Prayer

PRAYER

The focus of prayer is not the self. Prayer comes to pass in a complete turning of the heart toward God, toward His goodness and power.


Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His will prevail in our affairs.


We go hopelessly astray if we think of prayer as a selfish endeavor to persuade or inveigle, or browbeat God to do us a favor, or win us a victory, or even help us in some dire distress.


He is not some kind of divine bellhop, to be summoned, as by the pressing of a button, to the service of our passing whims.

God does not come to us, but we to Him – and prayer is the high road to His presence.


Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.


Prayer cannot mend a broken bridge, rebuild a ruined city, or bring water to parched fields.
Prayer can mend a broken heart, lift up a discouraged soul, and strengthen a weakened will.


Prayer digs the channels from the reservoir of God’s boundless resources to the tiny pools of our lives.

Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to be what we can be.


If I recite my wants, it is not to remind You of them, but only that I may be conscious of my dependence upon You.


Prayer is answered when it enables us to act as God desires.

If you would have God hear you when you pray, you must hear Him when He speaks.


Prayer requires more of the heart than of the tongue.


It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks.


True worship is not a petition to God: it is a sermon to ourselves.


By benevolence man rises to a height where he meets God. Therefore do a good deed before you begin your prayers.


Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.


Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on you.

 

Thought from: Abraham J. Heschel, John Holmes, Søren Kierkegaard, F. Ibserhan, E. Strangy Jones, Morris Adler, Bahya Ibw Pakuda, Ernest F. Scott, Thomas Brooks, Adam Clarke, Helen, Keller, Emil G. Hirsch, Hai Gaon, George Meridth

Marc Chagall, "Jew at Prayer"

"Prayer" was given to me by a coworker. Her father was a Rabbi. After his death, she found “Prayer” among the many papers her father had saved from his many years in ministry.

“Prayer” is an anthology of sorts. A collection of quotes on the nature of prayer from great men and women of faith and thought across many years. It is a sort of contemporary piece of Wisdom Literature echoing some of the literary traditions which can be found in the Hebrew Bible.

My friend was gracious enough to share it with me and I am delighted to share it here.

For your own personal spiritual growth, you might find some value in reading each line of “Prayer” slowly, over time and sitting silently with each line's particular wisdom for a while, allowing it to connect most deeply with your own spiritual longings.

If you know where this came from, you are invited to leave a comment. Heck, you are invited to leave a comment anyway. How do you connect with this modern piece of Wisdom Literature?

Image: “Jew at Prayer”, Marc Chagall

The Psalmist prays:

“My sins, O God, are not hidden from you; you now how foolish I have been. Do not let me bring shame on those who trust you Sovereign Lord Almighty! Do not let me disgrace to those who worship you.”

(69: 5-6)

“The function of prayer is not to influence God,

but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."

Sørren Kierkegaard

My we bring our hearts in prayer this week asking to open them to the depth and truth of our being, to those things about ourselves which are held tenderly and in mercy by our God, but which remain in the dark hiddenness of our own frailty and fear. May we seek at prayer the courage and strength of the incomprehensible depth of God’s tenderness and mercy for our lives that our living may be in tenderness and mercy for all who would call upon our care. Amen.

For Mother's Day, Chagall's

"Mother and Child in Front of Notre Dame" 1953.

In my 50's, at long last more able to be true to my self: I can see more clearly in the shadows within, some pale reflection of birthmother, Patricia. I can hold, with gentleness and compassion, both the extreme brokenness and frail blessedness of my mother, Frances. And, I can speak softly in my heart, and in my living, of my own three Dear Little Ones whose tender hearts have rested for so long with my own dear mother’s. With gratitude, Happy Mother's Day.

Speaking From Silence: Vocare to a Life Solitude I

Marc Chagall, Solitude


“When we have lived long enough alone with the reality around us,
our veneration will learn how to bring forth a few good words
about it from the silence which is the mother of Truth,”
(Merton, Thoughts in Solitude).

There is wisdom which circulates among courageous souls who are called to share compassion’s journey with sufferers who come seeking healing of mind and heart and spirit: nothing happens along that way until the sufferer is ready. Lately, several things have happened which have drawn me more even more deeply into suffering and grief at the brief lives of my three Dear Little Ones and more closely to my long-slow smoldering rage at living this unbidden childlessness of mine. Only a few shy of twenty years, I have struggled minute-by-minute to keep them at a distance for fear they would consume what little of me remained. All the while, they still consumed me in every battle I waged against their power. I am exhausted now. And they have come again. I have no fight left in me, so I must succumb and find the ways to welcome them into the solitary practice of my daily living. Only here, in the great silence of these sorrows and the sins and griefs they bear can my spirit’s sighing find the Word which might hear the silent death of my fecundity into speech. Only here in mute surrender, in the solitude of this rage too deep for words can the Spirit’s sighs reach the shattered weakness of my heart and intercede for good, for love for a will and purpose which are my vocare, my call.

My very wise Jesuit Spiritual Director has, with great patience, persistence and good humor, consistently offered a hermeneutical frame for my living which I have resisted mightily for several years. The central point of discernment in this struggle—if God created us for relationships, how is God present in all that I have lost? Adoption, mother’s alcoholism, father’s terminal illness, two sets of parents gone before I was twenty-five, three children dead before they drew a breath, and the potential for ever bearing a child of my own with them, extended family caught up I the hubris of blood over emotional and relational bonds, a ten year marriage turned horribly public in the revelation of its truth in clergy sexual misconduct and that same horrible truth lurking in the shadows of the church where I turned for support. The vocare says very wise Jesuit Spiritual Director, is the very thing which I hate, rail against, resist, resent, refuse… my aloneness. Who in there right minds would want it, to be alone, to grieve these many losses, with no family to give and to receive love and the common bonds of daily living which offer our lives their shape and form and meaning?

For these many years, I have listened with particular attention to the brave preacher’s words on the painfully difficult passage from Mark 10: “Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’” (Mark 10:28-31). Never have I heard uttered a word, or an inflection or an inference to lead me to believe that the preacher’s heart would truly be willing to give up family or home or community or livelihood to follow Jesus. How, I have often wondered, might that preacher live, if he or she had no choice but to lose all that they loved and held dearest in the world? Would they still try to follow Jesus? Would they still be so certain of the smug platitude of God’s goodness and their heart’s willingness to follow, or convicted of such righteous sociopolitical truths?

It is not their hearts I am questioning but my own. In some long dormant hidden place I know this journey is mine and mine alone, and just as I must remind myself that I will never be able to find a family at grocery in the produce section among the avocados and artichokes, so I must remind myself that no heart should ever have to comprehend, no less endure, the shattering of the simple safe assumptions of their benevolent and equitable worlds. No one of them should ever have to endure year after year of shattered hopes for life shrouded in fears of death. Nor should their deepest longings and most tender dreams ever be pushed aside for the arrogance and hubris’ gains.

But I am, after all a Presbyterian, we do spirituality more in the spirit of Rabbi Abraham Heschel marching from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. King, “Even without words our march was worship. I felt my legs praying,” than we do in the spirit of St. Paul in Romans 8, waiting in our weakness for the Spirit to intercede. This does not come easily to me, this vocare, this silence. I feel my legs still longing to march, to pray deliverance from this evil. Amen.