Category Archives: prayer

screwy time

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seibels chapel candles

this morning, I lit the candles in our little chapel for Morning Prayer.  There’s something immediately calming about striking a match, hearing the little snaps of fire starting up, and igniting a waxy wick.

I was instantly transported back four years to the little chapel in Cooperstown, New York, St. Agnes Chapel, where I prayed Morning Prayer with the priest there every morning of the summer for two years.  Many mornings, I’d strike a match and light the candles, first the right one, then the left, just like I did this morning.wp289fa4d0_05_06

For a moment this morning, time collapsed, and I was in both places, in both times, at once.  Time got all stacked up on each other, and I realized that this chronological assumption to which we submit ourselves most of the time (which can sometimes be overwhelmingly oppressive, and maybe even despairing) is a fallacy.

Moments are echoes of each other; when we remember certain moments or phrases or phases, they’re enlivened in a way–a bit of life and light is breathed into them.  So it was this morning when, 2 years into this ordained-ministry-thing, I remembered when I was still at least 2 years away from beginning the ordained-ministry-thing, and though I was coming at the moment from different geographical, psychological, spiritual places, it wasn’t all that different either.

fake it until it makes you

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– the point of liturgy.

I’ve heard worship in the Episcopal Church described as a method of “fake it till you make it.”  I think this is close to right.  There’s no requirement or expectation that a person will come every Sunday or walk through the church door and feeling something every single time; there’s no lofty ambition that every attendee will be bowled over by the mystical mind-body-soul connection and the deep meaning of what their bodies and voices are doing during the service. But there is a sort of trust that something profound and shaping is going on at an almost-imperceptible level when our voices are saying the psalms and when our bodies are bowing and folding our hands.

However, unlike the popular adage, it’s not about our own effort, or our feelings about the experience, or even about our own experience of the moments at all.

When learning to cook something new, or trying a new cleaning method for the bathtub, or working on a new regimen for exercise, the steps are clumsy and take a long time and feel foreign and unproductive.  It’s frustrating and unfamiliar–sometimes we even give up, trying this new thing, because it feels so totally useless.  Think of all the things you’ve tried, and worked for, and gained proficiency in, though–these have become second-nature.  Maybe it’s cooking eggs, or swiffering the entire house in just a few minutes, but these things have had a real impact on your everyday life as they were practiced.  They made you into a person who was a master omelette-maker, or a whiz with dusting. These skills might even prove useful in other realms of life, giving you an edge when volunteering in the soup kitchen or providing a subject of conversation when seated next to a fellow shedding-dog-owner.

How much more do we hope and intend for daily Scripture reading and repeated meditation on psalms to change the way we understand the world around us, make us more attentive to the God revealed in Scripture, realign our habits and instincts to be centered around the God who came to be with us.

What a comfort to trust that it’s not up to me to “make it,” but to show up, as willing as I can be–and sometimes it’s not willing at all–for the sake of being trained, habituated, realigned toward Hope.

listening to the heart of God

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“But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast; my soul is quieted within me.” (Psalm 131:2, BCP)

2013-09-03 11.13.17Babies know when Momma is holding them; Dad doesn’t sound or feel quite the same, and though Grandma and Auntie and Brother are lovely, no one is Momma except Momma.

From our very moment of creation–those little cells furiously dividing in a womb–there’s one voice, one heartbeat, one digestive system that calibrates reality for us.  When we are again near that same heartbeat, napping on top of Mom, or hear that same voice (even decades later!) the deepest, most primal part of us responds.  Some bit of ourselves, deeply coded with the nourishment (the life!) that this person provided for us, always knows Mom’s voice and body, the being that taught us by her simple presence and lifeblood what life and the world are.

God does exactly the same thing for us, but on an even deeper and more primal level.  The most profound calm, the Most-Anti-Anxious-State, the greatest security, and the truest reality arrives when we sit in the presence of God.  Yoga and meditation (and prayer) teach us to do this literally–to physically sit down, to face up to our racing minds (and hearts) and start digging in our heels, slowing down our minds, listening through distractions and listening into quietness.

One of my colleagues has a plaque on his office wall, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”  God is sitting next to you, where ever you are, whether you want him there or not–when we quiet down, we can start to notice his presence.

Part of the point of yoga and meditation and prayer is to help us recalibrate to that original orientation–sometimes it’s awkward and feels uncomfortable or even painful (physically, or socially, or psychologically) to slow down, to sit down, to quiet down.  Persistence in sitting quietly, in praying (or meditating or doing yoga), begins to loosen up our knotted up selves, and the searing shout of silence starts to feel more like a peaceful river of quiet.

God, his identifying heartbeat, his stirring voice, is not always the loudest or most insistent sound (often it is one of the quietest) in our lives, though it is the most profoundly sustaining.

 

For what God says to us in the quiet, a sermon preached by Sam Wells, “The Heart of God.“

For what struck me about Psalm 131 last September, “Psalm 131 Mash Up” (isn’t it funny how certain poems speak to you at particular moments of the year?  And isn’t it funny how the same words evoke something so different in the same person a year hence?)

another unarmed black teen killed by police #mikebrown

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No older than some of the dear students with whom I spent the last week at choir camp in the NC mountains, the unarmed Mike Brown was shot and killed yesterday in a St. Louis suburb.

I read the news when I checked twitter from my bed this morning.  I had to do some sleuthing to even find the story on the internets–this death hardly makes it to CNN.com (only under “Mike Brown,” not his Christian name, “Michael Brown”).

Feeling sick with yet another death on our hands, having chosen unadvisedly to look at twitter before praying Morning Prayer, the Holy Spirit butted into my heart anyway.

A scrap of music (performed in the link by Leichester Chorale) fell into my mind as I my stomach knotted up and I searched for more information on my tiny screen.  I’d first heard it exactly a year ago on my arrival at choir camp.  The sweet young voices of faithful young people gathered and blended, crying for peace–an end to violence and death–knowing that only God can bring such relief.

Even a year later, their voices still minister to me: pulling up the curtain on ugliness, glimpsing death and deep-seated hatred, what should pop into my mind as my heart breaks but the God’s word set to beautiful music, sung and prayed by dear devoted young people with courage and faith?

A voice cries out in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the LORD.

Quotation of the Day – Henri Nouwen

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“The various disciplines of the spiritual life are meant for freedom and are reliable means for the creation of helpful boundaries in our lives within which God’s voice can be heard, God’s presence felt, and God’s guidance experienced.  Without such boundaries that make space for God, our lives quickly narrow down; we hear and see less and less, we become spiritually sick, and we become one-dimensional, and sometimes delusional, people.  The only remedy for this is the intentional practice of prayer and meditation.”

Spiritual Formation