I found several copies of this prayer floating around at the conference last week. It provides apt words for my current spiritual state:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton

Habit-forming Prayer

The Orans or Orante, one of the most common images in early Christian art,
depicts a woman praying with her arms outstretched and her head covered.

When my family gathers around the dinner table to eat (on the nights when we're not eating in front of the t.v.), my dad has always said the same prayer. Well, at least, the prayer always had the same structure, rhythm and intonation. There was a flexible part: in the portion usually reserved for thanking God for each member of our family, thanksgiving for the presence of any guests was always included. Sometimes Dad said the prayer so quickly that, if I hadn't heard it nearly every day for my entire life, it would have been difficult to pick out the individual words.

I think it's probably fair to say that the closest thing to a liturgical prayer I heard growing up was at our dinner table. Other than the occassional (redundant and more or less nonsensical), "guide, guard and direct us," Dad was the only one I ever heard praying something out of habit. Among my peers at church (and I suspect among people of all ages), praying by rote or reading a prepared prayer was considered less "spiritual."

This attitude took me a while to outgrow - even after I'd grown to appreciate a more structured form of prayer, kicking my perceived need for spontaneity was hard. But the pressure of being continually new and creative becomes pretty overwhelming, even paralyzing at times (and I don't think it's actually Christian to always need something new and fresh to be spiritually alive). Lately I've been paying attention to the ways ritual prayer affect the daily lives of people around me. Here are some of my findings:

Last fall, I ate lunch at Aunt Yvonne and Uncle Roger's. As Roger ages, he stutters more and more. Yvonne can usually clear up what he's trying to say, but sometimes it's even hard for her to understand. As we sat down for lunch, we joined hands to pray, and I expected that my cousin Scott would give thanks for the food. It quickly became apparent, however, that this is Uncle Roger's house, and he was going to say the prayer. As we bowed our heads, I wondered how long this would take and how hard it might be for him to get the words out. To my surprise, the words rolled off his tongue with ease, loud and clear - the words of a prayer that he's been saying over his family's dinner table for 50+ years. Not a single stutter. I was amazed, but I shouldn't have been. It shouldn't be surprising that a prayer prayed over and over during the course of an entire lifetime has actually formed the person who prays it. After all, none of the fruits of the Spirit are virtues that just spontaneously surface; they're habits formed by a lifetime of discipline.

Here's another, different example: My friend Jared, who was confirmed in the Episcopal church last spring, includes a prayer in nearly every post on his blog, Scribere Orare Est (Latin for "to write is to pray"). More often than not, the prayers are from the Book of Common Prayer. It strikes me nearly every time I read something by Jared that the written, ritual prayers of his communal and personal worship often provide orientation for his daily experiences, even (or perhaps especially) those that are not easily explained or resolved. I think there's something to that.

A good prayer for anticipating a new semester:

In the name of Jesus Christ, who was never in a hurry, we pray, O God, that thou wilt slow us down, for we know that we live too fast. With all of eternity before us, make us take time to live - time to get acquainted with thee, time to enjoy thy blessings, and time to know each other.

- Peter Marshall

sparkles and atoms

Today I started reading The Cloud of Unknowing. (Check it out here.) The anonymous author wrote in Middle English in the 14th century. Before I'd always dismissed it as one of those weird Medieval contemplative texts: you know, maybe an interesting read, but probably loopy and irrelevant. Uh, wrong! It's surprisingly insightful (but it takes me a while to catch on with its King James-ish language and mystical subject!). No wonder Christians throughout the ages have considered this a classic work - turns out they actually knew what they were talking about!

Apparently, this mysterious writer has me pegged - Anonymous knows how much I wring my hands over my use and misuse of time. (Maybe I'm not alone in this?) After a short description of how time is made up of tiny units called "atoms" and how we will give account to God for our use of our life's "atoms," the author anticipates my distressed interjection (my paraphrase):

"How can I give an account of every single moment I've spent - I, who have to this day never taken note of how I spent my time during my 24 years of life? [Dude, Anonymous even pegged my age! Well, at least for a couple more weeks.] ... Help me now for the love of Jesus!"

