A Box for Prayers

February 25th, 2011 | Click to Comment

Thinking back over the week, it’s interesting to recall several conversations about prayer. Not a subject that typically recurs so often. With life moving quickly along from one thing to the next, I didn’t notice this thread weaving through the past few days until I stopped to reflect on what the week has brought.

This is a reason to write a blog, by the way. It helps me pay attention. The blog becomes a box for reflection, and its presence is a constant reminder to place something in it. A box for prayer can work the same way.

To one of these conversations from the week a friend brought a gift she had received—a beautiful handmade wooden box, shaped something like a medium-sized apple. The lid lifts off with a long stem-like handle to reveal a rounded interior, sanded smooth, the grain visible in the dark wood. It has just enough heft to feel solid in the palm of one’s hand.  After living with the gift for a few weeks, she realized that it would be a box for her prayers.

All sorts of prayers can be placed in such a box. Prayers for others can be held there, represented by a name written on a slip of paper. A gift that the day brings, a worry we can’t let go of, a feeling of fear or grief or longing—the concern and gratitude and pleas that color our spiritual life all have a place in a box for prayers.

To give our prayers a tangible expression is a comfort. A similar practice happens on a larger scale in Old Jerusalem where the Wailing Wall, or Western Wall, holds the prayers of visitors who tuck their written words into spaces between the ancient stones. The space is considered holy because of the Jewish tradition that the Divine Presence remains there. More than a million notes are placed there every year. Semi-annually the notes are collected and buried on the Mount of Olives.

Most of us can’t place our prayers in the Wailing Wall, but we can set aside a sacred space of our own. It might feel right to ask a blessing on that space, or it may be enough to let the blessing come from the prayers with which we fill it. They may be in the form of written words, or in a simple nonverbal prayer such as lighting a candle.

A box for prayer might be a metaphorical one as well. It can be a place to visit that feels set apart. It can be a time of day. It can be the experience of sacred writings, or music, or art. It can be a ritual that helps to place us in the presence of the divine. It can be anything that helps us see that we are standing on holy ground.

What have you found that serves as a box for prayer?

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The Red River Gorge at Nightfall

January 5th, 2011 | 4 Comments

I had a chance to visit the Red River Gorge over the holidays—a brief but beautiful drive with my family on the return trip from a Christmas visit.

We arrived at dusk, knowing our time was limited but wanting to see all we could before dark. The main road was snow-covered and a new snow had fallen, softening the landscape and offering up each bare tree and dark evergreen in clear contrast against the field of white.

It was immensely quiet there. The trees closed overhead and the light faded as we wound down to the river. As night began to fall, the snow reflected what little light remained. It held off the darkness, creating the sense of a moment outside of time in an otherworldly place.

Robert Frost’s words kept echoing through my mind: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” Gazing into awe, I was humbled by the power and mystery of this life.

The Gorge, a place of dramatic beauty, sits right off the highway. We usually drive by it on our way to somewhere else. But stopping by those woods on that snowy evening was a memory, and perhaps even a glimpse of eternity, to hold for a long time.

Have you had a glimpse of the eternal?

Comments (4) | Paying Attention,Seasons,Soul Tending Tags: , , , ,

The Restorative Power of Deep Attention

October 27th, 2010 | 1 Comment

This week I watched “Rivers and Tides,” a wonderful film directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, about the art of Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy works outdoors, often in the Scottish countryside where he lives. He uses elements from the natural world—leaves, stones, moss, bracken, ice—in surprising ways to create beautiful and powerful forms.

Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers & Tides

Much of his work endures only for a few hours, or even minutes, undone by elements as natural as the materials he uses. He brings to his work the expectation that it will soon yield to water, heat, gravity, wind, growth, decay, and time, incorporating nature’s claim on his creations into the viewer’s experience of the art. His ephemeral art, made of elements yielded by that particular place, are offered back to the landscape. Nature reclaims the elements of his work and once again changes their form. He says of a serpentine line of ice, made from icicle fragments and glowing gold in the rising sun, “The very thing that brings the work to life is the thing that will cause its death,” as the sculpture begins to melt.

In one sequence (you can view a clip here) he uses bleached driftwood to build a beautiful, domed structure with a perfectly round hole in the top, like the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome. He constructs it at a place where river and sea meet, the lines of the rounded walls echoing the swirling motion of the water next to it. As the tide comes in, the water washes up around the dome and lifts a few of the logs at its base. They separate from the structure, encircling it and becoming part of the circular flow mirrored by the lines of the dome. As it yields to the water, the dome becomes an even clearer expression of the motion it is made to suggest.

As Goldsworthy says in the film, “It doesn’t feel at all like destruction.” Eventually it is carried away by that very motion and incorporated into a flow it could only emulate when it was intact. He could be speaking of this circular structure later in the film when he says of another piece, “The sea has taken the work and made more of it than I ever could have hoped.”

Watching this film, I could feel my heartbeat slow, my breathing deepen, my muscles relax. When it ended, I felt the kind of inner quiet and spaciousness that comes after prayer or meditation. A sense of reverence infuses the film. It evokes a sense of wonder and of awe.

Goldsworthy’s rooted presence in the natural world, and his ability to convey it through his work and his words, are a rare gift. He brings deep attention to growth and change in nature, to the details of creation. He knows the characteristics of rocks and leaves, the path of the river, the ebb and flow of the tide. He seems to be exploring how to live in relationship with the overwhelming power of the natural world, finding ways to meet it with his own power as an artist, and working to know the world around him and his place in it.

His work is a reminder that we are part of a miraculous creation, in its enormity and power as well as its specificity and detail. Living with the kind of attention he brings helps us to be present for moments of divine clarity, when life on this earth shimmers with the presence of a reality beyond the one we can know.

What helps foster a sense of reverence in your life?

Comments (1) | Creativity,Paying Attention Tags: , , ,

The Things that Save Our Lives

August 13th, 2010 | 3 Comments

I’ve begun reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World, a title that speaks to the significance of our embodied lives and our daily experience of the world around us. Her book explores the meaning inherent in our physical existence. The chapters describe ways of inhabiting our bodies and our lives that help answer the spiritual longing for more—“ more meaning, more feeling, more connection, more life.”

“The accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life,” she says, “suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it.”

The friend who recommended this book called Taylor’s “an earthy spirituality,” and it is exactly that. She rejects the separation of earth and spirit, of body and soul, found in many spiritual writings. She sees that split as more an injection of the history of Western thought than the essence of a life of faith. She makes the point that Christianity at its heart reveres the life of the body through its reverence for the Incarnation. In her words, Christianity takes body and blood very seriously.

Barbara Brown Taylor is an excellent writer and I am finding both pleasure and meaning in her work. I appreciate the way she describes the practices that keep her grounded in the world and, at the same time, connected to the divine.

But the question that keeps prodding me is one she lifts up in her introduction, a question from which her book arises. Asked to speak at a church gathering, she inquired what the priest wanted her to talk about. In his wisdom, he went straight to the heart of life and asked her to “Come tell us what is saving your life now.”

There’s a question. What is so important right now that our lives depend upon it? How do we hold onto what will give life meaning or at least keep us from the pit of despair? Our answers change, but the question remains essential. I’m learning something from how she answers that question, and thinking about how to answer it for myself. I think conversations in which we can share the things that are saving our life are themselves part of what saves us.

For me, the process of learning to see helps. I’m learning to see how the spiritual resonates in the physical world, learning to see patterns in how life unfolds, learning to more clearly see other people. I think that learning to see is a way of learning compassion, as well.

So I would love to hear—What’s saving your life right now?

Comments (3) | Books I'm Reading,Inspiration in the Everyday,Soul Tending Tags: , , ,

Seeing Those We Meet as an Expression of the Divine

June 9th, 2010 | 4 Comments

A friend recently shared with me her sense that everyone we meet is an expression of the divine. Maybe that’s what is implied in saying that we’re all children of God, but her way of stating it captured my attention.

