Where Sibyl ended up is unimportant; how she got there is. As she
says now, her doubting and yearning, her searching and rebelling –
even if she was unaware of it at the time –were unspoken prayers.
And God finally answered.
More than ever before,
people are alone. If not physically separated from others, they are certainly more isolated emotionally.
This is one of the great curses of our time: people are lonely and
disconnected, depression is rampant, more marriages than ever are
dysfunctional, and a pervasive sense of aimlessness marks many
lives. Why
are
we here on earth? I believe that the answer to this
question can only be discovered when we begin to find each other –
and, more than that, to find God.
Each of us needs to find God, since our “vertical” relationship
with him is always a strong determinant of our “horizontal” human relationships. But what does it mean to find God? Sibyl, whose
story is in the previous chapter, says that for her it was “like finding a pearl.”
I was utterly consumed by my joy, as one in love. And once I
found God, I saw the people around me – even though they
were just normal human beings like myself – in a new light, and
sharing life with them was like participating in an ongoing
adventure. I continued to go through struggles, but they were
punctuated by laughter, of all things. Before I found God I was
sure that it would mean living a life of gloomy introspection, but
what I found was prayer, forgiveness, love.
Sometimes it seems that the word “prayer” carries too much religious baggage with it; it is worn out from too much handling by
too many people. It has become a duty that people feel they must
fulfill, and therefore even a burden to rebel against. Personally, I
do not see prayer as a duty, but an opportunity to come before God
and tell him my worries, my needs, my happiness, or my gratitude.
In this sense, prayer is simply conversing with God – something anyone can do.
Prayer may be a rite that involves a written verse, a prayer book,
a certain place and time of day, or even a specific position of the
body. Or it may have no form at all, but simply be a posture of the
heart.
For most of us, silence and solitude are the most natural starting
points for finding God and communicating with him, since both
entail laying aside external distractions and emptying our minds
and hearts of trivial concerns. It is as if God has come into the room
to talk with us, and we must first look up from whatever we are
doing to acknowledge him before the conversation can begin. For
others of us, the act of becoming silent before God is not only a
preparation for prayer, it
is
prayer. Such conversation is like the unspoken dialogue between a couple, or any other two people who
know each other so well that they can communicate without
words.
Naturally a true conversation has both sound and silence, give
and take, talking and listening. Yet it is clear that God does not
desire self-centered prattling: he knows what we need even before
we ask. And if we do not become inwardly quiet, how will we ever
be able to hear anything but our own voice? Nor does he require
long, wordy petitions. If our hearts are truly turned to him, a
glance upward or a heartfelt sigh, a moment of silence or a joyous
song, a tearful plea or anguished weeping will do just as well. Each
of these can be just as much a prayer as any number of carefully
chosen words. Indeed, they may be more.
There are many ways to pray. One woman I know told me that
she envisioned herself in prayer “like a baby bird in a nest with my
head stretched way up and my over-sized mouth open and hungry to
receive whatever my father would drop into it. Not questioning, not
doubting, not worrying, just receiving and totally appreciative.”
Vemkatechwaram Thyaharaj, a friend from India, says:
I pray silently. All the same, though brought up as a Hindu Brahmin, I do not pray to an abstract being, but to the biblical Creator of the universe and of man – to God the Father. He is not
distant from his creation, for Christ brought him down, close to
man. It is to him I pray…
Very often I resort to lonely places for prayer. In such times I
experience the divine, unseen touch that imparts power and life
to my body and soul. True, it is always an effort to get out of bed
early, before dawn. But this has been my practice, to sit during
the early morning in the presence of God when I meditate and
pray. During such times my heart is filled with peace and unexplainable joy.
Vemkatechwaram touches on an important aspect of genuine prayer:
insofar as it is a conversation, it is not a vague state of being, but
something that moves or takes place between two or more people,
even if without words.
According to the early church father Tertullian, praying is also
more than directing emotions or feelings toward God. It means
experiencing his reality as a power.
Prayer has power to transform the weak, to restore the sick, to
free the demon-possessed, to open prison doors, and to untie
the bonds that bind the innocent. Furthermore, it washes away
faults and repels temptations. It extinguishes persecutions. It
consoles the low in spirit, and cheers those in good spirits. It escorts travelers, calms waves, and makes robbers stand aghast. It
feeds the poor and governs the rich. It raises those who have
fallen, stops others from falling, and strengthens those who are
standing.
Tertullian also refers to prayer as the “fortress of faith” and the
“shield and weapon against the foe.” And Paul, in his Letter to the
Ephesians, admonishes his fellow Christians to put on the “whole
armor of God” and thereby enlist the aid of the Creator himself in
times of trial.
Valid as these metaphors may be, it is good to remember that
even if God’s power can protect, shield, and comfort us, it is also a
power before which we must sometimes quake. Especially after we
have failed or done wrong, the act of coming to God in prayer and
bringing our weaknesses to him means placing ourselves under his
clear light, and seeing the wretchedness of our true state.
Our God is a consuming fire, and my filth crackles as he seizes
hold of me; he is all light and my darkness shrivels under his
blaze. It is this naked blaze of God that makes prayer so terrible.
For most of the time, we can persuade ourselves we are good
enough, as good as the next man, perhaps even better, who
knows? Then we come to prayer – real prayer, unprotected
prayer – and there is nothing left in us, no ground on which to
stand.
Sr. Wendy Beckett
Given Sister Wendy’s recognition of the contrast between the Almighty and a puny human being, one might fairly ask, “Does God
really answer me, or does my praying just get me used to the discomfort of my situation?” Indeed, there are skeptics who feel that
prayer is simply a forum for working through our feelings, and
those who say, “All I want is God’s will, and he can give that without my prayers.”
I have no simple answers to these riddles, but that doesn’t mean
there are no answers. As I see it, it is a matter of relationships. If I
claim God as my father, I need to be able to talk to him when I am
in trouble. And before that, I need to be actively involved in my
relationship with him – at least enough to know where I can find
him.
Having given us free will, God does not force himself on any of
us. He needs us to ask him to work in our lives before he intervenes.
We must want his presence, be desperate for the inner food he can
provide. Like the figures found on the walls of Roman catacombs,
we must lift our eyes and arms to God, not merely waiting for him,
but reaching upward to find him and to receive whatever he will
give us.
In this sense praying is much more than talking with God. Prayer
gives us the opportunity to discern God’s will by coming into direct
contact with him. It enables us to ask God for whatever we need,
including judgment, mercy, and the grace to change our lives. It is
even, as Henri Nouwen has written, “a revolutionary matter, because once you begin, you put your entire life in the balance.”
Much has changed
in the last hundred or so years since Robert
Browning penned his famous lines, “God’s in his Heaven / All’s right
with the world.” Not many of us have such a cheerful view of
things on our planet today and indeed, because of the happenings
of our century, countless people have turned from faith, doubting
the very existence of both God and heaven.
Certainly, we cannot show or see the God we worship. He is God
for us just because we can know him but cannot see him. In his
works, in all the movements of the universe, we perceive his
power always, whether in thunder, lightning, an approaching
storm, or in the clear sky.
And you believe that this God knows nothing of the doings
and dealings of men? You believe that from his throne in
heaven he cannot visit all men or know individual men? Man, in
this you are mistaken and deceived. How can God be far away!
The whole heaven and the whole earth and all things beyond
the confines of the world are filled with God. Everywhere he is
very close to us, yes, much more than that, he is in us. Look at the
sun again! Fixed in the sky, its light is still poured out over all the
earth. It is equally present everywhere and penetrates everything. Its splendor is nowhere dimmed. How much more is God
present, he who is the creator of all things and sees all things,
from whom nothing can remain hidden!
Minucius Felix, rd century
God. The very word implies belief, for if we cannot see, we must
believe. Our senses, which so marvelously apprise us of our surroundings, are utterly useless when dealing with an abstraction. But
how is it with joy? With sorrow? Just because they cannot be seen,
heard, or touched, is their existence denied? No, for our experience
of them is so strong, and their effects so tangible, that we have no
difficulty accepting them as reality.
