How then Shall We Pray?
This Sunday morning, I sit in silence, allowing it to enfold me, anchor me, root me, teach me. Silence has become a profound place of prayer for my heart; a place for truth-telling, healing, and guidance. In the silence this morning, as I thought of many of you who receive this writing, and saw many of your faces before me, I held you in love and deep gratitude. I also took time for the Prayer of Examen which has been a powerful form of prayer in my life. Once again, I was impacted by the significance of pausing, breathing, and listening. This form of prayer has profoundly changed my life again and again, opening an interior space of relationship with Mystery. In these days, days of upheaval and unsettledness, we are invited to be people of prayer. But what does that mean? What is prayer? How then shall we pray?
Throughout my life, I have listened to hundreds, if not thousands of people. I have learned so much through listening to others and one thing I have learned is how similar our hopes, longings, and desires are. People, when they truly listen to themselves, have tremendous longings, yearnings, sorrows, griefs, pains, joys, and questions. People, as they attend to the interior space, find that they hold queries of discernment, areas of unknowing, places of confusion, and seasons of spiritual wrestling. How do we pray in these various moments of being human?
Many of these common interior places in being human are somewhat uncomfortable and sometimes disturbing. How does one pray in the midst of life’s circumstances? Depending on one’s view of the Divine, the approaches to prayer differ vastly – but what I find interesting is that most people do not pray at all. Not really. There are words spoken, routines exercised, but a real opening to the vast Mystery of Love enfolding us seems to be a far-off idea to many. How does one pray in a state of grief, of confusion, of unknowing?
As a child, I learned to share a litany of requests as a form of prayer, seeing the Divine as distant and apart from me. Over the past thirty years, through the journey of contemplation, there has been a reorientation of prayer as a movement into awareness of Presence rather than a litany of requests. This Presence is with me in all things – my work is to become aware, to open, to listen, and to receive. As I become aware, there is an opening to Wisdom in how to respond to the current day. This way of prayer has been profoundly life-changing and a continual invitation to return again and again. My sense is that prayer is a place of ‘return’ where we are reoriented into alignment with Love.
When we are aligned with Love, we are invited to draw from the inner well-spring, as Jesus taught. This is the place of living water that is available to us when we pause, breathe, and listen. When we receive from this Living Water, we move from a place of inner rest, trust, and wisdom. What might happen in our lives if we move into our days, rooted in this Living Water?
One simple and powerful way of practicing a movement into awareness of presence is through the Prayer of Examen. Explained more in the book, Walk with Me, this prayer exercise is a three-fold movement that can be especially effective through writing.
“One of my favourite ways to pray each day is with the Ignatian Prayer of Examen through journaling. I write in large letters: consolation. I express my heart through words all that has brought me life that day. What was life-giving? What was I thankful for? Where did I notice myself being energized? Where did I lose a sense of time? Where did I experience wonder? Then I write: Desolation. I fully express my fears, disappointments, anxieties, and anything else that pulled me away from my centre, the place of being rooted and grounded. I allow myself to be fully honest with my confusion, anger, angst, or pain. Finally, I write: Words of Life. (This part of the Examen is my own personal process that I’ve added to this ancient prayer practice,) I become silent and take time to listen for inner wisdom I write what I feel Love is speaking to me. This part of the prayer has been life-changing. Love enters both my consolation and desolation and guides me into truth, creating awareness, insight, and invitations to respond to.” from the book, Walk with Me
Our daily invitation is awareness. To awaken to the mystery of Presence.
When we remember the truth of our being, we awaken to the song of the stars, the unfathomable mystery of Love, the well-spring of Life.
A prayer for this day:
O Eternal Presence – we return through silence
O Eternal Love – we return through stillness
O Eternal Birther – we return through listening
O Eternal Friend – we return through breathing
(from the book, Love Breathes with Me II)
“Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe
