Prayer: Being Led

This morning, at the end of the worship service, I went to the front of the sanctuary (I like that word) to stand with a friend and offer prayer for anyone who needed or wanted it. Because there is another presence there as well—God—it is often a soul-satisfying or enriching experience for all of us who are praying. But relying on the Spirit’s direction in prayer means that at times we move into uncharted waters. It can be like stepping into a river together and swimming across through sometimes turbulent water. At the end of the prayer, we all emerge, dripping, on the other side.

The act of such prayer itself is a mystery. After the person describes his or her need in a few sentences, we take each other’s hands and plunge in. Sometimes I ask a few questions for clarification, so as not to pray for the wrong thing entirely. But I always enter prayer with the awareness that my knowledge is partial. And that even the knowledge of the person asking for prayer is partial. Who can know the deep places of the heart? So it is not always clear at the outset what we should be asking God for.

This morning a woman asked for prayer regarding a matter that she wished to keep personal. She gave just a few words of description as to her need, but these were very general--yet she was bringing to prayer a very specific struggle, a specific event in her life that she felt needed healing and straightening.

Then we began to pray. Into my mind came specific things to say, specific things to ask. They arose out of my own heart and experience but also, seemingly, out of another place. As I was praying, part of me was saying, "Whoa! don't you think she'll be a little offended by this?" Another part said, "Keep going. Have courage. Have faith."

Afterward she expressed surprise that she had received insight during the prayer into things that she did not understand before. We talked about how in the very act of praying, we feel moved to ask for things we don't understand or comprehend.

As I write this, a passage from Romans 8 comes to mind:

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

It happens now that I trust the Spirit's voice, trust the push and pull of the current as we pray together. I trust the heart of God that groans for us, deeper than words. Walking with someone into the river of prayer is an exceptional privilege. It gets close to the meaning of life.

Prayer, Contemplation, and Action

I believe that in every age Christians need to look to the desert fathers and mothers of their day, to learn from those who have made contemplation the bedrock of their life. These contemplatives are able to offer a profound simplicity and truth to those of us whose lives are too busy, too cluttered. The early monastics spoke to their day and to us; but we have our own mystics today, and it is important to hear them as well.

Again I am drawn to Mother Teresa, a woman who suffered much and who had an astonishing simplicity of belief in Jesus. Her writings continue to challenge and deepen the way that I live out my faith in Jesus.

Here are two of her comments regarding prayer and contemplation:

Often a deep fervent look at Christ may make the most fervent prayer. "I look at Him and He looks at me" is the most perfect prayer....

Through a life of contemplation we come to realize God's constant presence and His tender love for us in the least little things of life: to be constantly available to Him, loving Him with our whole heart, whole mind, whole soul and whole strength, no matter in what form He may come to us. Jesus comes in the bodies of our poor. They are there for the finding. Jesus comes to you and me and, very often, we pass Him by.

Her first devotion was to contemplation of the Jesus who loved her. Her second was to loving Jesus in his "distressing disguise" of the poor and sick. For her, any action of ministry or service flowed out of contemplation and prayer. Prayer and contemplation were essential. She writes,

By contemplation the soul draws directly from the heart of God the graces which the active life must distribute.

She wrote this prayer for the Missionaries of Charity to pray daily before beginning their work among Calcutta's slums:

Dear Jesus,
Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your Spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us
and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us
but only Jesus.
Stay with us
and then we shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.
None of it will be ours.
It will be you shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best
by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching
not by words, but by our example,
by the catching force,
the sympathetic influence of what we do,
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.

Good Read: George Herbert

I own a dilapidated copy of a once-lovely Victorian edition of the works of George Herbert, an English country parson and poet. Born into a noble family of ten children in 1593, Herbert was a noted scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. He took orders in the church and eventually served the parish at Bemerton for several years, beloved for his preaching and his devotion to the people in his parish. Close friend of John Donne and contemporary of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare, he was versed in theology, philosophy, and poetry. His own poetry records with surprising honesty the struggles he had with faith and with a life of service in the church. One of the metaphysical poets, he explores truth through imagery, juxtaposition, and paradox. Many of his lines--and some entire poems--are brilliant.

Herbert died in 1632. He wrote his faith in poems to the end, mindful of his role as poet:

Of all the creatures both in sea and land,
Onely to man thou hast made known thy wayes,
And put the penne alone into his hand,
And made him Secretarie of thy praise.

The following poem, which is really about prayer, is appropriate at Advent:

The Bag

Away despair; my gracious Lord doth heare,
Though windes and waves assault my keel.
He doth preserve it; he doth steer,
Ev'n when the boat seems most to reel.
Storms are the triumph of his art:
Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.

Hast thou not heard, that my Lord Jesus di'd?
Then let me tell thee a strange storie.
The God of power, as he did ride
In his majestick robes of glorie,
Resolv'd to light; and so one day
He did descend, undressing all the way.

The starres his tire of light and rings obtain'd,
The cloud his bowe, the fire his spear,
The sky his azure mantle gain'd.
And when they ask'd, what he would wear;
He smil'd, and said as he did go,
He had new clothes a making here below.

When he was come as travellers are wont,
He did repair unto an inne.
Both then, and after, many a brunt
He did endure to cancell sinne:
And having giv'n the rest before,
Here he gave up his life to pay our score.

But as he was returning, there came one
That ran upon him with a spear.
He, who came hither all alone,
Bringing nor man, nor arms, nor fear,
Receiv'd the blow upon his side,
And straight he turned, and to his brethren cry'd,

If ye have any thing to send or write
(I have no bag, but here is room)
Unto my father's hands and sight
(Beleeve me) it shall safely come.
That I shall minde, what you impart;
Look, you may put it very neare my heart.

Or if hereafter any of my friends
Will use me in this kind, the doore,
Shall still be open; what he sends
I will present, and somewhat more,
Not to his hurt. Sighs will convey
Anything to me. Heark despair, away.

Prayer and Grief

My dear father suffered a stroke about eight years ago. Though he recovered initially, he lost ground after a while and slowly began to retreat from the world and from us. He would say in frustration, "I feel as though my head is not screwed on right." He would say to Mom, "What's happening to me?" I would see him in his easy chair, with nothing to do any more--no pumps to install, no fruit to harvest, no washing machines to fix, no children or grandchildren (usually) around to love him up, just an empty life. Empty eyes. He forgot my name, though I like to believe he never forgot my face.

Last year, a day after Thanksgiving, my siblings helped him into the car and drove him to a nursing home. Though he had lost a lot of his ability to verbalize any complete thought, he did say, as they were wheeling him out of the house, "I have lost everything."

He endured a month of loneliness and deteriorating helath, until we found a marvelous six-bed private home run by Connie, an exceptional caregiver of Philippine heritage. She cared for Dad for seven months. He could have died there a happy man.

But he became too much work for her, and my mother had to move him to a lower-quality residential home, where he immediately developed infections and life-threatening bedsores. I saw him cry out in fear to three nurses who were trying to turn him, "I love you all!" Poor man, hoping to appease those whom he thought were attacking him. I took him to the hospital, where they fought his infections for three weeks and then released him to a better nursing home.

The physical care at this home was excellent. But there was no one to touch him in a loving way, to hold his hand, to rub his shoulders, to sing "Heavenly Sunshine" and "Blest the Man Who Fears Jehovah." All of us children had scattered across the country, taking his grandchildren with us. There was only Mom, at 87 still driving the freeway every day to feed Dad lunch, to remind him that she was his wife, and to cry when she came back home.

When I flew out to visit in September, Dad--who usually could hardly put a thought together--said when he saw me, "Can we go? Take me away. Anywhere, anywhere but here." When I could not answer, he turned his face away and would not look at or talk to me. I saw more clearly that at the end of his life, he was enduring a killing loneliness and a slow death among strangers.

I couldn't stand it. This was not the kingdom of God for my dad. Other people could put their parents into a nursing home and leave them, but this for my father was not right. It was not right.

With my mother's blessing, I laid plans to leave my home and fmaily in Michigan and become my dad's live-in caregiver at my mother's home for several months, until a suitable person could be found from our community to take my place.

I was going to fly out next week, after Thanksgiving, to take Dad home. To prepare a place for him. To let his parched spirit soak in some love.

Last Tuesday, my mom called me to let me know that God had beaten me to the punch. Through the doorway of death my dad found his long home, one better prepared for him than the little bedroom we were going to move him into.

At visitation, seeing his tired body laid out in the casket, I experienced terrible grief. I relived the darkness of the nights in his room, alone, endless nights, long and empty days, the awareness of neglect. Why had I not acted sooner? Why had I waited so long to respond to his pain and the indignity and loneliness of the last five months of his life?

It still hurts. I cry as I write this. But I am coming to hear, through the blessed dialogue of prayer, the voices of my father and my Father. Their voices offer a balance, a counterpoint, to the voices of accusation and longing and regret that goad my grief. Their voices explain to me that, although the desert is a horrible and lonely place, that it can be endured, and that it can become a place of springs. My brother preached the funeral sermon from Isaiah 35:



The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them,
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose;
it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice,
even with joy and singing....

The tongue of the dumb shall sing;
for waters shall burst forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert.
The parched land shall become a pool,
and the thirsty land springs of water.

My father suffered, and it should not have happened. But his suffering stopped. He is more alive now than perhaps in his strongest moments as my father, pulling a pump by hand, dancing with us children on his workboots, or praying over us the Lord's Prayer. He is stepping in the pools of water. He is no longer dumb, but speaks. He is speaking to One he loves.

I am glad that the One he loves also speaks to me. That voice brings pools of water in the midst of my own desert.

Paul J. Van Dyken, Sr.

1920-2009

Prayer as an underrated gift

Prayer is, I suspect, one of those things that those who profess a belief in God tend to talk about more than actually do. Which might be understandable. Who can long endure conversing with someone who, if actually seen, would produce such sensations of bewildering and blinding awe that one would be left prostrate on the floor?

Yet the Christian Scriptures teach that prayer moves the heart and mind of God and unleashes God's power in the world. An odd arrangement, when you think about it. So maybe that's why it's easy to not take it seriously or to do it very often for any length of time.

It's the two-billion-dollar check left among all the wrapping paper and boxes under the Christmas tree by the child who has eyes only for the new video game.

Prayer

A small gift
To: us
From: God
wrapped in brown paper,
tied not with gold ribbon but red string.

Easily hidden among the other gifts
under the Tree,
not shiny or flashy,
just an everyday sort of thing.

But when we put our hand to this gift,
and actually untie the string
and open the paper,
what happens then is a blinding flash
greater than that unleashed over Nagasaki

and the world is changed.