Prayerful shadow-dance

“It is not my ability, but my awareness of and response to God’s ability, that counts most.”

-- Corrie Ten Boom

“Without fully accepting my own flawed humanity, I can’t fully receive His perfect divinity. Prayer helps me accept me and receive Him.”

-- Yours Truly

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. As much as possible, do both at the same time.”

-- Saint Augustine

“God loves us the way we are, but way too much to leave us that way. Our prayer is the gateway to our freedom that comes through change and growth.”

-- Leighton Ford

“It is impossible to get exhausted in doing the real work of God. We get exhausted because we try to do what we consider God’s work in our own way, through our own awareness, effort, and power. If you’re getting tired doing it, and you genuinely want it to be of Him, stop and reassess.”

-- Oswald Chambers

“God waits eagerly to respond with new guidance and strength to each little act of our self-awareness, self-control, small disciplines of prayer, feeble searching after Him. And His children shall be filled to bursting if they will only humbly and sincerely hunger and thirst after what He offers freely.”

-- Richard Holloway

It is all available to us, if we simply realize that we can’t create it for ourselves. We live in a world of co-creativity, a dance of daring and delicious denouement, as His sometimes dizzy, often deranged, always totally unpredictable co-authors. We are the darkness of His Story, and the carriers of His Victory flag, but only truly visible as human as the shadow formed by His Light. We so often want to “be” the source of the light – sometimes out of fear of the full depravity of our own darkness, sometimes out of fear of the sheer intensity of His light, often just out of arrogance, ignorance, and neediness – but everything dims and becomes dull when we try. Through our obstinacy and refusal to participate, we are left hiding in the darkness, dying, and through acceptance of our role in His Story, we are brought into the light and included in Him, with full and eternal life. Simple deal, simply delivered. I accept, completely. Let’s dance, Papa and Pardner! Amen.



Shadow and Light Source – Let Them Dance

How does a part of the world leave the world? How does wetness leave water? Don’t try to put out fire by throwing on more fire! Don't wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast you run, your shadow keeps up. Sometimes it's even in front of you! Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow. But that shadow has been serving you all along. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest. I could explain this, but it will break the glass cover on your heart, and there's no fixing that. You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe. When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you, be quieter than a dove. Don't even open your mouth for even a coo.

-- Rumi

Just a little pencil in the hand of God

"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world."

-- Mother Teresa



"When the foolish man finally realizes wisdom, know that he has exhausted all that he has."



Awareness

"Is salvation obtained through action or through meditation?"

"Through neither. Salvation comes from truly seeing."

"Seeing what, Master?"

"That the gold necklace you wish to acquire is hanging around your neck. That the snake you are so frightened of is only a rope on the ground."

-- Anthony de Mello



As God lifts me off the paper for a rest (for me, not Him), and after feeling like I have been used to scribble and scribble and scribble some more, and feeling dizzy and exhausted from the seeming incoherence and yet relentless persistence of His scribbling, I lift my eyes to what He has left behind on the page, and it is this simple sketch of instruction and love.

"Pray for what you need; believe that you have received it, and it is yours."

-- Mark 11:24 (NIV)

And one last little scribbling in humble anticipation.

Prayer

"The value of consistent, fervent prayer is not that He will eventually hear us, but that we will eventually hear Him." ~William McGill

"God punishes us mildly by ignoring our half-hearted or selfish prayers and severely by answering them." ~Richard J. Needham

"When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing that He hasn't already given us - nothing at all." ~Saint Francis of Assisi

"Prayer may not always change things for you, but it most definitely can change you for things." ~Samuel M. Shoemaker

"We have to pray with our eyes on the bigness of God, not on the bigness of our difficulties." ~Oswald Chambers

"God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening deeply is the beginning of prayer." ~Mother Teresa

"Pray for what you need, believe you have received it, and it is yours." ~Bible - Mark 11:24 (NIV)

"Prayer does not ever change God, but it changes him who prays." ~Søren Kierkegaard


"Grow flowers of gratitude in the rich, fertile soil of prayer." ~Verbena Woods

Prayer is a funny thing and is so often both grossly misunderstood and sadly misused. It isn't the same thing as hoping to win the lottery (such a weak, pathetic position), and it is both foolish and futile to weakly wish that God would fix our situations or other people for us (or even fix us, for that matter, for fixing is not what's really needed), while actually not believing in either Him or ourselves, as if He were some magical, whimsical, most likely wacky wizard, and we are like Dorothy, Toto, the scarecrow, the tin man, or the cowardly lion. Talk about disempowered, disingenuous, disinherited.

He doesn't tend to engage us when we are so clueless as to who He is and who we are as His beloved children. Prayer is God's beautiful invitation to us (an access method, so to speak) into preparedness for deep interaction with Him, to help us more fully see and recognize Who we are coming into dialogue with and what He has already done for us, for all time, and that He stands ready to help us receive Him in real and true and wonderful ways. Prayer, if fully engaged in earnest, re-forms us into ready receivers and distributors of His gifts and His grace and His power.

In fact, prayer is a like a home supply transformer in an electric power delivery system that allows for the safe and effective "download" of His awesome, unlimited power into ready and practical use in our lives and in our homes, knowing that there is already more of His ready power than we could ever need or effectively use (because full access would totally obliterate us), and it is us who must change to acquire and utilize it in our human lives.



Weak prayer makes God small, mean, and fickle in our minds, and us weak and pathetic. Faithful prayer makes us His, glad, and sure in our hearts, and Him His Huge Magnanimous, Magnificent, Marvelous Self - the Ultimate and Totally Reliable Power Plant of the entire universe, made accessible and totally available at a human and personal level.

Becoming a living prayer - individually and in community

OK, folks, His defining act is clear, our instructions are clear, and now comes our execution. It is our turn to demonstrate that we got it, and it shows up in the caring consciousness of our daily living, not in the grandiosity of our planned gestures or our wary suspicions of each other. With yesterday's celebration behind and inside us, we are now - through our mere choosing and free will - singular, spiritual "beings," reveling in our exhilarating opportunity, and not just unconscious, dualistic, worldly "doings," fretting every step of a dangerous journey. This is the choice at hand, and the price has already been paid in full. There is nothing we have to do to deserve, earn, justify, or become worth this totally free gift but just agree to hold each other's hand and STEP right into it - into the Kingdom He created for us - carrying our collective heart along with us.

The following excerpts are offered as encouragement and support, and thanks, Arun, for the gift of this book several years ago. It is coming in very handy today.

"If, like Jesus, we are to become a living prayer, it cannot be in a purely quantitative way, by futilely multiplying prayer upon prayer for the rest of our lives. We can only be faithful to the mandate to unceasing prayer when we seek it qualitatively, by reverently listening and discerning the presence of God in every situation in life; by conforming our hearts and minds and behavior with the words and attitudes we articulate in our most heartfelt prayer; and by embracing our whole life, in its beauty, fullness, richness, and variety, presenting it as a sacred gift to God, requesting that He forgive us for where we went astray, redeem our journey's every step, and then agree once again to live for and through us."

-- In the Spirit of Happiness; The Monks of New Skete

"So the interior, spiritual life is not supposed to be an exercise in narcissism, in self-absorption and self-satisfaction. This would only further fragment our life. The goal of a healthy spiritual development is the full integration of the adult personality. This includes the redemption of every aspect of our life, from negativities, backsliding, unconscious influences, ignorance, malice, and sin. No one, of course, can ever accomplish this as an isolated individual, though attaining a sense of individuality and autonomy is an important step in growing up. But a further aspect of developing is the open sharing, the total giving away of ourselves in community. What we are and have is a gift and talent that will only corrode unless we eventually use it in the service of love for others. We are asked to grow closer together."

-- In the Spirit of Happiness; The Monks of New Skete

"And the message of Jesus and the New Testament is unambiguous: love must extend to all. There is no one we are permitted not to love. The manner in which we love the various 'others' that make up our life - our spouse, our children, our parents, our siblings, our closest friends, a casual business acquaintance, the person sitting next to us on the bus - will vary according to the nature of each relationship. More important, acting for the good of others can and must transcend our romantic or sentimental feelings and affections - what we ordinarily seem to think love is. Furthermore, thanks to him, this is within our power to accomplish, simply by virtue of our free will - by the act of calling on him for help. This is the central struggle of man's integrated spiritual practice: to will the highest good for each person we meet, without exception. Our attitude and actions must be based on this choice and intent to be and do good for the other - for all others, for that matter - whatever we may happen to feel at the moment. Well then, what does this love look like?"

-- In the Spirit of Happiness; The Monks of New Skete

"Real love sees what is needed in the moment with eyes of caring and compassion, sees what is missing, and seeks to respond in a deeply meaningful way - in fact, will even sacrificially lay itself down in direct response. It is deep and true contemplation and thoughtful perception of and reflection on the other - regardless of fleeting feelings - whether God or our neighbor. This is why love is the supreme characteristic of the interior, contemplative life. We cannot hope to act corrrectly - lovingly - without first facing what God's reality is asking of us RIGHT NOW. Love is the root of every virtue and good. Love has no limits or prerequisite conditions. This is why love is not only the source of our humanity, it is the crown of the mystical life: in our striving to become conscious of the reality of all realities, love opens for us the ultimate, infinite reality that permeates everything, the very essence and expansiveness and extravagance of what we call God."

-- In the Spirit of Happiness; The Monks of New Skete

Deeply feeling each precious, prayerful heart

Last week, if you recall, I mentioned seeing the agonizingly brilliant film, "The Wrestler," and in it there were a couple of excrutiatingly painful scenes in which Randy "The Ram" Robinson is given one last (and very undeserved) chance by his estranged daughter to meet with her for dinner and attempt to patch up years of neglect and oblivion, with this very fragile and precious opportunity (very tentatively given) to regain some semblance of a relationship with this one person in his life he truly cares about (or so we want to think). And then we helplessly watch him blow it (again), when a little beer, some drugs, a little reminiscing, and a girl shows up to stroke his desperately needy ego one last time, and his appearance at his daughter's house the next night to try to explain and ask for forgiveness (again) is brutal beyond words.

The pain of this moment is white hot, because you know he really does love her, at least in feelings, but he is so lost in his addiction and lifestyle that he is unable to show it with any meaningful, reliable action to support those feelings. And then you realize with a loud thud, ... OMG, this is all of us. This is our normal state - the state of the human condition. We try so hard to do right by others who we claim to care about. And we keep screwing it up, over and over again. And then, in our embarrassment and humiliation, we shift to thinking we deserve endless slack for our sad, endless string of ongoing mistakes and oversights and our total inability to really and truly show up, and we get bitter and frustrated and ultimately jaded and just plain pissed off at others' expectations of us, when in reality, we know deep down we just can't do it - it's too f###ing hard!!! That's when I realized how much I am praying, and with the compassionate, empathetic heart of Henri Nouwen, who has been there and understands, because I see myself and so many others in good ol' Randy, and God help us all, and we so desperately need His constant compassion and forgiveness, because chances are we're not going to find too much of it in this world of infinite hurt and infinite distraction from responsibility, unless we get praying.


"Today I imagined my inner self as a place crowded and tingling with pins and needles. How could I receive anyone in my prayer when there is no real place for them to be free and relaxed in here? When I am still so self-centered, so full of my own preoccupations and distractions, my petty jealousies, my angry, self-centered feelings, that anyone who dare enters there will surely get hurt. I had a very vivid realization that I must create some free space in my innermost being so that I may indeed invite others to enter and be heard and healed. To pray for others means to offer others a hospitable place where I can really listen to their needs and pains. Compassion, therefore, calls for a disciplined and honest self-scrutiny that can ultimately lead to inner gentleness. If I could have a gentle 'interiority' -- a heart of soft flesh and not of hard stone, a healthy, inviting perspective, a room with some spots on which one might walk barefooted -- then God and my fellow humans could meet each other there. Then the center of my heart can become the place where God can hear the prayers for my neighbors and embrace them completely with His love, with no needy interruptions from me.

... Often I have said to people, 'I will pray for you,' but how often did I really enter into the full reality of what that truly means? I now see how indeed I can enter deeply into the broken heart of another and pray to God from his or her center. When I really bring my friends and the many I pray for into my own innermost being and deeply feel their pains, their struggles, their cries of desperation in my own soul, then I leave myself, so to speak, and become them, and only then can I have genuine compassion and truly care. Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless hurts and needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I have come to realize that compassion is not my gift to them but God's gift to me (and thank You). I cannot embrace the world, but surely God can and does. I cannot pray, really, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are - that is, when God allowed us to enter into His intimate life by His joining us in the flesh - it became possible for us to share in His infinite compassion and understanding. In praying for others, I lose myself and my misery and become the other, only to be so joyfully found by the divine love which holds the whole of humanity in a warm, compassionate embrace."

-- Henri Nouwen, in The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery

Prayer

I don't believe there could be a better way to start 2009 than in deep concentration on the very rich subject of prayer. Prayer is quite a misunderstood practice, held in a very limited, naive way by many who would only seek God out to have Him solve their latest toughest problem or to save them in their next hour of most desperate need - i.e.; as a "last resort" kind of gesture in which there's usually very little "cheerful (or any kind of, except maybe to be disappointed or let down again) expectancy," which comes only from intimate awareness and oft-repeated experience. Prayer is much more of an "ongoing conversation" (than a desperate act) that accompanies a powerful "way of life" (vs. the occasional gesture) and reflects a profound "personal relationship with Him" (vs. a fear-based and trembling "visit to the Wizard of Oz"). As such, I thought I would tap a few masters on the subject to reveal and explore the deeper truth about prayer. Enjoy the ride!

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea what I am doing or where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the sincere desire to please You does, in fact, please You.
And I hope I have that sincere desire in the heart of all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that deep desire.
And I know that if I do this You will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
-- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

"Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before and with God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep, ongoing, and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this."

-- Thomas Merton

"Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow Someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched. ... Prayer is first of all listening for and to God. It requires a total openness. God is always speaking; He's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity with Him. ... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue, in harmony ... an aligned and intimate conversation with God."

-- Henri Nouwen

"To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. ... Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts -- beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful -- can be thought in the presence of God. ... Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue."

-- Henri Nouwen, in Clowning in Rome

"Prayer is basic. Prayer is basic because it provides the primary language for everything that takes place on the way of Jesus. If we go to a shopping mall in North America, we speak English to get what we want. If we go to a restaurant in France, we speak French to order our meal. If we travel in Greece, we speak Greek to find our way to the Acropolis. And if we decide to follow Jesus, we pray. We pray because it is the only language we have for speaking to the God revealed in Jesus. It is also the only language we have for listening to the commands and blessings and guidance that God provides through Jesus. God is nothing if not personal. Both God and we humans are most personal, most characteristically our unique selves, in our use of language. When language has to do with God and us, us and God, we call that prayer. What I want to insist on is that prayer is not something added onto the life of following him. It is the language and way of being in which that life is lived out, nurtured, developed, revealed, informed; the language in which it believes, loves, explores, seeks, and finds. There are no shortcuts or detours. Prayer is the cradle language among those who are 'born anew' and then the intimate, familiar, developing language of 'growing up' to follow the way of Jesus. But because in our secularized society prayer is often associated with what people of 'religious' interests pursue or with formal acts conducted by professional leaders, it is necessary from time to time to call attention to the fact that prayer is the street language of the soul that we use with Jesus, who walks the streets with us."

-- Eugene H. Peterson, in The Jesus Way

"If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get His help, and you won't be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who 'worry their prayers' are like wind-whipped waves. Don't think you're going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open."

-- James 1:5-8 (The Message)

Isn't it true (let's be honest with ourselves, folks) that we rarely really know what we're doing? So, in other words, be with Him in the midst of everything, knowing that you will not have to search hard and long to find Him, and you will always get what you need. In other words, take Mark 11:24 (one of my very favorite Bible verses) very seriously:

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

And now for my deeply personal, thankful "practice:"

Dear God:

I am so moved and thankful to be able to finally see Your magnificent hand at work. As I enter a new calendar year, 2009, while almost halfway through my 55th year in this human form called "Jim," I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this ability to see the beauty and perfection in having been planted amidst such painful brokenness. As a young child You did this, and I could only feel my own brokenness, desperation, fear, and victimhood, and I let go of any thoughts of You and became bitter and insecure about my mistreatment at the hands of others, as well as becoming an "excellent performer" amidst the chaos, as a carefully measured way to survive it all and look above it. (These were my very young Bruce Wayne days, from the early part of the movie, "Batman Begins," where chaos reigns supreme and overwhelms his childhood.)

As a young adult You did it again, then time and time again, and I became filled up with myself as I began to think that something was "wrong" with others and the world (having totally lost sight of myself) and it was my job to fix it all for them, and I went through several iterations of "attempting to fix it" for several communities in which You planted me, and I could only sustain my own false "magnificence" and "savior status" for so long before I and it collapsed in total exhaustion, shame, and human wreckage, often led by my own. You stood by diligently and let me try and fail, time and time again, in the blind, so that I could finally begin to see, on my own terms, that we are creative partners, and that I was observing and learning and failing my way back into the originally designed partnership. (These were my young adult, tough guy, immature, totally ego-driven days of creating my false superhero status - my "Batman" - as "Jokers" began to appear everywhere, and I set out to take them head on and destroy them, all while destroying myself in the process.)

And here I am now, as a gradually maturing adult (who still has the tender heart of a child, and how did You do that?), planted amidst it all in overwhelming and unprecedented diversity and volume, where so much of it is calling out my name and desperately asking for help and hope, but now I am more fully aware of and thankful for the "perceived" overwhelming pain and drama of human existence, so that I can have the privilege of seeing what You have done and are doing for me play out in the lives of others, so that I can simply stand by diligently, with a heart of love and service, and without too many words or attempted fixes, as You boldly and adoringly move others through their own painful observing and learning through failing process, all with me not having to do anything more than marvel and delight in Your magnificence, as I consistently see and reflect the beauty of their struggle, standing firmly in the hope they seek. Thank You for the clarity. I am so clear. Thank You for trusting me. I am so trusting. Thank you for the love and tenderness. I am overflowing with love and tenderness for so many hurting souls today, and what an honor and privilege. (These are my "Alfred" days, for which I am so incredibly grateful, and now, as I look back on all of it, I am grateful for all of it, seeing its necessity.)

Amen.

This is my life's living, breathing prayer.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

-- T.S. Eliot
(which I picked out and chose to read, having finally come
to understand it, at my father's funeral in late 2003)