenties, Inigo suffered bad leg injuries when struck
with a cannon-ball. He whiled away his convalescence in daydreams of the
heroic deeds he would do on recovery and of the great lady whom he would
win. He had such a gift for daydreaming that he could lose himself in
them for three hours at a time. Then he grew bored and asked for novels.
Loyola Castle, where he lived, did not have any, so he had to make do
with the only books they could supply, a life of Christ and lives of the
saints. He began daydreaming about becoming a great saint, outstripping
the lot of them by his austerities and goodness. For weeks he alternated
between the two sets of daydreams, then noticed something which was to
change his life. Both sets of daydreams were pleasant at the time, but
the after-effects were different. Heroic deeds and the great lady left
him bored, empty and sad: outdoing the saints left him happy, strengthened
and hopeful. He later called this experience his first lesson in ‘discerning
the spirits’, which we might call reading our inner moods.
‘Do your duty and ignore your feelings’ is like saying to
the motorist, ‘Ignore the state of your engine and just follow the
highway code’, advice which, if followed, would soon block the roadways
with broken-down cars. Emotion is an interesting word. Literally, it means
that which causes movement. Without emotion we stop living: if we don’t
notice our emotions, ignore or repress them, we crash.
Our emotions are very complex. They are more numerous than the instruments
in a large orchestra. Usually many are playing in us at the same time,
producing agony, ecstasy, or just indeterminate noise.
One evening I watched One Man and his Dog on TV and found the programme
an excellent image of our inner life. The sheep correspond to our various
emotions, our appetites, desires, ideals, fears, hopes, ambitions: the
sheepdog corresponds to the deepest part of ourselves, sometimes called
‘the fine point of the soul’, our truest self, that which,
in our wildest dreams, we would love to become. Inigo, in his daydreams
about outdoing the saints, was getting in touch with the sheepdog part
of himself.
The sheepdog may be intelligent, fast and strong, but unless it has a
good relationship with the shepherd, it will fail to bring the sheep through
the gate and probably damage them. What corresponds to the sheepdog/shepherd
relationship in us?
Augustine, looking back on his life, concluded, ‘Lord, you created
me for yourself, and my heart is restless until it rests in you.’
We come from God, our origin, and return to him, our destination. Like
Augustine, for most of our lives we are not aware that this is our nature.
What we are conscious of is the bleating of our sheep, the cries of our
inner wants for satisfaction. We try to answer them, are thwarted, or
we succeed and are disappointed, hurting ourselves and others in the process.
The fine point of the soul seems just an empty phrase, non-existent in
us, or buried beneath the debris of broken dreams and shattered hopes.
Inigo decided to start outdoing the saints by going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
a risky undertaking in the 16th century, so that pilgrims were advised
to make a general confession before starting. Inigo had so much to confess
that it took him three days. He then spent nine months in a cave at Manresa,
where he underwent spiritual experiences of darkness and light. Out of
this experience he eventually wrote his Spiritual Exercises, a series
of Scripture-based meditations and contemplations designed to bring the
creative and the destructive movements within us to consciousness, so
that we can follow the creative, get rid of the destructive, and so find
the will of God for us. When he had finished the Exercises, he added a
short preface, a skeletal summary of the contents, the summary itself
summarized in his opening sentence, ‘We are created to praise, reverence
and serve God, and in this way to save our souls.’ It is a very
traditional Christian statement of the purpose of human life. Other well
known formulations are, ‘We are created to know, love and serve
God,’ or Paul’s ‘Before the world was made, he chose
us, chose us in Christ… to live through love in his presence’
(Ephesians 1:4).
All these formulations may be compared to oil drills. We have to let them
sink into our minds and hearts until they reach the fine point of the
soul where we can recognize them, not as precepts imposed on us from without,
but the voice of our own soul expressing its deepest longing. Then we
can, like Augustine, begin to recognize the true meaning of much of our
pain, disappointment, emptiness, disillusionment and restlessness. The
fine point of the soul is of God, and it can find no rest except in him.
When the fine point of the soul, the core of our being, is directed to
God, then all our attitudes, values, decisions and actions, which are
in accord with that fundamental direction, will resonate in us. They will
bring peace, tranquillity, strength, while the destructive elements within
us and outside us will jar, causing agitation, sadness and inner turmoil.
What does it mean to be directed towards God? As we have already seen,
we can have all kinds of deformed and destructive images of God, which
explains why it is that so many crimes have been committed in the name
of God. We can only come to a knowledge of God in and through his creation:
we have no other option. When Ignatius says, ‘We are created to
praise, reverence and serve God’, what does he mean? The phrase
can suggest a God with a voracious appetite for adulation matched only
by his delight in the destruction of those who do not comply.
In our human experience, praise is only genuine if it is based on appreciation
of someone or something. We can only know God through his creation. Therefore
we can only praise him in so far as we come to appreciate, value, cherish,
love and enjoy his creation. The psalms are full of praise, but it is
praise of God’s creation. One Jewish writer has said that the first
and only question God will put to us at the final Judgment will be, ‘Did
you enjoy my creation?’! That is why recalling each day and thanking
God for the things we have enjoyed is so important. God does not need
our praise, but we need to praise him so that we can begin to recognize
his beckoning presence in the everyday things of life.
The way we relate to God’s creation, especially the way we relate
to one another, is the way we relate to him. ‘In so far as you did
this to one of the le