Week Four – Lesson Four – Prayer – Call Inward

Week Four- Lesson Four – Prayer –Call Inward

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Prelude

My first recollection of prayer was when I was no more than eight years old.

My grandmother was taking care of my younger sister and me while mother and father were out for the evening.

She was teaching me the Our Father while I was using a knife – albeit dull – to sharpen a thick candle. Yes, a thick candle!

* * * *

In the years that followed, prayer was the memorized versions that proved effective even when I was distracted.

It was not until I attended a three-day spiritual retreat when I was sixteen years old that I discovered a prayer realm not confined to syllables of speech.

It was at this time I became acquainted with the works of Thomas Merton , a Trappist Monk, who wrote of a special stillness of the spirit where words lost their essential purpose.

* * * *

Many years later, in my grief this stillness in prayer served me when words failed to convey the deepest agony in my heart.

It is this stillness that inspires me in meditation each morning before dawn.

On the following page, read the stillness of The Rose, a poem I wrote in Afghanistan, sitting in front of a flower I had earlier snatched from a bush growing wild within a fortified compound in Kabul.

The Rose

Have you ever looked at a rose?
Really gazed at it until
You and the rose were One?

Could you sense the rose
Being in you and it puzzling
Why you can’t be still,

Listen to the movement,
See the soft whisper,
Touch together Divine Wonder?

What is happening to me?
That my companion,
This blood-tipped rose,

Speaks soulfully
Of a ripple-free
Presence in Love?

It must be good!
When’s the last time
You looked at a rose?

Become conscious of these moments of intense Presence that you experience during a day. Of what does this presence consist?

It can be of you, God, a rose, quietness, what is around you, a loved one; you decide.

Describe in your journal what you feel and estimate how long the moment lasts.

In this lesson, we will explore the wide-dimension of prayer and the promise it holds for healing.

Part One – The Power of Prayer

Prayer is powerful.

When I observe the results from prayer, my first inclination is to attribute the change to chance, circumstances, or fate.

This is so whether it is headline news or a quiet restoration of calm in a family racked with its daily chaos.

However, I do recognize the limits of the rational mind, and perceive a sea of interlinking energies flowing through the universe.

These energies represent the creative force or Holy Spirit in whose union we exist. Our prayers reflect that union.

Prayer is to harmony as cause is to effect is an insight I received while sitting unaware.

Harmony flows with and from the Supreme Being. In union with Him, we release inestimable energy through our prayers. The result is the harmony restored and promoted in the universe. And we participate in and share in that fulfilling, becoming process.

It is because the link between a prayer uttered in silence and the answer to the prayer is impossible to establish beyond rational doubt that prayer remains mysterious.

In the turmoil, confusion, and chaos of this world, can it be that somewhere – nestled between the fourth rib below the heart, behind the forehead, or perhaps not confined by the body at all – resides within all of us union to the Supreme Being?

In prayer we manifest that union; we discover that union; we give birth to that union.

Spiritual development is not recovering what was lost – as in the Garden of Eden mythology – but rather becoming conscious of what is and is to be.

Prayer is a sign that acknowledges union with the Supreme Being and creative force of the universe.

Now I am certain that you expect me to start any discussion of prayer with prayers you utter aloud to restore balance and harmony in your life. 

I will, but later. In this part I want you to think of prayer as a supreme, generous, and gracious service you render for another in love.

Imagine, just when you are the depth of your sorrow and grief, you are called upon to pray for those in need without judging who is in greater need.

Nothing reminds us more that we are all traveling on the same path, all experiencing the vicissitudes of life that describe what we would term success, setback, joy and sorrow.

We all gain sustenance from the care of those who witness to our grief and we offer in grace that same support to others in need.

Take a moment to identify those coincidences, when what you prayed for happened, as well as noting prayers unanswered.

Part Two – Stillness as Prayer

We are drawn to some unspeakable region, to some image-less experience, where on the pivot of all time and space, our hunger and thirst for God shall at last be stilled.

Perhaps, at no other time in my life than at a time of deep loss and grieving I have learned to be still.

I am becoming familiar with a deeper, richer silence that embraces me.

Like the Zen silence between footsteps on a stone garden path or in the interval between waves crashing on the beach, I discover a most unexpected but welcome silence.

This silence might envelop me just as I complete a task or about to undertake another, or when all about seems calamitous.

This rich silence reminds that there is a deeper presence than the activity I am doing, contemplating, or observing.

I must tell you that on such occasions I am not daydreaming. I have come to believe that I am entering the Eternal Now with which my suffering and grief reward – even bless – me in a special form of prayer.

On such occasions there is no need to fill the airwaves with forgotten syllables or your mind with symbols and images.

Simply listen to your heart beating, your lungs expanding and then emptying, and then take a deeper breath—deeper, deeper, and deeper. Hold it. Let it out slowly. Be conscious about it. Savor it.

Reserve some time to be in stillness. Write a few words to describe the experience and try to make this a regular practice.

Part Three – Prayer of Compassion

Isn’t it so that suffering transforms into a sense of compassion for those who suffer around us – suffering that we might have missed as had we not experienced the deep grief that we feel?

