One of the spiritually significant things in my inner life has been the past few weeks. I've not had the ability or even the motivation to pray. The reverberations of grief, shock and sadness so far beyond consolation, drain away so much of what is normal emotional engagement with life and its routines. That's because the routines are disrupted beyond repair; nothing will be the same in the aftermath of what feels like the death of something so significant as what I've experienced. It's been doubly hard because I can only share that grief with a few folks and cannot name it publicly yet.
It takes time to take any grief in. It takes time to want to even think too much about it. And whatever else prayer is, it makes you think as you search for words. In a time of intense sorrow, prayer is a process of taking in, of internalizing a reality that cries out for denial and contradiction. Prayer requires engagement at the depths of our being with the God whose personal and interpersonal depths are replete with eternal love, infinite wisdom and redemptive creative purpose. That makes each attempt at prayer an exercise in vulnerability, trust and self-giving. And for the grieving heart, that's sometimes too much to ask. Grief renders us all but defenseless in the face of death, and to survive, much that is inside us shuts down to conserve resources already running out and nearing exhaustion.
It's times like this that the theological category that matters most is the communion of the saints. That reality to which you're glad you belong. "You're in our prayers" sounds cliche, but at the moment, for me, it's been absolutely vital and vitalizing. To be conscious that our own silence and felt distance from God is a weight willingly carried by others is part of the comfort that sustains faith in such times. It isn't only that we're prayed for, as objects of prayer. It's also that people pray for us, that is, their faithful prayers are said on our behalf, their words give voice to what has rendered us silent, and their intercession draws us into the circle of a conversation which at the moment is beyond us.
I shared with a friend yesterday -- someone who knows the contours of my spiritual landscape right now -- when he said, "I'm praying for you", that his being a companion through this spiritual drought and hunger has been essential for one whose own faith is so fragile it might break. Knowing that my name is on his lips when those lips are opened in front of God has made my inability to pray less weighty. He -- and several others -- have taken on the pain of bearing my cross for me.
In these past weeks, I've learned again what Golgotha feels like. How hard it is to be shattered by pain and loss. How Jesus' grief was exacerbated precisely to the extent that no one said to him, "You're in my prayers". Quite the opposite: Instead of praying for him, they were asleep. Jesus' sorrow in Gethsemane at the soporific disciples isn't peeved self-concern, it's the cry of a heart needing support, the reflex of a mind tortured by doubt and inner agony.
There are times when prayer is beyond us. For me, these past weeks have been that time. But the prayers of others have sustained my spiritual life. They're gift of love has held me together when all else was falling apart. That's what "the communion of the saints" means. Our lives are entangled in the Spirit.
The experience of grief, and the inner adjustments it has imposed, has meant a new understanding of what prayer is, and what it is not. In my sorrow, bewilderment and inner derailment, there have been times when prayer felt impossible; other times when prayer didn't even enter a mind too busy processing a new life-changing reality.
Oh, I know: Prayer is the natural breathing of a Christian. It's an obvious resort -- "just pray about it". It's an open invitation to talk to and with God. It's a habit learned over years of practice. "Pray without ceasing."
But that's just my point. The disorientation of mind and heart, of reason and emotion, have made prayer more difficult, not less. I know that isn't everyone's experience, but it has been mine. And the communion of saints, the struggling for words friends who said, "You are in our prayers" and "We are praying for you" have rewritten the Gethsemane experience. They have watched with us, and they have watched over us.
It seems almost providential to me now that the last sermon I preached before this Dark Night settled in was the sermon of Good Friday.
Praying has been crucifixion to me.
Praying is different than it's been in twenty years. Tempered by a daily sorrow, prayer is nothing more than St Paul's "burden of a sigh". It arises out of a loss and the demand to see a new world in the midst of the old. The mood of prayer is entirely interrogative now. As someone most at home with words, the silence of my prayers of late has become a new eloquence.
And in the grasp of a new life that will forever include some loss, somehow the love and hope of others means that I know my spiritual life doesn't depend on my words. There is a sense of completeness, because someone said "We're praying for you".
It takes time to take any grief in. It takes time to want to even think too much about it. And whatever else prayer is, it makes you think as you search for words. In a time of intense sorrow, prayer is a process of taking in, of internalizing a reality that cries out for denial and contradiction. Prayer requires engagement at the depths of our being with the God whose personal and interpersonal depths are replete with eternal love, infinite wisdom and redemptive creative purpose. That makes each attempt at prayer an exercise in vulnerability, trust and self-giving. And for the grieving heart, that's sometimes too much to ask. Grief renders us all but defenseless in the face of death, and to survive, much that is inside us shuts down to conserve resources already running out and nearing exhaustion.
It's times like this that the theological category that matters most is the communion of the saints. That reality to which you're glad you belong. "You're in our prayers" sounds cliche, but at the moment, for me, it's been absolutely vital and vitalizing. To be conscious that our own silence and felt distance from God is a weight willingly carried by others is part of the comfort that sustains faith in such times. It isn't only that we're prayed for, as objects of prayer. It's also that people pray for us, that is, their faithful prayers are said on our behalf, their words give voice to what has rendered us silent, and their intercession draws us into the circle of a conversation which at the moment is beyond us.
I shared with a friend yesterday -- someone who knows the contours of my spiritual landscape right now -- when he said, "I'm praying for you", that his being a companion through this spiritual drought and hunger has been essential for one whose own faith is so fragile it might break. Knowing that my name is on his lips when those lips are opened in front of God has made my inability to pray less weighty. He -- and several others -- have taken on the pain of bearing my cross for me.
In these past weeks, I've learned again what Golgotha feels like. How hard it is to be shattered by pain and loss. How Jesus' grief was exacerbated precisely to the extent that no one said to him, "You're in my prayers". Quite the opposite: Instead of praying for him, they were asleep. Jesus' sorrow in Gethsemane at the soporific disciples isn't peeved self-concern, it's the cry of a heart needing support, the reflex of a mind tortured by doubt and inner agony.
There are times when prayer is beyond us. For me, these past weeks have been that time. But the prayers of others have sustained my spiritual life. They're gift of love has held me together when all else was falling apart. That's what "the communion of the saints" means. Our lives are entangled in the Spirit.
The experience of grief, and the inner adjustments it has imposed, has meant a new understanding of what prayer is, and what it is not. In my sorrow, bewilderment and inner derailment, there have been times when prayer felt impossible; other times when prayer didn't even enter a mind too busy processing a new life-changing reality.
Oh, I know: Prayer is the natural breathing of a Christian. It's an obvious resort -- "just pray about it". It's an open invitation to talk to and with God. It's a habit learned over years of practice. "Pray without ceasing."
But that's just my point. The disorientation of mind and heart, of reason and emotion, have made prayer more difficult, not less. I know that isn't everyone's experience, but it has been mine. And the communion of saints, the struggling for words friends who said, "You are in our prayers" and "We are praying for you" have rewritten the Gethsemane experience. They have watched with us, and they have watched over us.
It seems almost providential to me now that the last sermon I preached before this Dark Night settled in was the sermon of Good Friday.
Praying has been crucifixion to me.
Praying is different than it's been in twenty years. Tempered by a daily sorrow, prayer is nothing more than St Paul's "burden of a sigh". It arises out of a loss and the demand to see a new world in the midst of the old. The mood of prayer is entirely interrogative now. As someone most at home with words, the silence of my prayers of late has become a new eloquence.
And in the grasp of a new life that will forever include some loss, somehow the love and hope of others means that I know my spiritual life doesn't depend on my words. There is a sense of completeness, because someone said "We're praying for you".