“Unsaying Prayer”
By Caroline Dean
September 4, 2011
Luke 11: 1-2
[ Audio
(mp3, 5.8Mb) ]
Barbara Brown Taylor's book, An Altar in the World, she confesses that she is “not very good at prayer.” She writes about her sense of shame that she does not pray enough or pray well enough to write or preach anything authoritative about prayer. But she overcomes her sense of shame in two ways: First, “by remembering that prayer is more than her ‘idea' of prayer and second, that some of what she already does in life may constitute genuine prayer” (An Altar in the World, page 176).
As I meditated on the practice of
“prayer” for today, I did find that there is something profoundly humbling
about it. In a good way, I find myself
far from being an “expert” on the inner workings of prayer or meditation. But, in a bad way, I find myself tempted to
doubt my prayer experience and wonder if I have anything spectacular to
say. And so with that caveat “out there,” we can all acknowledge we are on a
faith journey, even as pastors. And perhaps
prayer feels risky and humbling because every act of prayer is a leap of
faith. It is the attempt to reach
out to the divine; to reach into the divine in each and every one of
us. Of course, it is a leap of
faith. And so acknowledging the hard work
before us – let us begin in prayer:
Let us
pray:
Loving
God, we ask that in our moments of faith and in our moments of doubt, you would
sustain us in your love, guide us in your grace, and grant us the sweet embrace
of your Spirit. Amen.
A short
reading from Luke chapter 11:1-2
One day, Jesus was praying in a
certain place. And when he finished, one
of his disciples said to him, “Lord teach us to pray, just as John taught his
disciples. He said to them, “when you pray, pray like this…”
We are a society that loves words:
the written word, the spoken word, even the “texted word” (if you can call them
words). When we drive, we listen to talk
radio or the lyrics to a snappy song. Billboards with slogans bombard us on the road. Cell phones make texting and chatting
available at all times. We sit in front
of a computer typing and reading all day. Even when we can “get away from it all” at the shore, or the lake we grab
a book to fill our time. But what about
the spaces in our lives with NO words, no written, spoken, or heard utterance,
no billboards, no books, no cell phones conversations, what does a day without
words look like? Can it possibly
exist?
Perhaps it entails going on a long
walk? Doing the dishes? Gardening? But even in these moments our minds ramble on with more words. Sometimes our thoughts wander to process
something difficult in a positive way, and other times we too easily cast
judgment, or spiral into patterns of resentment. Sometimes our minds get caught up in love,
and sometimes in hate. Our thoughts go
in so many directions at once that they feel out of control. We are a society that loves our spoken and
written words, and we seem to have little control over the words floating
around our minds.
Even in the preparation for this
sermon, and in this very moment, I am totally reliant upon thinking, writing,
and speaking with this miraculous thing that we call language. I need words that smash together and somehow
produce larger meaning.
Don't get me wrong, communicating
with one another and exploring our world through language is a true miracle,
but what about the times in life when words fail us? What happens when we need something beyond
words? What about the paradoxes and
experiences in life that language seems pin down too quickly? What habits and soul formation are we lacking
because of our strong dependence upon the use of language?
Now, even Jesus used words, but he
used words in a unique way. Jesus did
not come up with a treatise to explain away all of the mysteries of the
universe. He did not preach a sermon to
“explain it all.” Instead Jesus told
stories about life, truth, and loving our neighbor. He encountered people with
words of love and grace. He left us with
riddles and open-ended parables. And
Jesus used these riddles to flip upside down the status quo of his day,
befriending women and lepers, and calling the meek and the poor blessed. Jesus used words to call out hypocrisy and to
call people towards prayerful reconciliation with God and one another. He did not use words in a way that was
comfortable for those around him, but yet he still used words. But I wonder, what about the times when
Jesus was able to enter a space beyond words?
“In the morning, long before dawn,
Jesus got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place to pray.” This was his custom, to hide away from the
masses and even from his most intimate friends. But what did he do with this contemplative time?