It is as if our demonstrations of concern now take on a genuine quality that was missing earlier with our previous rote statements of concern and sympathy.

For those of you who experience bouts of insomnia in your grief, I suggest that you use this wakefulness – as debilitating as these periods are – to good prayer service.

Consider before you retire those who are also in need of prayer and healing. Perhaps, create an acronym with the first letters of the recipients’ names.

For example, I create an acronym – D-A-L-M I have used recently. Each letter calls to heart someone in need of prayer. The D reminds of a friend’s daughter experiencing deep depression following a divorce; A for friend suffering from a dizziness that throws him to the ground; L for the wife of a friend where Alzheimer is proving a deadly companion; M for a friend’s daughter who attempted suicide.

And so, in the middle of the night and early morning, when I wake – and I do – a short memorized prayer uttered silently and a glancing thought of the individual secures each remembrance.

With no exceptions, lifting my heart in prayer results in a peaceful, innocent sleep descending upon me within moments.

This special time, once fraught with anxiousness, is greeted whenever I awake long before the gray dawn.

 During this week, write in your journal those who need your prayers as much as you need theirs – strangers, friends, or family.

Create your own acronym of purpose and keep it at your bedside as you prepare to convert sleeplessness into prayer and peaceful sleep.

* * * *

Let me say a word about offering as in prayer. 

As you might realize or have come to appreciate, prayer calls us to consciousness – consciousness to our and others’ circumstances   – the struggles, surprises, encounters, challenges, the sorrow and even the joy.

You will discover a special healing and perhaps at first the imperceptible release of your grief and suffering as you offer in prayer the unique challenges you face. 

Seek to identify your intentions, realizing in the process you are raising your consciousness.

Consider from time to time offering that which fills you with anticipation, and even dread for the healing for a family member who maybe experiencing deep sadness over the loss you are grieving; for a nation at war; for families grieving their losses; and conclude with praise for the insights received.

Part Four – Contemplative Prayer

For many, many years I practiced centering prayer, having first come upon this form of prayer in the writings of Thomas Merton, who influenced me greatly from when I was young man up until the present from writings that have been published long after his sudden death in 1968 while attending an interfaith conference for contemplatives in Bangkok, Thailand.

In each dwelling place for over thirty years, I have reserved a quiet place where I place myself in the presence of the Divine with no other purpose than to listen.

* * * *

Several years ago I initiated a practice of intuitive prayer where I selected a verse from scripture, meditated on it; a personal prayer surfaces – often a request for enlightenment or clarification.

I sit quietly with eyes resting gently shut and begin to type in this manner what I hear.

These daily sessions of about twenty minutes in duration are filled with insights. It is as if I have a personal tutor who is providing me the instruction that I need that particular day.

While not directed exclusively on the grieving process, I have found that the wisdom contained therein lends perspective to my suffering and opens me to experience a profound love that I had not known earlier.

See if this method of prayer suits you by following these steps:

1. Select a Scripture verse or two;
2. Reflect upon the selection;
3. Type a short prayer related to the selection;
4. Pause and be still until you are prompted to begin typing;
5. Consider the meaning for you that day.

Part Five

The following are the exercises and activities for this lesson.

How do you pray when your heart feels pierced and the words seem clutched in a voiceless void?

Find a comfortable spot, preferably outdoors, in which you can gain easy access in the future.

Spend twenty minutes quietly with no agenda, no problems to solve.

If you become distracted, repeat a word or a phrase that is an invitation to prayer, preferably in a language that is not your own, like maranatha, which is Aramaic for “Come, Lord Jesus.” This becomes your mantra, a phrase that occupies your mind as you listen in silence to your heart.

After you complete the session, jot some notes about the experience in your journal. Remember there are no expectations. You have just been introduced to centering prayer, a practice that can be found in all religious disciplines.

Look around you and select among those you know, three individuals or families who are suffering deeply from loss, be it the loss of a loved one, a livelihood, a rejection in a relationship, or even the loss of health.

At the same time, chose one stranger suffering similarly, be the person nameless as one caught in a natural disaster or the calamity of war. Enter into your journal the selections.

Each evening before you drift off to sleep pray silently or with muted words for those who are suffering, sometimes alone and not known.

If you wake in the middle of the night and are fearful that you won’t get back to sleep, pray for these same individuals in the quiet of your heart, and you will discover that a deep and restful sleep returns, sometimes reminding you of a time of peace that preceded your loss.

You will learn that your prayers contributed in some inexplicable way as the soul health of those for whom you prayed is restored.

When I remained in Beirut during the civil war between 1975-76 and Donna and the children were evacuated to Athens, I gained great relief during the tension of those weeks and months sketching from my balcony scenes that captured the modern buildings against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, palm trees, or a solitary fishing vessel off shore, and – when there was a lull in the violence – the people walking along the Corniche, the road along the Mediterranean Sea.

I didn’t need more than a pencil or pen and a pad of sketch paper, and the patience to focus on the lines before me that I would recreate with no concern of time.

I found to this day that such activity, even the anticipation of it, served to release me from current concerns and distractions., and deliver me to a region of the heart where all is in order and understandable – even grief and loss.

Check your matrix for Week #4.