Advent and Waiting Without Words

Something I've prayed this week:

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come, let us adore him.

Advent is drawing to a close and Christmas is four days away. It seems like every year once Christmas comes and then is gone, I have some sense that, yet again, I missed it. Sure, each year I enjoy the time with family whom I love and the different things we get to be a part of, different celebrations and opportunities to so good for others. Yet still, I am well acquainted with the post-Christmas Day sense of having thrown a party for someone and not paid much real attention to them while we were both there. Years ago, I occasionally played around with writing songs and one line that stuck in my mind from a song I never finished was, "Sorry I missed you at the party I threw for you last week." Christmas has often been like that for me, and my guess is, for many of us.

Taking on this experiment this year, though, has helped me to linger more attentively in these weeks that the church has traditionally called Advent, and my hope is that when the big day comes next week, I will be able to notice a difference and have a sense of having been more attentive to the one for whom most of the world throws this party each year. I like the way that the prayer for this last Sunday of Advent says it:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself...

That would surely be quite a different experience from my normal, less attentive Christmases, both from my perspective and God's.

As the rhythms which this experiment have imposed on me this Advent season have had time to sink in, I've noticed a meaningful connection between Advent and the practice of praying without words. Advent is about waiting- about remembering Israel's long, desperate waiting for the coming of the Messiah; about them waiting for God's address to and deliverance of them as the prophets had seemingly disappeared and the oppressors continued to succeed one another; about Zechariah and Elizabeth's waiting childless for so many years- then after Gabriel's promise, waiting for the birth of their son, John; and about Mary's waiting after another promise for the birth of her son, Jesus. Apparently, through these two boys, Israel's centuries of waiting would be brought to completion.

Advent is also about our waiting- about our waiting for the day when Jesus' royal coming will finally take place and the prayer he taught that so many have uttered for so long ("may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven") would finally and fully be fulfilled. It's about our waiting for God to make things right in the midst of a world full of the strange mix of compassion and beauty with pain and school shootings. We wait for the day when King Jesus will reappear, all of our little kingdoms will submit in full loving devotion to his, and everything will be made new, with sin and death's defeat being completed forever.

And maybe there's no better way to practice the waiting that Advent is about than by praying without words. We wait on our minds and hearts to settle down and trust in God, for God to address us whenever and however he sees fit, and for God's slow work of transforming us into the likeness of Jesus to be brought to its completion.

[This is 10th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Forgetting God and Learning How to Avoid it

Something I've prayed this week:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Prayer for the Fourth Sunday of Advent from The Book of Common Prayer)

Yesterday I was supposed to deliver a check for my wife. When I was pushing our kids in the swing before supper (yes, less fortunate ones in other places, it was 75 degrees here in Mid-December), I reached in my pocket and found the check I had forgotten about. I told her, and it didn't surprise her for one obvious reason: I forget stuff. A lot.

As I've embarked on this project of living prayerfully throughout this year (part of which involves using guides for prayer), I've been surprised to notice how often forgetting comes up in these prayers that I'm following. Just in the last couple of weeks, the prayers have included:

"We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you..."

"... yet I do not forget your law..."

"...grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil..."

It's humbling to the extreme to pause and think about how often I forget God. I guess that takes some definition, because not forgetting God certainly has to mean something other than to have every thought of every moment be, "GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD."

Perhaps the best description I know of what it means to not forget God is in part of another prayer to which I've been taken often in this experiment:

...And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days...

Reflecting on how well I live that is not only humbling to the extreme, but even makes my eyes feel a bit watery. Using the language of the prayer, God's mercies to me are immense and never-ending. My awareness of them, gratitude for them, and the resulting kind of life that I live falls far short of what I would like for it to be.

But I don't say that to beat myself up about it. Rather, I just don't want to forget. I want to learn to forget God less and less and live ever more aware of his mercies toward me and toward all of us.

In the beginning of this project, I was a bit apprehensive about what it would be like to keep up with these commitments of praying four times per day, and including three kinds of prayer each day. In my fourth week of doing so, it's the greatest anti-forgetting practice I've ever tried.

[This is the 9th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Prayers for Newtown

I heard of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut as I was driving. I had no words. I turned around and looked in the back seat at my two preschoolers and I grieved for those families who would not be able to do so again. Silence is an appropriate prayerful response, and it's needed now. There are no words that can fit just right. Perhaps praying without words in response to these shootings is the best way for us to mourn with those who are mourning, to give our attention to the God who promises to comfort the broken hearted and eventually set everything right, and to increase our awareness of what's going on in our world and in our own souls.

Silence is good and needed, but when I heard the news I wanted some words, though it has taken me a few days to find them. So below are two other prayers. The first is in someone else's words, the second in my own.

I dug several places trying to find a prayer with roots, which also seemed suitable to what I longed to pray but had no words. I found some good things, including this from The United Methodist Book of Worship:

Everliving God, in Christ's resurrection you turned the disciples' despair into triumph, their sorrow into joy. Give us faith to believe that every good that seems to be overcome by evil, and every love that seems to be buried in death, shall rise again to life eternal; through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you for ever more. Amen.

And one in my own words:

Living, loving Father,

In this season, as we remember Jesus' coming and look forward to his reappearing, as we are reminded of the promise of Immanuel, God with us, with heavy hearts we give you thanks that you are with all of us at all times. You are with us now as we pray this prayer. You are with every family that is grieving such a tragic loss. You were with those whose lives were lost, you are with them now, lovingly caring for them, and you will be with them forever.

God, we cannot understand this. We pray that your kingdom would come and your will would be done on earth as in heaven, so that all senseless suffering in the world may end and that you would finally fully be our King, reigning in relentless peace and goodwill. Come to us again, and set things right.

Until that day when Christ reappears, make our hearts like yours. Help us to defend those who have no defenders. Give us the eyes to identify evil and injustice in the world around us and the courage to confront it. Move us with your kind of compassion so that we may do good to everyone in every way.

Even in the face of tragedy, may the seeds of hope that spring from Jesus' resurrection continue to grow in us along with the joy and peace which we both celebrate and long for this time of year.

Amen.

[This is the 8th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Checking My Hypocrisy

Something I've prayed this week:

Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past... (From The Book of Common Prayer)

I can be a ridiculously private person. This can irritate my wife quite a bit, and for good reason, because it often unintentionally leads to me neglecting to share significant things with her. With her, it's unintentional, as I just get wrapped up in things going on inside my head and some of them never make it out. But with other people, sometimes it's a bit more intentional. I'm not the easiest person in the world to get to know, and I usually have no problem with that.

But once in a while, I get surprised by how far I swing in the other direction before realizing what it is that I've done. It might be in conversation with someone when I realize I've just given information that they really would have been better off not knowing. The instances of having the feeling of having said too much are really rare for me, but they do happen, and I can't stand it when they do.

So as I'm nearing the end of the third week of this experiment, I caught myself wondering if writing about these things could turn out to be an example of when I've said more than I should have. The passage from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount came to mind as something that, in a way, I happen to be intentionally not doing throughout this year.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

(Matthew 6:5-6, ESV)

I have yet to go pray in a synagogue or on a street corner, but perhaps a blog is one of our 21st century equivalents to them. While my conscience is clear about my motivation for writing these posts, I can see the irony: I'm attempting to do what the Bible says by finding ways to pray without ceasing. Then I come really close to doing something the Bible forbids by writing about those attempts here in a public way.

Though if someone really wanted to lay the charges from the passage above against me in this project, I've concluded that I'm on pretty safe ground for a couple of reasons:

First, Jesus wasn't giving laws for us to follow in this passage. There are plenty of times that I pray other places than my room, or without the door closed, and I'm sure that God is fine with it. In the same way, one can easily think of ways to pray as a hypocrite that have nothing to do with being in a synagogue or on a street corner. Rather than laying down laws, he was pointing to our motivation. Do we pray for our Father, or so that people can see us, congratulate us, and think of us as a prayerful person?

And there's the rub: Have I written Live Prayerfully, and am I writing these blog posts because I want people to think of me in a certain way? If that's the case, I need even more these words that I've been praying every day: Lord, have mercy! I think that Live Prayerfully is written in such a way that folks will read it and realize that while I've attempted these things for a while, I'm far from any kind of a guru. And as for this year of blog posts- I'll combat the charge of hypocrite by being sure to post something somewhat humiliating now and then. Such as this:

If you would have been watching me during my time of praying without words yesterday, you would have been doing so for a long time. I was sitting with my daughter as she laid down for her afternoon nap. During midday prayer, when I came to the opportunity to pray without words... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. We both woke up about an hour and a half later.

