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Our Rector Chris has pointed out a new way of praying.
Prayer like breathing - in ... and out ... - the special name of God - Yahweh.
- Yah ... Weh ..., Yah ... Weh ...
Prayer is an exciting place to explore.
There is a whole range, world indeed, of praying.
We sometimes, without thinking about it, limit it to intercession.
We cannot but use that because our world and we have needs and wants that occupy much of our thoughts and hearts.
But intercession has its problems: it implies that we are interceding with God to change what he was going to do.
Often we suggest to God what he should do.
We are human and we cannot help it - but we should open our eyes to the vast dimensions of prayer which go beyond intercession.
Once you can begin to become free from our natural "shopping list" of prayers,
and learn that two way conversation with God starts not in speaking but in listening, then a whole new life of prayer becomes possible.
It is the whole realm of your life lived in the light of God.
George Herbert has a poem which simply lists the possible dimensions of prayer.
It is so condensed that each phrase, each word, needs to be taken apart and thought about - and indeed prayed:
Prayer
by George Herbert
Prayer: the Church's banquet; Angels' age;
God's breath in man returning to his birth;
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage;
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against th' Almighty; sinners' tower;
Reversed thunder; Christ-side-piercing spear;
The six-days' world transposing in an hour;
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness; and peace; and joy; and love; and bliss;
Exalted Manna; gladness of the best;
Heaven in ordinary; man well dressed;
The milky way; the bird of paradise;
Church-bells beyond the stars heard; the soul's blood;
The land of spices; something understood.
Prayer, the Church's banquet,
The bible is full of food:
from the first apple, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;
via the mess of potage;
the manna in the wilderness and the complaints about it -
"Who shall give us flesh to eat?
We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely;
the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic,
but now our soul is dried away, there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes";
The wedding feast at Cana when they ran out of wine and Jesus and his mother were there, and the water became wine;
To the central feast of the bible, the last supper in which
Jesus took the bread and giving thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying,
Take eat, this is my body which is given for you - and likewise afterwards with the wine - this is my blood shed for you;
And finally the resurrection breakfast by the lake when he cooked the fish.
Yes the bible is full of food.
And our church has as its central activity the repetition of that last supper by which it becomes real to us.
But how does it become real?
In prayer - we are given that small glimpse of the heavenly banquet at which Christ, the one high priest, presides.
All the riches of heaven are there set out for us to taste and satisfy ourselves with all we could ever want.
O taste and see how gracious the Lord is!
(Prayer is the) Angel's Age,
(Perhaps the most difficult to understand:
Perhaps to pray is to enter the Age of the Angels - The time, the Era of the Angels. )
To pray is to enter into that age, that realm, in which God and his messengers are the reality which transcends our earthly concerns.
(Prayer is) God's breath in man returning to his birth,
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
The very breath we breathe is a biological product of a wonderful creation.
When we pray we come back into touch with our creator.
God's breath in man returning to his birth:
Yah ... weh ... Yah ... weh ...
(Prayer is) The soul in paraphrase,
When we paraphrase we sum up and express in new words something that we find hard to understand.
Prayer is the self expression of our souls, a different way of understanding our souls.
We find it hard enough to be in touch with our own bodies - to get in touch with our own souls seems beyond the power of any of us -
and yet through prayer - by seeing the image of God in our minds, we begin to recognise his pattern in each other, and finally in ourselves.
(Prayer is) the heart in pilgrimage,
Prayer is the heart on a pilgrimage.
Our central being, yearning to centre itself on God, to find the way, follow the way, arrive at its destination.
Our calling is to be a pilgrim people - not at home - but on a journey to the centre of our world, to God himself.
(Prayer is) The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Prayer is to look at our world from a new perspective.
To measure it against the absolute truths of God.
To set up a plumbline to see just what is straight and what is out of true.
To sound out the heights and face up to the depths.
(Prayer is) an Engine against th' Almighty,
Part of God's understanding with us is that prayer works.
To know that is also to know that it follows that much of our human understanding of the way things are must be rethought.
(For George Herbert an engine was not the internal combustion engine or even the external combustion steam engine -
but simply any mechanical device - a lever - a key.)
Prayer is a lever to get God moving - only who moves when you press on it is another matter!
"Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world". (Archimedes)
Give me a prayer and I will move God himself, --- or me.
(Prayer is) the sinners' tower,
When all else fails and we retreat into whatever safety we can find within ourselves - there in prayer is our castle,
fortified against all attack because it exists not within our own being but within God's.
Only sinners are allowed into this tower.
