First off, my apologies for some delayed posts here on the blog... lots of things happening in life have drawn my attention away but alas, here I am! This latest post comes from a March column for Global Sisters Report. Even as Lent comes to a close, there is wisdom from those who came before us that can guide us through this season and the many seasons of our lives. Prayers for all as we make the journey!- C
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At the outset of Lent, I chuckled when a friend sent me a clip about Ash Wednesday from the morning television program "Today," featuring the actor Mark Wahlberg. With ashes on his forehead, Wahlberg shared with the show's host about Lent. Scrawled across the bottom of the screen, the captioned title for the segment read "Mark Wahlberg's 40-Day Challenge."
Absurd as the notion of Lent as a 40-day challenge might
seem — as if it were a fad diet or an exercise routine — the way many people
approach the season isn't too far from the concept of challenge. Prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving can easily devolve into challenges to be mastered and
tasks at which to excel.
Of course, that's not the purpose or the aim of Lent. We
pray, fast and give freely so that we might more freely embrace and deepen our
relationship with God. It is a challenge to simplify that is anything but
simple. There is no mastering these practices (i.e., you can't "win"
Lent), but only the invitation to wholeheartedly pursue them in these 40 days
with the hope that the lasting effect and ongoing practice of them might
transform our lives in the long run.
To that end, it is prayer that grounds the entire journey of
Lent and the Christian life. Whether you are an apostle, a 14th-century mystic,
or a 21st-century seeker, prayer roots our relationship with God; it is the
focus of our fasting and the impetus of our giving. Without prayer none of this
makes sense and yet, in the busy lives we lead, prayer is often the first thing
to be cut short.
Perhaps this is because prayer at times can feel intangible.
On a long journey, it feels like we need to be more active, like there must be
something we can do. The reality, though, is that the best thing we can do is
simply show up.
"Labour hard in this nothing and this nowhere,"
the 14th-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing writes to a spiritual
novice seeking to learn how to pray. That is the hard work of contemplation, of
seeking union and finding that beyond anything else, you simply (or not so
simply) need to show up to be united with God in prayer.
One night, early on in my candidacy as a Sister of St.
Joseph, I found myself sitting in the small chapel in the local convent into
which I had just moved. This was a regular occurrence. Making the transition
into religious life was no small feat. As I navigated the newness of that
moment, I held on to advice I had received from a spiritual director years
earlier: show up every day.
That director didn't have this transition in mind when she
offered the advice. In fact, her words were more about making a habit of
prayer. "No matter what, show up to pray," I remember her telling me.
She wasn’t quoting The Cloud of Unknowing or
Meister Eckhart but the core sentiment of her advice draws off the wisdom of
these spiritual classics. To be present to God, she advised me, requires the
removal of obstacles.
Now certainly, obstacles in prayer aren't easily removed. We
can't simply will ourselves to pray or command God to appear. Our minds still
wander and preoccupations can still intrude. What we can do is create a
landscape that is conducive to prayer, a time and place ordered by regularity.
Such a place is not devoid of character or free from distraction, but it is
simplified by radical reliability. Create patterns. