Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I have not posted in a unusually long time. This is not because nothing has been happening with my vocation, you'll hopefully be glad to hear. There are in fact six different things that have happened since my Spiritual retreat on Holy Island, but because I've basically been under an 'injunction' to refrain from sharing the news about the one BIG thing, and the one-big-thing impacts my entire perspective of basically everything else, I have not wanted to share about the other things whilst dancing around the one-big-thing.
If that makes sense in English.
So in brief, the six things that have happened are
THE BIG THING - I have been offered and accepted the post of Pastoral Assistant at St Martin-in-the-Fields for a year starting in September
I met with the rector of St James' Piccadilly to discuss this job and where next to take my discernment process
I went to yet another church to experience a different type of service, and it was my first experience of a conservative, evangelical church, and my outfit made it a little exciting!
I had a meeting with the vicar of SMITF which was an interesting experience
I had a second meeting with the curate of SJP
I went on my first parish weekend away with SJP
As this is quite a lot, and normally I would have blogged each separately as I went (and I appreciate I have let myself down a tad by not writing drafts as I went, ready for the lifting of the 'injunction', as this blog is supposed by an account written as it happens, not in retrospect), I won't write a massive long blog that no one is going to read. I'm not working at the moment so I'll write separate posts for each thing over the next few weeks.
To sum up though...
I AM SO HAPPY AND EXCITED ABOUT MY NEW JOB WHICH IS EXACTLY WHERE I SHOULD BE AAAH!! :D
Less vocation-related, but a sharing of only my second experience leading a group religious discussion about prayer. See the video for my presentation, or the full text is below, followed by notes from the discussion.
Prayer is a big topic, but here at Circus Spirit, we decided to concentrate on “What is prayer?” and “Does it work?”
What is prayer? A year ago, I might have been able to give you a simple answer, when actually I didn’t really know.
Does it work? Again, a year ago, I would have shied away from thoughts of ‘the power of prayer’. I knew that I was supposed pray, but I also knew that I was absolutely terrible at it. I chose this topic in no small part to educate and motivate myself.
But improving at prayer is a tricky business. Priest Kevin Scully puts it quite neatly: “How does one learn to pray? By praying. Is there a way to learn more about prayer? Yes, by praying. What does one do if one experiences barrenness in prayer? Pray. How can one deepen a sense of the divine? By prayer.”
It’s a very subjective act, and I would put forward that ‘what is prayer’ and ‘does it work’ are both subjective questions.
That said, as with most human activities, there are a lot of similar experiences. Prayer is a common feature of most religions, and even people who don’t have a religion, pray, often in their own way and for their own reasons. People pray for all sorts of reasons and to all sorts of objects – to one divinity, to many gods, or to gurus, spirits or angels, saints or the dead, or concepts, like ‘Wisdom’, personified in the Psalms for example.
I talk to God. I talk to God with a reverence that I would give a leader and a boldness as if I were talking to a friend. My most common prayer is gratitude. My second most is generally a desperate plea for help.
This echoes a classic structure of prayer from my own religion, Christianity. It is often described as ‘adoration, confession and petition’; I was introduced to it long before I knew such big church words; I was introduced to it by a friend, whose advice was to pray the ‘teaspoon prayer’. TSP = thank you, sorry, please.
This is the way that I and many sustain our connection to God. Like any relationship, it takes time and effort, and whilst good to acknowledge where we know we’ve done wrong and ask forgiveness, the confession, it is also a dynamic of give and take – adoration and petition. As for petition, I ask for things, I do, because it’s not a one sided relationship where only I put in an effort.
And as for adoration, I praise God for the blessings in my life and the wonders in the world. Whilst I do try to show this gratitude in my everyday life, it is important for our relationship to communicate directly and put into words my gratitude.
Note, I did not say it was important for God, but important for our relationship. Often an intellectual barrier to beginning, growing and sustaining a prayer life is, if God, an all-knowing divinity already knows what I’m sorry for, how grateful I am, and what I want or need, why ask? Now, as a religious person, an easy answer for me to give would be ‘because God commands it’.