And then the author relieves my distress (again, my loose paraphrase):

"You said it well: "For the love of Jesus!" For in the love of Jesus is your help! Love is such a power that it makes all things common. Therefore, love Jesus, and then everything that is his will be yours. Because he is God, he is the maker and giver of time. Because he is human, he is the very keeper of time. And because he is both God and human, he is the most just judge and the one who asks for an account of how time is dispensed. Therefore, knit yourself to him by love and by belief, and then because of that knot you will be able to see time alongside him in the way that he does, and alongside all those others who are also knitted to him by love: with Mary who was full of all grace in keeping time, with the angels of heaven who can never lose time, and with all the saints in heaven and on earth who by the grace of Jesus rightly heed time because of love."

In all my years of hand-wringing over my poor time management, never has anyone suggested to me that maybe the answer isn't really establishing boundaries, buying a new day book (which I use for about 2 weeks and then lose), or mapping out a schedule. Maybe instead I'd better concern myself with something altogether different: simply loving Jesus. The Cloud of Unknowing offers an alternative way to measure time: not by hours, days and years, not by tasks completed and tasks left undone, but simply by "sparkles." These are the moments, the "atoms" when the soul leaps toward God out of love for God alone, like "a sparkle from the coal." That, I feel, is the best, most appealing way to orient my time and measure the quality of my life: by every momentary blaze of love toward God.

A Prayer for Time

I was only looking for a research topic for my church history paper. While searching for academic inspiration, I also ran across this prayer by Michel Quoist in a delightful volume called 2000 Years of Prayer.

And so all men run after time, Lord.
They pass through life running -
hurried, jostled, overburdened, frantic, and they never get there.
They haven't time.
In spite of all their efforts they're still short of time,
of a great deal of time.
Lord, you must have made a mistake in your calculations.

There is a big mistake somewhere.
The hours are too short,
The days are too short,
Our lives are too short.

You who are beyond time, Lord, you smile to see us fighting it.
And you know what you are doing.
You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to men.
You give to each one time to do what you want him to do.

But we must not lose time
waste time,
kill time,
For time is a gift that you give us,
But a perishable gift,
A gift that does not keep.

Lord, I have time,
I have plenty of time,
All the time that you give me,
The years of my life,
The days of my years,
The hours of my days,
They are all mine.
Mine to fill, quietly, calmly,
But to fill completely, up to the brim,
To offer them to you, that of their insipid water
You may make a rich wine
such as you made once in Cana of Galilee.

I am not asking you tonight, Lord,
for time to do this and then that,
But your grace to do conscientiously,
in the time that you give me, what you want me to do.

Augustine

Tonight I started reading St. Augustine's Confessions - it's my second shot at this particular work. Last time I didn't quite make it through before school attacked. I'm glad to start over - I think I'm taking a little more time to really "hear" the musings of this honest, seeking, belatedly godly man this time around. Sometimes I do this "binge-reading" thing and skim right over statements which would otherwise inspire.

Tonight I thought that the most delightful thing about Book I of Confessions is the opening prayer. Augustine begins his book - which is really one long prayer itself - with a prayer that seems to have more questions than statements or requests. Moreover, these are answer-less questions, meant more as wonder-filled praise than confused query. Even this quotation, with less questions than the rest, evokes a sense of worshipful perplexity:

"What are you, then, my God? What are you, I ask, but the Lord God? For who else is lord except the Lord, or who is god if not our God? You are most high, excellent, most powerful, omnipotent, supremely merciful and supremely just, most hidden and yet infinitely present, infinitely beautiful and infinitely strong, steadfast yet elusive, unchanging yourself though you control the change in all things, never new, never old, renewing all things yet wearing down the proud though they know it not; ever active, ever at rest, gathering while knowing no need, supporting and filling and guarding, creating and nurturing and perfecting, seeking although you lack nothing. You love without frenzy, you are jealous yet secure, you regret without sadness, you grow angry yet remain tranquil, you alter your works but never your plan; you take back what you find although you never lost it; you are never in need yet you rejoice in your gains, never avaricious yet you demand profits. You allow us to pay you more than you demand, and so you become our debtor, yet which of us possesses anything that does not already belong to you? You owe us nothing, yet you pay your debts; you write off our debts to you, yet you lose nothing thereby.

"After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing."