Scattered Thoughts on Spiritual Practice

So many things to write, talks coming up. Every day now I must devote myself to thinking on these things. I do some of my best thinking "out loud", and that's why I'm here. I hope you don't mind.

As of yesterday I was given an assignment to talk about beauty. It doesn't seem to fit with any of the other eight talks I have to deliver. I've been fussing with it.

This morning I woke thinking about the last words I typed in last night...

Beauty has a shape. It is dimensional.

I don't know what that means. Except it somehow fits with a conversation I had with a friend, about what prayer looks like. I said I think prayer isn't just sitting alone in a room, staring at the four walls and saying some kind of obligatory words. I said I think maybe praying could be as simple as this: go on a hike, with a sense of openness and a willingness to compose (think David and his poems) and all of it in a posture of "here I am God."

Prayer has a shape then too, a shape that includes footfalls, rock climbing, touching dirt, maybe picking wildflowers. It's seems to me this is the primary prayer shape recorded from Jesus' life. And he went out into the hills. (that's my paraphrase). There were the Festivals too, great times of prayer and devotion. These were also dimensional (one of my favorites is when they would pour water out of jugs, onto the pavement, for the Feast of Tabernacles).

Have we pared spiritual practice down to a thing we do with pencils and books, barely dimensional? And, as we instinctually know about beauty when it is pressed flatter and flatter, have we lost something vital along the way?

Unlikely Thoughts on Prayer

Still at it. Still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of prayer (yes, confession: still trying to write my next chapter). Not that I haven't prayed for a lifetime already. Not that I don't know the basics. Not...

Well, that's just it. I'm stuck this morning, in a trembling state... on what it is I can not say about prayer. And by that, I don't mean that I have nothing to say. I mean that what I have to say might cause someone to choke on her morning coffee.

Here's the thing. It's. I'm. Okay, out with it... I'm thinking about prayer as sex (not sex as prayer, which could also be argued I suppose). I'm thinking about how so much of our prayer and instruction on prayer is like (don't choke, okay, I'm warning you up front) porn. I don't mention that word to be graphic or sensational and definitely not to be condemning for those who've developed a habit in that direction (there's enough of all three in the world to go 'round, it's just not my way, and it's not my point).

In other words, prayer is too often Insert Tab A into Slot B for Response C. It probably works on some level. It's definitely a reach for connection. And it's a little like painting by number. We put the hot-red paint on the number 1's and the passion-blue paint on the number 5's, and so on. And in the end we've got our velvet Elvis. There he is, charmer on black. Flat and fuzz-muted. No one can argue that we haven't captured him at least in some small way. It's a matter of spectrum.

And now I'm gulping about the task ahead of me this morning. I'm going to take the plunge and try to write this chapter using this angle. It's going to mean an unorthodox dip into Song of Songs. I'm not too pleased about it, to be honest with you. Except that I think it's the way to go. This is the call of the writer: to follow the trail set before him/her. God, give me courage and sensitivity and the will to go all the way.

How to Pray

Reading, musing, struggling about prayer. Need to understand, articulate something (writing a book on spiritual practice demands it.)

Prayer. From the same Latin word that we get our English word precarious. Risky. Dangerous. Hazardous. Uncertain. How to write about such an unpredictable, uncontrollable, uneasy alliance/reaching/groaning/hoping towards You?

Sybil MacBeth suggests Praying in Color. Doodling before You. I like that. Drawing, doodling, too are risky, unpredictable. Where will the pen take me, what will it outline. Will I stand back and find Your face in my scratchings, or simply sense Your yes over my shoulder as You watch me move? Will you write me a love note on the corner of the page?

How to pray. Put Your color to my soul, energize my wrist and fingers, scribble through me...

Is it Okay to Pray Out Loud?

I started a conversation on my rigorously conversational blog, Seedlings, to help me think through how things will go here.

Because I've struggled with a few questions... Is it okay to pray out loud? I mean, didn't Jesus say we should pray in secret? And, like unto it, Is it okay to let people comment here, where I pray out loud?

In the end, the decision, the need to answer these questions, has fallen squarely in my lap. After all, people had amazingly heart-felt, different opinions. (And I thank each person for sharing those thoughtful opinions.)

Several things have swayed me though. One is that people have already expressed a sense of feeling encouraged or blessed here. Some have told me so in private emails, some on my other blog, some right here in the comments. To my mind, this is part of the reason we have spiritual gifts and also why we come together to worship. As Paul says, "What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up." (1 Corinthians 14:26)

As a writer, I've already come to terms with what I felt was a very special confirmation to build people up, to "sustain the weary with a word". (Isaiah 50:4) I suppose sometimes I'll only be sustaining myself here, with these words. But I also know that I'm a public person, a writer, called to sustain others through the sharing of my life, my thoughts, my heart, my faith... through words, even those expressed to God in prayer.