A day later I was on a plane for New York City, and her words remained with me while I was traveling. As other passengers claimed their seats, I considered the greater connection we shared. In that light, the aircraft seemed a container of sacred space.

In the city, among rivers of pedestrians filling the sidewalks, the press of engines and car horns through the streets, and the whoosh of full subway cars gliding by, I moved in close proximity to thousands of other people in a single day. So many souls; I was one among many. It changes everything to remember that each one is a way of seeing God. When the light changed at the street corner, I joined the wave of people washing across the avenue, part of the ocean of humanity in that city, upon this earth.

Thinking of other people as expressions of the divine lets everyone in. It shows that adopting tunnel vision regarding what I want is to choose a kind of blindness. All these people line the walls of that tunnel, each with their own ways of manifesting life. Each one matters. When I open my eyes, I see that every place where our lives intersect is holy.

Yet sometimes it’s too much, letting in all that humanity. Their energy clashes. Their oblivion is painful. They make such a mess, leaving chaos behind wherever they go. Like the trash blown up against the curb early on Sunday morning. Like the young woman dropping a gum wrapper on the stairs of the subway in front of the old man sweeping up and spitting a round of Spanish in response. There are reasons why we block out the press of life around us.

But if people are the diverse expressions of a divine commonality, we inherit a connection to all of them. Other people are the sea we’re moving through, whether we’re fighting the water or swimming in it. We, too, make up this sea of life. We’re part of a miraculously varied and endlessly energetic creation. The diversity we see out there is within us as well, and the expression we give to it makes us an integral part of the whole.

We really are all in this together. Why is it hard to learn a truth so old and so familiar?

Comments (4) | Finding Courage,Paying Attention,Soul Tending Tags: , , , ,

Simple Prayers that Fit our Lives

May 1st, 2010 | 5 Comments

Part 2 in a series on Breath Prayers

It’s unfortunate that so little teaching about breath prayer is offered in today’s church. These prayers fit beautifully into the lives we lead in this time and culture. They’re brief and portable, a manageable doorway into a richer spiritual life. And they help to meet our great need for spiritual respite.

A breath prayer is connected with the body, offering a tangible experience of prayer. The life force that draws breath in and out of us through every moment of our lives, with or without our awareness, tells us something about the presence of God. Similarly, a breath prayer is a reminder of God’s presence.

There are many ways to center our prayers in our breathing, including simply becoming quiet and aware of the flow of the breath. Awareness of the breath is a good place to start in prayer; it helps us to relax. But adding words can help to keep a prayerful focus.

Words for a breath prayer can come from poetry, scripture, or prayers we write ourselves. It claims an attitude toward God, a longing, a request, a need, a hope, a confession—an opening of the heart to the divine. When we adopt a prayer to say in rhythm with our breathing throughout the day, we acknowledge something about ourselves, something about God, and something about that relationship. We allow the prayer to become part of us, to shape our thoughts and our heart.

The words to a breath prayer are brief and simple, like a mantra. It does not voice everything we think, and isn’t made to sum up all that we trust in, or hope for, or seek. It uses pared-down language that suggests more than it states. It points beyond us, toward the divine object of our longing.

For example, part of Psalm 13 reads, “Give light to my eyes.” I love the line and the wealth of meaning it implies. A breath prayer using that line might be, “God of all wisdom, give light to my eyes.”

The words to the prayer are said in rhythm with the breath, a phrase on inhalation and a phrase on exhalation. A single breath, in and out, might complete the prayer; a longer prayer might require two full breaths.

You might find words for a breath prayer written in scripture or penned by spiritual teachers or poets. The possibilities are everywhere. In the next post, I’ll offer more from the Psalms.

What words inspire you?

You might also be interested in Part  1 of this series, Breathing a Prayer, on wordless breath prayers. Or in Part 3, Praying the Psalms.

