It's the night before Trinity Sunday, and I'm aware that I've been pretty silent this week, for which apologies. It's been a busy week, on the outside, but inside I've not been able to stop thinking about the passage from Maggie Ross I mentioned on Monday, where she says:
There are as many ways of intercession as there are moments of life. Intercession can become deep and habitual, hidden even from our selves. There is nothing exotic about such practice. What matters is the intention that creates the space and the stillness. Even something as simple as refusing to anesthetize the gnawing pain in the pit of your soul that is a resonance of the pain of the human condition is a form of habitual intercession. To bear this pain into the silence is to bring it into the open place of God’s infinite mercy. It is in our very wounds that we find the solitude and openness of our re-creation and our being. We learn to go to the heart of pain to find God’s new life, hope, possibility, and joy. This is the priestly task of our baptism.
This so accurately describes the path of prayer God has been leading me increasing along for nearly 30 years - acutely, for the last 10 years - that it is quite uncanny. It's also, by definition, hard to write about - hard even to think about, conceptually, since it is so hidden. As Maggie says, it is at times hidden even from ourselves.
Maggie writes of "the intention that creates the space and the stillness..." and it is this which the Jesus Prayer does. But it doesn't only do that: it helps us quite explicitly to "bear this pain into the silence... to bring it into the open place of God’s infinite mercy." The repetition of the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" create a stillness and a crying, where the wounds of our openness to, our identification with, the pain of the human condition are lifted up to the Cross in all their particularity and is-ness, and in all our own defencelessness and conceptual defeat.
The astonishing thing is, it works - something happens, when we pray like this, far greater than our own little intellects can grasp. Or should I say, why should I be astonished that Jesus would answer this kind of prayer, so close to his own heart?*
There is far more to this way of praying than this, and I am only just beginning to understand a little of it. I shall hope to explore a little more here over the next week or so - but I hope you will bear with me if I am a bit faltering, both in regularity of posts and in my language - I find this difficult to write about, just as I know I must try...
*Matthew 6.6; Luke 13.34; Luke 18.35ff; John 11.35 etc.
4 comments:
Your words- whenever they come, are always filled with such generosity of spirit and goodness.
I am really moved by this post - as I so often am here.
I love where you live, Mike, trying to talk about almost-impossibles. Isn't it wonderful when you are able to articulate a tiny smidgeon of it? :)
Yes, her words have been ringing in my heart all week too. It helps bring home to me the importance of not striving, that stuff is going on we don't even know about it and this trying to strive to achieve our ends only foils it all.
Of course, I have spent so much of my week trying to strive, just simply out of having old wounds and crap getting a bit more of an airing-out, and how bloody tiresome striving is. Seriously, it's enough to make you wonder how we ever started striving, seeing it bears so little fruit worth keeping.
You don't need to apologise about post brevity. It just is what it is :)
Your posts are helping me too. When I was younger, I always used to pray very specific things for people. I would tell God what to do for them. Now it seems that often all I can do is to sit there and name them before God. I sometimes feel lazy for doing this, but I'm beginning to think it's all right. After all, we are promised that the Holy Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. Perhaps all that matters is that I am choosing to make the space.
I hope this makes sense and isn't a twisting of what you are trying to say.
Thank you, Fran and Sue... It's good to know someone out there understands my ramblings!
Ruth, you haven't twisted my words at all - and Romans 8.26 is a key Scripture for all of this. I think you're right - what matters is that we do try to make the space, in whatever way the Spirit leads us to. I've found, though, that that leading often comes through other people, face-to-face or in their writings. I'll try to deal with this in a bit more depth this week, if I can!
Mike
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