So it is with God, he whom we know and love but do not fully
understand. Who is he? Our very notions of him seem full of contradictions. Despite his invisible nature, he is eminently visible. He
is so great, yet so small; creator as well as destroyer; immeasurably
loving, yet stern. God sees all and moves all, yet is himself unseen
and unchangeable. Desmond Tutu quotes a Bantu verse that puts
this well:
In the beginning was God,
Today is God,
Tomorrow will be God.
Who can make an image of God?
He has no body.
He is the word that comes out of your mouth.
That word! It is no more,
It is past, and still it lives!
So is God.
And which one of us has not, in distress or anger if not in joy, lifted
a voice to God? Perhaps it has been only in a vain hope that if he is
there, he might – just possibly – pay attention to our pleading. But
that is the beginning.
Prayer, as I noted in the previous chapter, is often no more than a
sigh, a yearning of the heart, an expression of one’s need for help.
As such, it is also an acknowledgment, even if subconscious, of a
being greater than ourselves.
Polls tell us that the majority of Americans pray daily, and almost
all of these have experienced satisfactory answers to prayer. What
does this mean? Can we conclude that this is a nation of God-fearing souls who love their neighbors as themselves? Hardly. But it
tells us that, at least in the privacy of the home, many do turn to
God. And apparently they have found a deep inner dimension to
their own selves, a dimension that is hidden in the soul of every
person, latent, waiting to be awakened.
Ron, an acquaintance
whose sister was murdered in 1983, was
justifiably angry: at God, at society, and at his sister’s killer. But underneath it all, there was more:
I probably prayed on and off my whole life, even though I didn’t
really know it. I guess I was just talking with God… I was at the
bottom. I was ready to kill myself; I really was. And I got down on
my knees and asked God to come into my life. He answered my
prayer: he just didn’t say anything. It was the way things
changed, I knew he had answered me…I wasn’t angry anymore.
Poet Jane Kenyon, who recently died of leukemia, wrote that she
and her husband got into the habit of going to church because that
is what their neighbors expected of them. Kenyon soon realized
how spiritually empty she was.
“Before I knew what had happened to me, I’d become a believer, not in the frightening God of my childhood, but in a God
who, if you asked, forgives you no matter how far down in the
well you are. If I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t live.”
I like to think of belief as a child slipping her small hand into the
welcoming hand of her father or mother. Many emotions and experiences are expressed in that simple act, but perhaps the most basic
is “connectedness.” Hand in hand, we establish a bond of trust and
love. There are times when something within us makes it difficult
to reach out with our hand, and it becomes an effort to accept the
waiting hand. But when we do, what a relief comes over us! Now
we are able to pour out our hearts, and God can work in us. Now
we are ready to hear his answer.
How is it possible to find such inner certainty? Because God
works in each individual in a unique way, each one will respond differently to his prompting and prodding. For most of us, faith will
not come easily. More often given than earned, it may be elusive,
too. One day it may seem to drop into our laps; the next, we may
have to struggle to hold on to it. When the going is rough, this may
seem discouraging. Yet as novelist Flannery O’Connor once suggested in a letter she wrote to a young friend, there is no such thing
as belief without doubt or struggle.
I think the experience of losing your faith, or of having lost it, is
an experience that in the long run belongs to faith; or at least it
can belong to faith if faith is still valuable to you, and it must be
or you would not have written me about this.
I don’t know how the kind of faith required of a Christian
living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on
this experience that you are having right now of unbelief.
“Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” This is the most natural
and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and
I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.
A friend once wrote to the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and
asked him to tell him how he could believe. He must have expected a long philosophical answer. Hopkins wrote back, “give
alms.” Perhaps he was trying to say that God is to be experienced in Charity (in the sense of love for the divine image in human beings). Don’t get so entangled with intellectual difficulties
that you fail to look for God in this way.
Faith is what you have in the absence of knowledge… and
that absence doesn’t bother me because I have got, over the
years, a sense of the immense sweep of creation, of the evolutionary process in everything, of how incomprehensible God
must necessarily be to be the God of heaven and earth. You can’t
fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories.
If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but
for very few is it a gift given without any demand for time devoted to its cultivation…Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises
and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It’s there, even when he
can’t see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there.