The righteous can fend for themselves, they don't have a prayer, God help them!
(Prayer is) Reversed thunder,
Lightning striking up from us to God, reversing the natural laws of cause and effect, striking at the heart of things to change, not God but us.
(Prayer is) a Christ-side-piercing spear,
And they pierced his side with a spear for he was already dead
so He who was dead for us, and rose again, knows about the side piercing spear.
It guarantees his attention, nothing like a spear for grabbing your attention.
In prayer we have a captive audience - though who is captor and who is captive is for loving negotiation.
(Prayer:) The six-days' world transposing in an hour,
Prayer takes our ordinary weekday life and transposes it into God's key - sets it to his music - lets us dance to his tune.
(Prayer is) A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
And that tune threatens the materialistic basis of our world.
It is not good news to those who are not in harmony with it, who do not recognise its nature.
(Prayer is) Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
And that is its nature.
It is not harsh, it does not go to war, it is not misery, it is not hate, it is not despair.
Are you hard? - It is soft!
Are you aggressive? It is peaceful!
Are you sad? It is your joy!
Are you full of hate? It is love for you!
Are you unhappy? It is your bliss!
(Prayer is) Exalted Manna,
Food for those starving in the wilderness.
Exalted food, spiritual food for those whose soul is starving within them.
(Prayer is) the gladness of the best,
There's a motto for the Christian.
You want happiness? You want to be the best? You want to achieve something?
Then pray - Prayer is the gladness of the best!
(Prayer is ) Heaven in ordinary,
In prayer we take the ordinary concerns of us ordinary beings, and in it and through it we find heaven.
(Prayer is ) man well dressed,
It is what we were made for and shows us off at our best when we are not showing off at all - but just being the persons God made.
(Prayer is ) The milky way,
Right across the width of the heavens from one side to the other is that starry bridge across the sky,
from earth to heaven and back again.
Sometimes we can't see it for all the harsh glare of our own creating.
But there it is all the same.
(Prayer is ) the bird of paradise,
The most exotic thing that we can conceive, ordinary mammals like us, developing this faculty for cosmic communication with our God.
(Prayer is ) Church-bells beyond the stars heard,
Ringing out the message - and the message is heard beyond the stars - our God reigns - our God is King - and we are his people.
(Prayer is) the soul's blood,
It is what makes us what we are, it is what circulates in our arteries, it is the life of the people of God, called to his service, called to life in him.
(Prayer is) The land of spices;
Not dull, ordinary unexciting, but colourful, romantic, inviting.
(Prayer is) something understood.
Prayer makes sense of life.
Prayer
by George Herbert
Prayer: the Church's banquet; Angels' age;
God's breath in man returning to his birth;
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage;
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against th' Almighty; sinners' tower;
Reversed thunder; Christ-side-piercing spear;
The six-days' world transposing in an hour;
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness; and peace; and joy; and love; and bliss;
Exalted Manna; gladness of the best;
Heaven in ordinary; man well dressed;
The milky way; the bird of paradise;
Church-bells beyond the stars heard; the soul's blood;
The land of spices; something understood.
A little meditation on Prayer:
Lord, I have this to ask, and so I pray:
I want this - and this - and this - will you not yield?
Come on almighty God, it's not beyond your power
you could do this one - well, three - well, rather a lot - for me
if you wanted to - and I know you do - you value me - or so you say.
And there's no answer - are you deaf?
No answer! when all I want is - well I want all!
yes, to be perfectly honest, I want all - and you keep silent
Is it my want should change?
No, it's not my want - that's real enough God knows
It's me - you want me to change - and grant your prayer
And I'm the one who's deaf.
You know my wants - I do not need to pray them:
I need to pray your wants - they're hard to say,
You do not need to change, it's me
And I don't want to change! I like me as I am - well, just a little taller,
And other people can be difficult - and - and -
Before I pray I must confess.
Lord, this is your world, may I use your eyes to see it?
My wants now seem so small.
What was it I wanted? I forget the list.
May I pray your prayer? May it be so.
You change my centre - hold me now
To you and you and you.
JCE
OTHER POEMS IN THIS SERIES:
Poems for Eastertide
'Come, dear heart' A LIVING EUCHARIST, Evelyn Underhill. With a hymn setting.
'Love bade me welcome' by George Herbert
These are hosted on my website thames.me.uk - "Where Thames smooth waters glide"
which is mainly given to a guide to the River Thames -
complete with its prints and pictures and history and poetry and water levels and weather and news and events.
It will take weeks to go through the 600 or so pages - but some of us do have the time nowadays!
Keep well!
John Eade