And so I'm praying out loud. But not without a bit of fear and trembling. I am not so deceived to think that I couldn't become that pious Pharisee Jesus condemned, praying too louldly and waving my prayer shawl to garner attention. So if you think of it, pray for me, even as I pray here.

Now about whether the comments should be open or closed, Nikki gave me a beautiful picture during that Seedlings conversation. I thank her for that and have decided to share it here...

"...I come from a tradition where much prayer is corporate— we lift together the private intentions of our hearts in words we can sing and speak together. The candles you have on the top of the page are the sort of candles one finds in every almost every Orthodox church. When one enters, one often takes a beeswax candle or two, lighting them and placing them in sand before an icon or in a holder like the one in the photo— always with a prayer, and those prayers are as many and varied as the hands that light and place the candles. Those candles burn, beacons of each individual intention, while the whole church prays and sings in one voice and all of our prayers rise symbolically in the incense that wafts heavenward.

Perhaps your blog is your candle. It's your quiet intention in the midst of our incense cloud of prayers. The beauty of the comments that are in the right spirit is that they become other candles in the holder— the whispered prayers others leave behind when they approach the quiet place you have created. They allow the blog itself to be less about you and your private experience, and more about the ways our experiences of the Holy overlap."

So here I am praying out loud. Quite comfortable if you come in and put a candle beside mine or say "Amen." If I don't talk back, comment back, well, please understand... I did learn something from my Catholic mama's "Shhh...." all those childhood years, when I wanted to talk even as the candles flickered through glass cylinders of emerald, ruby, sapphire.

"For everything there is a season... a time to keep silence, and a time to speak." (Ecclesiastes 3:7) Lord, give me the wisdom to know the difference.

What is Breath Prayer?

Morning was making it's way, slow, into my room. Was it 5:00 am? It seemed so. Except for the breathing of my spouse beside me, the whole house sat quiet.

And I was drifting in my thoughts. About breath prayer.

"Breathe in a name for God," I remembered Adele Calhoun's counsel from her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. "Breathe out a deep desire of your heart."

In the stillness of my room, where night still clung to the walls, trying to hide from day's advance, I had no particular desires. But soon a small prayer drifted in.

I breathed in... Lover of my Soul

I breathed out... give me lovingkindness.

It was a prayer given for the day, before the day came. A prayer I knew, upon later waking to true day, that I would need. Busy day, Little One up early and too chatty, me feeling like I want to be alone. Everything sounding too loud, looking too bright, feeling too constrictive. Me wanting to pick at people or push them out. Leave me alone!

Breath prayer. A simple prayer to repeat in time of need. To remind me, in a single cycle of breathing, that God is "nearer to [me] than [my] own breath" (Calhoun, p.205) Breath prayer. A simple prayer to remember who God is and what God might do.

Lover of my Soul, give me lovingkindness.

Lover of my Soul, give me lovingkindness.

Lover of my Soul, give me lovingkindness...

Tired of Dying

Thank you for sleep last night, Lord. But I woke up tired. Tired of dying.

I went back over the last few years in my little church community. Helen, 18 months old, died... liver cancer. Rick, passed away, age 43 (he told me he wanted to do something daring for his 40th birthday; two days later he was diagnosed with leukemia). Susan, early 40's. She didn't want to leave all her children. Cancer had its way. John, early 40s, inoperable brain cancer... the world lost one of its premiere software developers. Tim, great architect, late 40s... and the year before he died of bladder cancer, he took me aside to say, "You should go to seminary, you've got the mind for it." Pete, 60s (I think), mowed the lawn and his heart gave out. Zulli, late 50s (?), taking care of so many children in this county. Lung cancer took her breath away, swift and furious.

I am

tired

of all this dying,

Lord.

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 20:14)

Yeah, I know.

Where, O death is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor 15:55)

So I've heard.

But don't you get tired, Lord? Tired of all this dying?

Jesus began to weep. (John 11:35)

There, there... shh... shh... my Lord. Put your head on my shoulder. We can weep together. And I will tell you a story...

"And I heard a....voice from the throne saying...'and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more...'" (Rev 21:3,4)

It's a good story, isn't it, Lord. There now, let's sleep on that for a while. Together we can sleep, and dream.

I am Your Joan Didion

Remember, God? Remember Joan Didion? How, after her husband died, she felt so lost? Because it had been an easy thing between them. Every little thought shared. Decision weighed. Sigh heard. And suddenly he was gone. There was no one to listen.

Stunning loneliness.

Paul says to "pray without ceasing". And I know I do. I am your Joan Didion. Every little thought shared. Decision weighed. Sigh heard. Like tonight, when I'm thinking of my dear eldest one, red-cheeked, bleary-eyed, coughing.

Do I want you to heal her? It's not so much a request as the sharing of my heart. You made her body smart. Made it to be self-healing. So I'm not asking anything particular of you.

Still.

I just want you to hear me on this.

For I am your Joan Didion.