Praying:
One of my favourite hymns has in it this verse:
There have been times when I turned from his presence
and I’ve walked other paths, other ways.
But I have called on his name in the dark of my shame,
and his mercy was gentle as silence.
The theologian Karl Barth said that in our praying God is really inviting us to live with him. That view of prayer is expressed in these lines of the hymn. The individual is recognising the need for God’s guidance and presence, and calls out, in faith, that their life will be brought back into a clearer path. And as they seek God’s mercy, that ‘still small voice’ announces itself, and divine assurance enfolds them. The prayer may have been only a couple of words or a waiting in silence: what matters is that inner journey of ‘returning home’ to the one who is always holding open the door of life and truth to our true humanity.
Yet often we see ‘prayer’ – in whatever form it takes – as something we do. We keep wondering if we have ‘got it right’—in terms of our thoughts or faltering words. And because we often reach the conclusion that we don’t have it right we give up on praying all together.
And there is another piece to this. Some people believe that prayer should be left to the clerics – after all, it’s their job! Yet if prayer does not belong right at the heart of ordinary, daily living, where does it live?
For centuries some women and men who have made prayer their total way of life have reminded us that God first comes to us – long before there was even the slightest thought of praying in our own minds.
Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1416), who’s famous book “The Revelations of Divine Love” (available as an eBook online), wrote: “Never forget that we have all been loved by God from before the very beginning”. That’s amazing, and it puts our anxieties of what we should think and say in our prayers into perspective. The Creator is there before us, and, as St. Paul says, even when we have no idea what to say, the spirit prays on our behalf. The writer Sheila Cassidy puts it: “When people ask me what I pray for, this is how I sometimes reply: I pray because God is. I sit before him open like an empty bowl, like a flower, like a wound. I give him my joy, my confusion, my boredom, my pain – just lay it there on the floor for him to process how he wishes and when he is ready”. Again and again I come back to that simple phrase “let go and let God”. It may be very basic in its language but it contains a profound truth. As the late Father Jock Dalrymple said: “Praying leads us straight into the heart of that mystery where we discover not only our true selves, but also our neighbour and God’s creation in all of its goodness and glory”.
These are words from my book “Waymarks” (ISBN: 978-1-85311-336-9), Peter.