One for all...

We like to make a distinction between our private and public lives and say, "Whatever I do in my private life is nobody else's business." But anyone trying to live a spiritual life will soon discover that the most personal is the most universal, the most hidden is the most public, and the most solitary is the most communal. What we live in the most intimate places of our beings is not just for us but for all people. That is why our inner lives are lives for others. That is why our solitude is a gift to our community, and that is why our most secret thoughts affect our common life.

(With thanks to the Henri Nouwen Society)

Every time I think of this I am moved almost to tears. That our solitude, our prayer and contemplation, should be given as a gift is just the most beautiful thought. Nouwen says here, "our community", but I can't help but think that in my understanding "community" is the whole community of Creation, ultimately.

In "The Cosmic Nature of the Jesus Prayer" (Praying the Jesus Prayer Together, BRF, 2001) Brother Ramon SSF wrote:

We have seen that the Jesus Prayer involves body, mind and spirit. If the whole person is given to God then it reflects the greatest commandment of all, the command to love... The cosmic nature of the Prayer means that the believer lives as a human being in solidarity with all other human beings, and with the animal creation, together with the whole created order (the cosmos). All this is drawn into and affected by the Prayer. One believer's prayers send out vibrations and reverberations that increase the power of the divine Love in the cosmos.

The Christian is well aware of the fact that the world is also evil. There is a falseness and alienation that distracted and infected the world, and men and women of prayer, by the power of the Name of Jesus, stand against the cosmic darkness, and enter into conflict with dark powers. "For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."  [Ephesians 6.12] The power of the Jesus Prayer is the armour against the wiles of the devil, taking heed of the apostle's word, "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayers and supplication."

...It is the one whose heart is aflame with the love of Jesus who can effectively radiate compassion and stretch out a hand in practical help to those in need.

This is why, I think, God has done this strange thing of calling me to pray the Jesus Prayer above all else. Somehow praying the Prayer in this way within my community - however widely or locally I might understand the word - is like planting the Cross at the heart of it. If "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2.19,20) then what I am doing is somehow making the crucified Christ present in creation, through my own ontological status within, and my own conscious openness to, the whole community of createdness. Not for the first time, this Lent, I'm finding that a remarkably scary thought...