Fullness In The Desolate

Over the last couple years, I've been trying to take a Sabbath once a week. Basically, I'm attempting to have one day in the week that's set apart to be different than the other 6 days. A day to remind myself that I'm created, I'm not immortal, and that I'm sustained by a Hand infinitely stronger than mine. It reminds me to be a child again, to breathe a little deeper, and to not shoulder the cares of the world alone. In the words of Eugene Peterson, the Sabbath is a day to "pray and play". Initially I felt like I was able to find the sacredness of the day and really attempt to make it different, but over time it's gravitated back towards a usual day and less "set apart". I find myself tasking and not being. I find myself not praying or playing. As I sit down to pray, to listen, and read, I end up picking up my iPhone and checking Twitter or Facebook, or reply to an email that could have easily waited till the next day. Then I'll get back to what I was doing, but sure enough, a few minutes later I'm back on my email. Have I become a slave to technology & immediacy? Am I really not able to simply focus on one thing or person for an extended period of time?

Not only does this affect my times spent with God but it also affects my time spent with others. With my wife, friends, and co-workers. As I'm in conversation with them, I'll get a text, a voicemail that I "need" to check, a phone call I "must" take. Charles E. Hummel wrote a short a short essay titled "Tyranny of the Urgent", where the basic idea is that we too easily allow the "urgent things to crowd out the important ones." I find this to be profoundly true in my life. When I look back at my life in 15 years, what will I think the truly important things were? What were the urgent ones? It's almost as if the only reason I attend to the urgent ones is because they're yelling a little louder than the important ones. I don't want to lose the important ones in the volume difference. How will my wife remember me? Our kids? Our friends? Was my time spent on people or tasks that could have waited?

I've had a couple thoughts about this since this frustration's been hitting:

First was a quote I read Mark Buchanan's book "The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul By Restoring Sabbath". He asked the question, "If people stop to listen to you, to whom are you stopping to listen?" It's a great question simply because it reminded me of where the weight of my words come from. He went on to say, "Our speaking comes out to our listening. What we say comes out of what we hear. We have to be people who listen, day and night, to God." This was true of Jesus, who said he only would do what he saw the Father doing. I hope I could say the same of myself, but so often I'm not looking for what the Father is doing. I'm not listening to what the Father is saying. In a sea of noise, would I hear the Voice that created all voices. I must remember to slow down to listen.

The second thought came yesterday during church as we read from Mark 1:35, which says, "And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed." The word that stood out to me was desolate. As I set apart time to listen, there are distractions all around me. "Desolate" would not be the appropriate adjective to describe my times with God. I'm not saying the distractions are in and of themselves "bad things", but in that moment, they're not the best thing. I need to learn from Jesus' example to find a time in the day (for him it was very early in the morning) and in a setting that wouldn't offer distractions in order to listen and be with God. To be in silence. To confess my need. To beg for help. To thank him for all He's done, is doing, and will do. Perhaps it's in the desolate places that we'll find fullness.

Open Eyed Prayers

I recall being taught to pray when I was a child with the infamous words: "Bow your head, close your eyes, and fold your hands." Bowing your head? Perhaps sign of submission. Closing your eyes? A sign of our capacity for distraction and potentially acknowledging that God is "somewhere out there" in that dark space, similar to that which we see when we close our eyes. Folding your hands? I'm still not sure.

In his book "Answering God", Eugene Peterson talks about 2 great mystical traditions in prayer:

• Apophatic
• Kataphatic

Apophatic prayer (apophemi or ἀπόϕημι is "no" in Greek) goes the route of "via negativa" by saying close your eyes, don't be distracted from the things around us, for they keep us from God. Kataphatic prayer (kataphemi or κατάϕημι means "yes") chooses a different path, that of the "via affirmativa", allowing the entirety of creation to draw us into our true source, God.

Which path is the best? Of course there is place for apophatic prayers, for we are creatures of excess. We must learn to practice self-control, to refine and at times forfeit things for the sake of greater ones. Through fasting (saying "no" to food or another item or action) we learn to feast on God (saying "yes" to him). However, we must move beyond our "no's" and discover the "yes's"...

This leads us back to childhood training in prayer. Are we teaching kids to think of God "outside" our reality, the reality that one day we'll finally escape to? Or are we teaching our kids (and ourselves for that matter) that God is. He is outside, but also within and around. We learn to see him in the most simple things. Would we not have a Gnostic prayer life that casts aside the "trappings of creation" for a higher spirituality. CS Lewis, in his book "Mere Christianity", said it this way:

"There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He used material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He liked matter. He invented it."

When Jesus performed miracles, he used common elements of creation: mud, spit, jugs of water, fish and bread, rivers, fig trees, pigs, stormy seas, and dead bodies. When Jesus spoke, he always used elements that were in full view around him: vineyards, shepherds, fruit, fathers, weeds, and yeast. Would we join Jesus in his understanding that within creation is an opportunity to meet and see God. Is God those items themselves? No, but in them are a glimpse of him. All of life is sacred.

Would we become like children again, but this time pray not with eyes closed and holds folded, but instead with extended hands and eyes wide open with wonder.

Tasting The Psalms

Over the last couple weeks, I've been taking some time reading through the Psalms first thing in the morning. I've tried a couple morning rituals (ie Divine Hours, Sacred Space, etc.) and am continuing to explore different ways of praying. I haven't gotten super far yet, but it's been life giving. Basically I've been starting with a Psalm a day, reading through it and meditating on it, praying it back in my "own tongue". I've been using a couple tools as I've done this:

1) Robert Alter's "The Book of Psalms".


2) Eugene Peterson's "Answering God: The Psalms As Tools For Prayers"


Robert Alter is a biblical scholar and author who taught Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, and has translated a lot of the Hebrew Scriptures. Alongside his translation are his commentaries on various passages, why they're hard to translate or understand, or shed some interesting light on words/phrases. I've enjoyed some of the poetic ways he's unfolded some of the psalms. Check it out if you get a chance.

I've also been reading through Eugene Peterson's "Answering God" and have been loving it. I read it a few years ago, but I'm blown away by the stuff I'm re-reading. I highly recommend it, even just for the first 5 chapters. The way he lays out the heart of the Psalms and even explaining the story & rhythm of the psalms is so helpful and encouraging. Here are a few of the quotes:

"All prayer is prayed in a story, by someone who is in the story. There are no storyless prayers. Story is to prayer what the body is to teh soul, the circumstances in which it takes palce. And prayer is to story what the soul is to the body, the life without which it would be a corpse. Prayers are prayed by people who live stories. Every life is a story. We are not always aware that we are living a story; often it seems more like a laundry list. But story it is."

Here's another:

"Spiritualized prayer is denatured prayer, prayer in which all the dirt and noise of ordinary life is boiled out. It is a prayer that cultivates exalted feelings and sublime thoughts. It is prayer that is embarrassed by the coarse subject matter that intrudes itself into most twenty-four hour periods, but takes great pleasure in aphorisms. It is escapist prayer, with scheduled flights to the empyrean. The psalm editors, knowing our weakness for these fantasies, use titles to tie the balloon of prayer to people in a story: for life is always and necessarily lived in detail, and the details are often inconvenient and regular."

I love this thought of story and how the psalm editors placed titles on 116 of the psalms because it reminds us that these prayers are connected to "place, time, and people". That should be a greatly encouraging thought. I'd love to keep on going, but need to get ready for class.

If you ready & pray through the psalms, what disciplines have been helpful for you to engage in meaningful, heartfelt ways? Books?