Is it not strange that God bids us ask, seek and knock when, with little room for doubt, we stand squarely at the center of the very hurricanes from which we then seek God’s rescue? And yet, God beckons us to come. Why?
I share here the three greatest gifts to my prayer life. Ever. One: contemplative prayer or, as I like to call it, prayer without agenda. It is a practice of which I cannot seem to get enough and about which I long to learn more. I have delighted in becoming a novice of this ancient art and try to practice it numerous times a day. The second gift to my prayer life: total honesty – bring the roses along with the rubbish, neither of which impress nor vex God in any way. So, if like the Psalmist, I can come to God on my worst day, in my worst mood, smelling of my worst sin, for the worst reasons and God still stubbornly delights in my presence…well then, let’s go! Finally, intercede. Praying for others has a strange way of drawing on a deeper joy, yielding better interior fruit and somehow diminishing my inflated sense of self-need. I’m not especially good at it, but the practice is half the fun.
For five years we lived in a small, college town in Oregon. It was located in the middle of some of the most richly verdant, mystical territory I’ve yet seen. It was also less than a half hour drive from not one but three monasteries. The one of my choice where I spent countless hours shouting at God, then apologizing, then wiping my tears, then repeating the process was a Trappist Abbey mere minutes from our house. There, God flayed the dead skin from my ailing soul on more occasions than I can count. There, I sought God’s counsel on major life decisions. There, I spent three days crying and screaming through uncountable tears and unspeakable pain when, for a time, my wife and I separated. There I would pray and laugh with the brothers who knew more dirty jokes and more great Merton quotes than I’ll ever know in a lifetime. By the way, never let anyone feed you a false bill of goods on monks. They’re just dudes in the hood with bad habits (you’re welcome).
Geography or setting does not determine good or bad prayer. It can help however. This post signifies the beginning of a search, a sort of prayer experiment if you will, in seeking out a new sacred spot where God and I can swear at each other through loving and mutual tears. I give you my journal entry from day 1 of this search:
“Lord, I thirst. I pray fervently for a special space to pray fervently. At times like this I wish I was a 20 minute drive from the Trappist Abbey where I could go and work out my salvation submerged in beauty and the green, deep stillness. Lord, how I miss that place. How I miss the spirit of learning, the ethos of readiness, of dark corner catacombs out of which came light and goodness, bright, and the silent choir of active contemplation.
Lord, show me a place to tie the ends
that beg to be braided in multiple strands joined in singular purpose.
Lift the fog enough to see the edges of solidity,
and fray the ends of cords I only think I need to tie my world together.
Unleash into my presumptive skies the birds of purgation
carrying with them twigs and branches for the task.
Let me author the story of my own demise
if through my disappearance you fill someone else’s stifling horizon.
Swell in the hopeless heart a future of light through my abiding darkness.
Write someone else’s story complete with satin ending on gilded pages
torn from the tattered pages of my tired, half-written tale.
Finish others by my incompletion.
Airbrush another life with the melted crayons of my own.
Sing another’s song with notes plucked from my own unfinished symphony.
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Check out the Trappist Abbey in Carlton, Oregon here
Prayer picture: www.julieamarxhausen.wordpress.com
Robert Alan Rife
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Rob this post is so rich that I could spend weeks conversing on it. First, you reveal an excellent pattern for prayer which the ancient teachers will convey as the “stages of prayer” (yours in only 3 stages). I am curious. Your order seems to go from the higher stages of prayer to the more lower stages. Have you noticed a difference in starting with intercession, then ending with contemplative prayer? The reason I ask is often when I intercede I find my words are all forms of fear rather than trust. In a strange sort of way if I were to merely meditate first…I would most often have nothing much left to intercede accept, “Lord may your will be done” and “thank-you”. Secondly you hit on a fault line for contemplative prayer in this statement: “At times like this I wish I was a 20 minute drive from the Trappist Abbey where I could go and work out my salvation submerged in beauty and the green, deep stillness”. I am forever longing for the sacred space you mention. My learning curve is to find that space within. Thanks much for these very helpful thoughts. I will ponder them more.
Thanks, Valerie. Although I understand your comments about stages of prayer, these ones are really intended to be understood in more random fashion. Even intercession these days asks very little in terms of words. My prayers contain fewer and fewer words all the time. I’m discovering ever so slowly what the Desert Ammas and Abbas discovered of the riches of spirituality in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t head to paradise to find God. They went the other direction and through their places of sandy refuge found a God far more beautiful than any “sacred place” could ever boast. They found Christ huddled with their own spirits down where no eyes can see but theirs and God’s.
Rob, I think it’s great that you and God are searching together for the place to engage in prayer in your current life station. It resonates with me, as I’m currently in a season of change in the places God and I relate. Thanks for your honesty here. Also, I loved your joke about the monks. 🙂
Christianne, your own Still Forming blog has always been a good template of raw honesty for me. It’s good to find those exterior places, when available, to engage God in that kind of honesty. Ultimately, it’s the interior God is after. I suppose it is therefore best to become comfortable with the welcome baggage of God in us, God in me. And yes, almost every monk I’ve known has been utterly real and integrated. No this or that. Just this.
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