Comments (5) | Prayer,Soul Tending Tags: , ,

Meeting Beauty Halfway

April 16th, 2010 | 2 Comments

It doesn’t seem hard to find beauty in springtime. The world is woozy with blossom-scented air; flowering branches shower the earth with petals. The breeze carries birdsong and life is abundant again.

But I keep thinking about your thoughtful responses to my previous post. The insights there remind me that it’s a gift to be able to appreciate these things, and that there have been times when the capacity to enjoy them has been beyond me.

I know what it’s like to miss out on spring, worried about something going on, or not going on, in my life, or even how I’ll look in summer clothes. Being blinded by those concerns, large or small, is a kind of imprisonment. Life can be hard, and even harder when the restorative experience of beauty is beyond our reach. The view is oppressive when we can’t see past ourselves.

It’s good to do what we can to be open to beauty, to try to meet it halfway. But when our own efforts aren’t enough to haul us out of a dark place, the possibility remains of being seized by something beautiful. It can break through walls we didn’t realize were there, and reveal something wonderful about this world. Beauty seeks us out, calls to something within us, urging us to open our eyes and see.

When I watch the light recede from the landscape and gather in the sky before dark, nothing seems more important than the changing color on the horizon. I don’t know what allows me to be caught by the scene. Maybe I’ve learned something about getting beyond myself, or maybe the patient presence of beauty through all these years has finally permeated my distracted mind.

At least I understand enough now to be grateful for the light, and also for the ability to notice it. I try to pay attention, but I don’t know whether appreciating a glorious sky is a reward for my efforts or simply the creation shaking me awake. In either case it’s an unearned gift. In either case I’m grateful.

Have you experienced something beautiful lately?

Comments (2) | Creativity Tags: , , , ,

A Definition of Faith

April 6th, 2010 | 2 Comments

One of the things I love about John O’Donohue’s Anam Ċara is its deeply rooted optimism. It does not deny the darkness in life, yet conveys unwavering trust in life’s goodness. His assurance of life’s faithfulness is itself a wonderful definition of faith:

“Creative expectation brings you healing and renewal. If you could trust your soul, you would receive every blessing you require. Life itself is the great sacrament through which we are wounded and healed. If we live everything, life will be faithful to us.”

This is a powerful statement, one that I’m drawn to and also challenged by. I’m not sure that I want to live everything. There are plenty of difficult, painful, and trying things that I’d like very much to avoid. Yet when those things arrive in spite of every effort to turn them away, there is no choice but to live them. And when that happens, I’d like to believe that walking through a dark valley eventually leads toward healing and wholeness.

How do we learn to trust life, knowing its power to wound? How do we overcome the fear that we won’t be safe, loved, or cared for if we aren’t good enough? How do we cultivate creative expectation when we’re weary and disappointed?

O’Donohue points toward the inherent strength of the soul. He knows there is a place within us that is eternal, where we can go “to be nourished, strengthened, and renewed.” He offers the assurance that “The deepest things that you need are not elsewhere. They are here and now in that circle of your own soul.” The presence of God is within us always.

That presence is manifest in a chorus that echoes throughout scripture: “Do not be afraid.” It is spoken to ancient ancestors and through the words of the prophets. It is the message of angels to Mary and Joseph, to the shepherds who visited the Christ-child, and to the father of John the Baptist. Jesus says to his followers, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.” Holy reassurance seems a universal stepping stone toward a life of genuine faith, one that trusts in the work of God.

Faith understands that the power of God permeates all of life, making growth, healing, and renewal part of the experience of being alive. Faith trusts that God is faithful. Faith frees us from being trapped in our circumstances. Faith rests in the assurance that God is always at work in the world and in us, and invites us to live into a greater vision of all that life can be.

