One of the biggest surprises on my spiritual journey has been prayer-- not just my private devotion or silence or meditation-- but the surprise has been for me in corporate prayer-- words or silences exchanged with large groups of people together.
It is like a stream that flows from us-- poetry and words or silence held together there is this flow that happens beyond the words, beyond the silence, there is the being in this together & putting this out there in the universe. The flow and stream that is sent-- be it Christian Prayer or Buddhist prayer or dare I say it, Atheist prayer. (yes, I know an oxymoron and perhaps I look like a moron, but.. we can ponder that in another blog!)
I realize that this statement must sound utterly absurd—for what is a spiritual journey but prayer. Prayer however is one the greatest mysteries and paradoxes of the unseen—how is it that our words or silence or walk or any sort of action that we might “do” and call prayer, how can it actually change or alter anything— and yet it does. Prayer changes everything. Not in some Hollywood special effects kind of a way, but the very core of our being is changed, made lovelier by prayer.
The image of a potter comes to my mind and I suddenly see the beautiful iridescent interior of a fired ceramic pot—on the exterior, you can’t see the loveliness of the hidden interior and yet you know it is present. So it is with prayer. Prayer, the filling of our consciousness with such joy poetry and love causes an interior beauty that can’t quite be noticed on the exterior and yet, you can tell gazing at the vessel that such care and beauty are present on the interior—an iridescent loveliness that is numinous is present in the one that centers their life on making space for God. That is the work of prayer. And prayer of course is not just bowing our heads and saying a few lovely words—it is an inner quality that softens the ground of our being. Prayer and a life time of it changes us in ways that aren’t quantifiable by any methodology or logic. Prayer is a way of being that is intentional and open to the presence of God.
I believe that all written traditional prayers—be they Christian or other—point us to that reality of such transformation. When we allow the words of any prayer to wash over our being, it smoothes out our roughness and makes us into that transformed being that we are called to be. All written prayer points us to that changed reality. So it is with the Lord’s Prayer, an ancient that points not just to Jesus Christ or Christians, but points to the ultimate human fulfillment—that we will be fully human by living into that transformation given to us by the divine. The Lord’s Prayer is about the growing up of our own humanity, the awakening of consciousness to our fulfillment as spiritual beings on a human journey. Each phrase is about our growth from selfishness into selflessness- it is about transcendence of our selves to God. It is not just the uttering of the words in repetition that will change us—its not about the words, Our Father in Heaven said over and over that make for transcendence. It is the intentional and interior space of a human soul that slowly opens in availability to those words spoken or held in silence. It is a saturation point or a receptivity that somehow opens up to such interior beauty and fulfillment.
The other oddity about such transformation is, however momentary it seems to be—it shimmers in the eyes briefly and then is gone, like a humming bird feasting for a moment, lovely and then gone. It is an awesome moving experience that is fleeting at best, at least in our human observation. I believe that ultimately, it is all that is truly seen revealed and known—because in those brief episodes of such beauty and goodness, it is where we find God and know that shining presence.
More than anything else, what I realize is that Spirit is not done with me yet.
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