We do get a hint of Jesus' spiritual
discipline of prayer in his teachings about prayer. As we heard in our first gospel reading,
Jesus preferred prayers in the quiet places. He sought out the quiet, more than “social,
liturgical or verbal prayer, which he mentions only a few times” (page
70-72). He told us to find a quiet room
and shut the door and pray. If anything
Jesus warns against some of the dangers of verbal and social
prayer. He lambasts hypocrites who pray
in public on the street corners. Jesus
models prayer that helps us have healthy egos, not too big and not too
small. He also warns against using
too many words, babbling on and on. Instead we are supposed to use few words and to find a quiet, hiding
place to pray.
A few weeks ago I attended a Clergy
Women's conference in Durham, North Carolina, and let me tell you that if
anyone has a hard time keeping it short
and simple and not blabbing on in front of one another – it is a room full of clergy. We had a closing worship service that lasted
over 2 hours, because it entailed 50 young women serving one another communion
and “blessing” our neighbor for the work that we had to do upon our
return. Don't get me wrong most of this
experience was meaningful and beautiful. But let's just say that it lost its charm after the first 45 minutes of
“blessing” and “communionizing.” Sometimes pastors
do not know when to shut up.
Richard Rohr, in his book The Naked Now,[i] writes that “formal,
social prayer has its place and it is an important ritual.” But he also writes that, “without an inner
life, our outer prayer will soon become superficial, ego-centered, and even
counter-productive on the spiritual path” (page 74).
Jesus prioritized this time of
quiet, introspective prayer. Before
every major event he goes off to be alone. And his disciples are always chasing after him. In this one instance in the Gospel of Luke, a
disciple finds him, and he asks him, “Lord, teach us to pray like John taught
his disciples!” Groups of disciples
“were usually identified by having their official group prayer –
something like the serenity prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous. It identifies them and
their spirituality to others and to themselves” (page 72). If you think about it, even the different
nuances of the Lord's Prayer identify us as Catholics or Baptists, whether we
say debts or trespasses, and so on. But
the interesting thing about this request is that it came from a disciple, not
from Jesus himself. Perhaps it could
have even been a concession (page 72)! It certainly wasn't Jesus' idea, and perhaps with the life of Jesus as a
model, the “real” “Lord's Prayer” is going off in the quiet, to think, and
pray. Jesus' model of prayer is an “unsaying prayer,” “the prayer of a quiet,
contemplative spirit, which balances out and grounds all of our ‘saying
prayers.'” (page 73).
But this is a moment when I wish
Jesus could have been a little bit more systematic and less enigmatic. How are we supposed to pray “beyond words?” What is the best strategy? How do we move from just “doing the dishes,”
to connecting with ourselves and with the divine in the ordinary? And if meditation is supposed to draw us
beyond words, how do we even use words to describe this process?
Let me close with two stories that
can help us capture a portrait of meditation, the first is from Eugene
Peterson's Eat this Book. Ironically this book is all about the “word”
of God and the transformational encounter with scriptures. He writes, “Years ago I owned a dog who had a
fondness for large bones. Fortunately
for him we lived in the forested foothills of Montana. In this forest he often came across a carcass
of a white-tailed deer that had been brought down by coyotes. Later he would show up on our patio carrying
or dragging his trophy…Anyone who has owned a dog knows the routine: he would
prance and gambol playfully before us with his prize, wagging his tail, proud
of his find, courting our approval…He gnawed the bone, turned it over, and
around, and licked it, worried it. Sometimes we could hear a low rumble or growl, what in a cat would be a
purr. He was obviously enjoying himself
and in no hurry. After a leisurely
couple of hours he would bury it and return the next day to dig it up
again.” (page
1, Eat this Book).