But that’s not good enough. That’s not enough reason, for me. So I found a few reasons why God might command it. As these are my thoughts, they are inevitably Christian-centric, and they certainly aren’t an exhaustive list. They may not even be right! But here we go.
Why would God command us to pray? If we were blessed without supplication, if we got good things in life having not asked at all, we could be tempted to assume independence. For God and humanity both, that is the opposite of what many feel are our true natures. They would say our natures, God’s and humanities natures, are of relationship; we can see it in humanity, because many agree that it is a base purpose and desire of a person to seek connection and intimacy, and we see it in God, in Christianity anyway, because God is a trinity, a single power in a status of eternal relationship.
Similarly, many would say that God desires communion, like a Father finds an unreadable scribble given by his child precious beyond measure. It cannot be denied that people’s experiences throughout the millennia have been of a divinity that communicates. Now you may not think any of the experiences were supernatural or divine in nature, but you can understand the conclusion of some of those who do think they were divine, that God communicates because God does want to hear from us directly, even though it has no impact on what God knows. It is not the content of, nor even the scribble itself that the Father cherishes; it is the act of giving, and being given the scribble that bonds the child and parent.
As I said, a relationship needs effort, and cooperation on both sides. For a lot of people, prayer opens our hearts so God may work on us; we have to open our end before God can easily get through. This is also a reason we need to pray to an all-powerful God – even an all-powerful God would hope to work with a subject that is willing and open to being worked upon. I’m not saying it’s necessary, but you can understand why God would prefer it that way.
Christianity also has a tradition of meditation, which is attempting to reflect on revelations of God; and a tradition of contemplation, which is simply bathing in God’s love.
An answer to the question ‘what is prayer’, in comparison to these two similar states, meditation and contemplation, might be that prayer is focused time of sometimes monologue, and sometimes dialogue, that we may be aware of grace and blessing, and aware of our own wrongdoing; a time to remember to be grateful, and to be repentant. To my mind, prayer is pure attention, an expression of our response to life and the world.
David Macintrye wrote of prayer in the 1800s, and he quoted someone called John Laidlaw who said “A sense of real want is the very root of prayer”.
But if that’s the case, what’s with all the tat that often surrounds prayer? What’s with prayer beads, mandalas, prayer mats, icons, bells to get God’s attention, using scripture to pray, and all the millions of words of written prayers, whole books of them?
Now this can be answered in two ways, and applied to all props, costume and ritual in religion – firstly, humanity is a bit rubbish left on its own to contemplate the ‘other’ in the world; most of humanity needs tools to help it focus, otherwise ‘pure attention’ is corrupted by the distraction of something shiny, or delicious, or naked, that seems must more important and certainly more interesting. Nothing wrong with shiny, delicious, naked things, but if you want a relationship with God, if you want to connect with that ‘other’ within you and all around you, if you want a chance to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, you have to pay attention.
And secondly, prayer can be a sensual experience, not just about what you say. The words may be intensified by the tactile motion of running prayer beads through your fingers. Or if you’re not speaking but ‘listening to the silence’, an atmosphere enhanced by pungent incense, or an environment with rich beauty for the eyes to feast on, or an icon of a saint whose life story speaks to you of God; even the colourful, embossed cover of a book of holy scripture which glorifies its contents – if you’re listening to the silence, that experience, that living in the moment of stimulated senses, the experience itself of the coming together of beauty, that experience can be a wordless prayer
So the need for ritual is common, even in silent spontaneous prayer. In Islam, there is an understanding of two areas of prayer, the spontaneous, and the official to be recited. Most rituals offer some form of written prayer.
There’s private written prayer, such as a prayer diary, or prayers written on the prayer boards in churches. There are official prayers, in the aforementioned books of prayers, or prayers of intercession at public acts of worship that are composed in advance for the occasion. Prayers can be danced, said, sung, said in tongues, chanted.
And of course there are religious structures of daily prayer. Official practice, either mandated or not, is for Muslims to pray 5 times a day, Jews to pray 3 times a day, and for some Christians to pray 8 times a day (though most prescribe 2 as a more reasonable practice!).
Prayer does have a spiritual core, but it is often most effective when it has a practical element. That is why it is a practice, and we are often called to incorporate it as part of our lives, not just let it sit isolated and separate from our lives.
I’m going to end by quoting Richard Sibbes, an Anglican theologian from the Elizabethan era, who has a practical answer to why we should pray. He said “It was a rule in ancient times, “Lay thy hand to the plough, and then pray.” No man should pray without ploughing, nor plough without prayer.” Which is a pretty way of saying life is not worth living without attempting to find its meaning, but wrestling with that meaning is pointless without also living.
Amen.
Points raised in discussion afterwards:
- pray to live, live to pray
- change perspective from if I don't get get what I ask for, God isn't listening
- God can still get in if we are closed
- sense of 'in the moment'
- prayer provides refocus, leads to perspective and can have effect
- prayer, meditation and contemplation can be linked and feed into each other
- not just we speak to God and God speaks to us, the conversation can overlap in the 'Spirit praying within us'
- all-powerful God's power is love and love is not coersive
- the act of prayer can generate the words, rather than the reverse
In reference to the video, this is what I wrote this morning:
"At the moment I'm in the middle of reading the book Jesus and Peter: Growing in friendship with God. I've wanted to get to know more about Peter for a while, and this is the book my rector recommended. I've always liked Peter, but it was this past Palm Sunday that it started niggling at me, because I played the part in our dramatic performance of the Passion story. (Yes, our church doesn't care about casting historically accurate genders in it's dramas - the point of dramatising the story is to make it more affecting, and seeing your pew neighbour up there denying Christ, betraying Christ, or being Christ makes it very effective, regardless of the gender they are.) Thinking about Peter as I stood next to the person playing Jesus, it struck me, I think for the first time, how real the people in the gospel stories were."
Will ya just calm down Peter?!
I thought about this when standing with the friend I mention in the video; thought of Peter standing next to his friend Jesus just I was standing next to my friend, and both our friends handing out wisdom and trying to calm us down.
Peter in the gospel is a passionate, hell for leather kind of guy. Good intentions, not so much forethought, rushing in confidently but often crashing around a bit. I can SO relate. Calm, helpful Jesus would probably have had conversations similar to the one my friend had with me, getting Peter to slow down enough to think.
I suspect Peter probably had times when he felt overwhelmed and torn as well, trying to balance talking to Jesus, praying, checking with the others, getting supplies, sorting the money, scheduling the travel plans, keeping all the Jewish needs seen to, eating and drinking right, staying out of the sun when it was hot, keeping up with the news locally and from other cities, maybe even contemplating romance, possibly having medical issues, enjoying getting a tad drunk sometimes, doing a heck of a lot of walking, thinking about his fishing days and missing his dad...Anyway.
Just like I talked about Paul in another vlog, Peter had his period of stumbling, but both men became pillars and leaders in the early church, in Acts. I read the outcome of the their stories and think "Oh I want to get there too! How?!" and the answer is the same as for them: through Jesus. Simple and complex at the same time. At the moment, I have Peter's enthusiasm and Paul's clouded vision. My relationship with Jesus and our journey together mirrors theirs as well - through prayer and community; and their example in the NT's pages gives me courage to keep going.
The book about Peter talks of 'mature discipleship'. That's a great phrase for how I see my calling, the end goal, whether that be in the form of ordination or not. I'm like Paul, without Peter's advantage of being the same spacetime as Jesus the incarnation - my relationship is with the ascended Christ, the Son of the Trinity. So my discipleship is not following him around for three years and sorting his travel arrangements. It's moving towards him in prayer, centering my life on his example, and helping others do the same, bringing humanity closer to the coming of the kingdom of heaven.
He will meet me in prayer, and in community. And very much in the meeting of souls when I talk to my friends. Jesus for me is my friend, the person at my shoulder, often with a warm, comforting, rock solid hand on my shoulder, giving me the strength with the Spirit, wisdom from the Word, and a guiding, if not always obviously, path from the Father.