Yes, I am available to teach others how to do as I do...

[This is the 7th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Kids, Santa, Jesus, and Why We Pray

Something I've prayed this week:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. (Prayer for the Third Sunday of Advent from The Book of Common Prayer)

Several times during the past week, I've driven past a church near our house which has a sign that says, Do your kids know Jesus like they know Santa?

Though I can't say for sure, my hunch is that the author of the sign wants parents to be able to say yes to the question, and if that hunch is right, I'm certain the words were posted with good motivations. The church wants parents to help their children know that Christmas is more about Jesus than it is about Santa.

But it got me thinking and I'd like to put the question a different way:Parents, do you know Jesus like you know Santa? I wonder how many times an honest answer would be yes, and I'm convinced a yes response to that question is common but tragic.

Unless I have been badly informed, "knowledge" of Santa is limited to things along these lines:

• Stories and poems about him in books, videos, etc. These are inescapable. We seemingly can't go anywhere or look at anything without seeing the big fella in red. My original approach as a parent regarding him was that I'd try to ignore him and hope my kids never noticed him. It didn't work. It's more likely that they could go through life without noticing me than without noticing him.
• Other people's claims to have seen him or interacted with him ("You serious, Clark?") I can remember leaving Christmas Eve services at church as a kid and on the ride home hearing Paul Harvey give a news report on the radio about where in the world's sky that the sleigh had been spotted. This wasn't just any voice relating this news. It was Paul Harvey. He was to be trusted at least as much as the preacher.
• The evidence- especially the stuff he gives us Cookies disappeared. Every tiny sound after dark on the 24th was surely what hooves on the roof would sound like. And then, of course, there was the stuff he left behind- the gifts to me attributed to him. Indisputable.

So I wonder how many of us may have been badly formed and actually, we do know Jesus like we know Santa, with our "knowledge" of Jesus being limited to things along these lines:

• Stories and poems about him in books, videos, etc. To some degree, these too are inescapable. If anyone ever bothers to wonder about the origin of terms like Good Samaritan or hypocrite, or things like why we number our years the way we do, or any of the abundance of crosses we see all around us (I saw one today on the back of a truck paired with the silhouette of a naked woman), they will trace them to ancient stories about or told by Jesus. But we only largely only know those things to the degree we choose to investigate them. Otherwise, it's more likely that we could go through December without noticing Jesus than without noticing Santa.
• Other people's claims to have seen him or interacted with him All kinds of people claim to have had all kinds of experiences with this poor man who was born in a small village two millennia ago. Some of these people are as trustworthy as Paul Harvey. Some others of them are preachers, so one would expect them to lay claim to these kinds of things. (That isn't a knock on preachers- there was a time in our culture when they were implicitly regarded as trustworthy- it's a cultural fact that this is no longer the case.) Many others of them are the ordinary kind of people you and I interact with every day.
• The evidence- especially the stuff he gives us Perhaps someone is able to deal with stress better than they were before being a Christian. Or, a few even have those fortunate experiences of a loved one having a medically inexplicable recovery. Others find meaning and purpose for their lives. Many find a deeply needed sense of forgiveness. All kinds of gifts come our way which get attributed to him.

But here's the point: None of the things listed above are the same as knowing a person. If it is not possible to know Jesus in a completely different way than kids know Santa, I am wasting my time in my attempts to live prayerfully this year, because in the end this isn't about blog posts, or habits, or even prayer itself- it's about following up (in a real and gut-level honest way) on the claim that so many have made throughout these last 2,000 years: We can know him.

[This is the 6th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Prayer and Hurry

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.Luke 1:78-79 

A few weeks ago I was helping my son get dressed, and it wasn't one of my finest moments as a father. One of his greatest abilities is to dilly-dally, and some days [he reminds me way too much of myself when he does so and] my patience doesn't hold up for long. About halfway through the process that was taking five times longer than I thought it should, I was getting such a sense of hurry to get on to the next thing that I gave in to it and was more harsh with him than I should have been.

Unfortunately, that's not a specific memory of one instance a few weeks ago, but a general memory of countless times. And they don't just take place when I help him get dressed. And it also happens with people besides him. Plus when I'm by myself... Really, there's no limit to the times when I've had that sense of needing to hurry to get on to the next thing. What happened a few weeks ago was that I noticed the sense of hurry and started to wonder where it was coming from.

There's no real reason for me to have it- I'm grateful to have one of the most un-hurried schedules of anyone I know. Seriously, I can compete with a good percentage of the geriatric population. Most of the time I'm not running late for anything, but the hurry is just a result of my desire to get on to the next thing instead of paying attention to what it is I'm doing at the moment. I realized how often I have that sense of wanting to get on to the next thing, not just when I'm helping my kids get dressed, but all of the time. Instead of paying attention to this thing, I've noticed an almost constant sense of wanting to get on to the next thing.

I was part of a good Apprentice Group discussion yesterday about hurry and how much of an enemy it is to living our lives well. It was based on a chapter from one of the Apprentice books, in which James Bryan Smith says:

Hurriedness is an inner attitude that is not necessarily caused by outer circumstances; boredom is one of its symptoms. The solution to the problem is counter-intuitive: being present where you are...

What's really happening is that we aren't paying attention; we aren't living in the present moment. And we do that because we think the present moment isn't interesting...

Hurry sickness is the number one spiritual illness of our day...

No wonder we have the attention span of a ferret on a triple cappuccino...

The average parent spends twice as long dealing with e-mail as playing with his or her children...

The most important aspects of our lives cannot be rushed. We cannot love, think, eat, laugh, or pray in a hurry...

In our spiritual life we cannot do anything important in a hurry...

God never calls us, as Richard Foster likes to say, "into a life of panting feverishness."...

Jesus lives his life in perfect rhythm, the proper tempo, at all times. He will not be rushed. He never does anything in haste...

Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life...

Hurry is not part of a well-lived life.

(The Good and Beautiful God, Chapter 9)

Thankfully, over the last couple of weeks, since I began this experiment, I've noticed the unnecessary hurry diminishing a bit. I've noticed myself more able to pay attention to this thing, rather than constantly wanting to get on to the next thing. And while I've certainly had too many times of attempting to pray in a hurry, the structure of this project fosters a deliberate, attentive, good kind of slowness in me. Pausing four times per day to pray with other people's words, and once per day praying without words and with my own words, these practices are helping me to pay attention to this thing rather than the endless cycle of only paying attention to the next thing.

I think, and I hope, that the end result of this after this year won't be that I move at a sloth's pace in everything, but rather that I'm simply able to pay more attention.

[This is the 5th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]

Advent 2

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.- Prayer for the Second Sunday of Advent from The Book of Common Prayer

I am now more than a week into this year-long experiment. Though there have been a few small challenges to the way that I'm trying to arrange each day around the ways of prayer described in Live Prayerfully, so far I'm very glad to be doing this. To this point, the challenges have all boiled down to small tests of my intentions to pray in these ways, in situations when by habit, I normally would have put off a time of prayer because of some inconvenience and probably not gotten back around to it.

I shared an example of this from one day last week in the previous post, describing my unexpected feline and canine companions in prayer. After writing that, I knew the next couple of days could also be unfavorable to my plans, as we had to get through a 17-hour road trip from Missouri back to Texas. Particularly with two preschoolers in the car, the trip is already guaranteed to be long, so pausing four times each day to pray and make it any longer didn't seem like a kind option for my family.

Plus, I like to be the driver on road trips, so even though I could find opportunities while driving for praying without words and praying with my own words, opening up my prayer book to pray with other people's words while going down I-44 at 70 miles per hour also didn't seem like a kind option for my family.

Yet thankfully, another very good option presented itself, as Kara was happy to read the prayers aloud for me and we were able to pray them together.

In the last paragraph of the conclusion of Live Prayerfully, I say:

One more thing: I said in the Introduction that a prayerful life is meant for everyone. Here in the Conclusion I want to add to that statement and say: a prayerful life is meant for everyone, and none of us becomes prayerful by ourselves. Perhaps the synergy that surpasses that of putting together practices of praying with other people’s words, praying without words, and praying with your own words is that of putting these practices together with others. It might be on a retreat, in a small group, or with your family, but the only way we are meant to live prayerfully is to live prayerfully together.

Although I am convinced that is true, to this point in my life I have only practiced it to a minimal degree. If one of the main things that comes out of this year is that I'm forced to put that paragraph to the test by living prayerfully with my family and others with whom I cross paths when it's time to pray, I expect that all of us will be a bit better off for having done so together.

[This is the 4th post from A Year of Living Prayerfully.]