This story also reminds me of those
insurance commercials, when the white fluffy dog tries to find a safe place for
his bone. He buries it, and takes it to
the bank, and hides it in his doghouse. Always anxious about it's
location and it's safety. Our dog does
the same thing! He prances with his
bone, and hides it away in the sofa cushion safely, and then returns five
minutes later to make sure that it is still there. It is an image of careful, meticulous
attention, as if nothing else in the world existed but this beloved bone…
Peterson uses this analogy for our
encounter with scripture, it should be serious and yet playful, leisurely and
also transformative. But I would like us
to also imagine a kind of “dog-with-a-bone” meditation. The “bone” can the
object of our meditation or even our mantra. It is the hope or the burden that we turn over in our soul
and attend to carefully. The “bone” can
be a sunset, it can be achy joints and the beautiful complexities of our own body,
it is a child's painting and a Van Gogh piece, and it can even be a pile of
dirty dishes. The “bone” is the thing,
the memory, the burden, the joy that we attend to and return to as a practice, because this practice gives us life and helps us
connect to God's love and grace. In
certain moments nothing else exists but this mantra, it is the center of our
universe.
The second story comes from my own
experience of meditation. And this
connects to Barbara Brown Taylor's insight that we should claim some of what we
already do as a meditation or
prayer. Some of my moments of ordinary
“meditation” have been in preparation for church and specifically in preaching
preparation. One example of a moment of “meditation beyond
words” was during one of my sermon preparations in Divinity School.
I was interning at a Methodist
Church in Walkertown NC, just outside of Winston Salem. I had been at this church for a year and I
was preparing a sermon for my last Sunday with this congregation. The text for the sermon was the story when
Jesus describes the Kingdom of God as yeast that rises in bread, a pearl that a
man finds in a long search, and treasure buried in a field.
One day I felt particularly “STUCK”
in this sermon preparation. I had a good
analysis of these images as sacred interruptions and small beginnings. But I was struggling to find a story to really
connect the Kingdom of God to our everyday lives.
And looking for a way to
procrastinate, I saw a mass of half eaten bags of potato chips leftover from
our summer youth ministry, and decided it was finally time to toss them
in the dumpster. On the way I passed
through the church's fellowship hall, and in a moment of nostalgia, I
remembered all of the occasions when I had been in that room in the past
year. And it hit me that for me this
room was my metaphor; these memories illustrated the kingdom of God breaking
into our lives in that season. Numerous
potlucks in the fellowship hall (a spiritual practice that we could practice
more of in the north!), and endless dishes of amazing southern food were a
parable for me illustrating the abundance of love in that church. Building a town out of cardboard boxes for
our youth group lock-in to learn about poverty in Africa was a parable
illustrating this community's commitment to the poor. Breaking beans in preparation for the annual
Church Bazaar with some of the
long-time members of this church, was a parable for me
of the ordinary efforts of a few, to be faithful with their gifts and their
time.
This room and these memories became
my “dog-with-a-bone meditation.” I
focused on that small, ordinary moment and mulled it over in my brain. And in this meditation, I found a metaphor to
express gratitude and to reflect back to a community their moments of joy and
service that revealed God's Kingdom to a young seminary intern.
For me, meditation is an
interruption, it happens in the midst of the ordinary. And this specific experience was a simple
moment; easily missed if I was rushing, or anxious or emotionally charged, and
yet the miracle is that for some reason I was able to let it sink in. I think about how many of those moments I
have missed (PAUSE) and also how many of those moments have changed my
trajectory, and how many of those moments have made me who I am.
What is your “dog-with-a-bone”
meditation practice? What are your
practices that give you ultimate perspective? What realigns you, grounds you, and heals you? What are your “unsaying prayers” that help
you move beyond judgment, resentment, and anxiety? How do you connect with the unwavering and
unimaginable love of God?
Richard Rohr writes, “We mend and
renew the world by strengthening inside ourselves what we seek outside ourselves, not by demanding it
of others or trying to force it on others” (460). What do you seek in this world? Peace? Justice? Compassion? Wholeness? Healing? How are you cultivating these virtues in the center of your being? How are you working to save the world by
allowing God's love and grace to permeate and transform your interior
world? How can “unsaying” prayer
practices be the root of our service and our mission here at Christ
Church? How we become a community who is
rooted in attentive silence and intentional soul formation? How can the quiet places, the places beyond
words, give us resources of love and light to heal and mend the world? Amen.