Comments (2) | Books I'm Reading,Faith Tags: , , , ,

Beyond Personal Growth: Trusting the Mystery of Transformation

April 1st, 2010 | 9 Comments

It took a long time to make much progress through John O’Donohue’s Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. I mean that in the best of ways. The Gaelic term, anam ċara is literally “soul friend,” and if books can be friends, this is such a one. Most pages hold something rich enough to send me off thinking about it for a while. I’ve kept returning through about two-thirds of it now, and today this is the passage on my mind:

Spirituality is the art of transfiguration. We should not force ourselves to change by hammering our lives into any pre-determined shape. We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program or plan for our lives. Rather, we need to practice a new art of attention to the inner rhythm of our days and lives. This attention brings a new awareness of our own human and divine presence.

A willingness to grow is a good thing, but the programs and plans available to encourage our development are overwhelming. Bookstore shelves teem with personal growth books, religious and secular, as if we can’t stop flagellating ourselves with agendas for self-improvement. And yes, I’m familiar with these store displays because I’m irresistibly drawn to them. It’s hard to pass up some bit of wisdom that will make me more capable, more fulfilled, more deserving. When an article promises to share Five Steps to Happiness, I can’t help but read it.

I want to grow, but I’d prefer to do it without all the messy uncertainty and annoying unpredictability of not knowing the way. I would love to learn what to do and just do it. But O’Donohue spells out what’s lacking in such a prescribed approach:

It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than the idea of will. Too often people try to change their lives using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one’s own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yourself, and you can spend years lost in the wilderness of your own mechanical, spiritual programs. You can perish in a famine of your own making.

Creating, growing, transforming—these are all mysterious processes. They happen underground, in the depths, in the dark. Paying attention while a process unfolds that we can neither control nor rush is a counter-cultural way of life. It can be hard to learn and harder to trust.

But if we lose faith and limit ourselves to the kind of processes we can control, we banish ourselves to the wilderness O’Donohue describes. Will power is hard work, and doesn’t make for a very joyful life. Maybe it’s trust power I need to work on.

What kind of power keeps you moving forward?

Comments (9) | Books I'm Reading,Creativity Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Kaleidoscope of Divine Names

March 23rd, 2010 | 2 Comments

Names for God: Part 3 of a Series

The dozens of names used for God in the bible include beautiful and imaginative ones, evidence of long history and deep relationship with the Holy One beyond names. Each name for God stretches to articulate a particular experience of the sacred: beautiful, bright hope in Morning Star, the source and end of all in Alpha and Omega, the object of longing in Desire of All Nations, ever-renewing strength and refreshment in a Fountain, the steady certainty of a Rock, just to name a few. It’s interesting to scan such lists as the biblical names for God here, and names for the different aspects of the trinity here.

Jesus names his relationship with the source of life, strength, and guidance by referring to the divine as Father, suggesting a closer and more intimate relationship than the traditional Lord. He is also naming a divine relationship when he refers to himself as the vine and his followers as the branches.

The names we use are necessarily metaphorical—suggestions for ways of thinking of God based on something we’ve experienced of God and of the world. Maybe it is tender love, or transforming power; it could be a light in the dark, or a stone rolled away; it might be a new way of seeing our circumstances, or a sense of connection to another person. We say God is love, strength, vision, light, renewal, unity—all describe God, none is the final word.

Any name or metaphor reflects a single flash of perspective—one bit of colored light in the kaleidoscope of names, one of myriad possibilities for describing an experience or relationship with God. None is complete, so any name used exclusively becomes false. If God is always Almighty, then we may miss the still, small voice. If God is always He, then our sense of God is not only limited to masculine traits and roles, but to human ones. If the divine is just another being, much like another person only magnified, we may not be prepared to encounter other expressions of the holy.

Learning to use a variety of names for God has enriched my faith. My spiritual life grew deeper when I began to think of God in new ways, with new names. Allowing my understanding of God to grow has helped me to grow.

May the faithful ever continue to conceive new names for the divine, and may those names be accepted into living, growing communities of faith.

Are there names for God that you resist? What names are most resonant for you?

You might also be interested in:

Part 1: Post Cards from the Divine

Part 2: Naming the Ineffable

Comments (2) | Prayer,Soul Tending Tags: , , ,
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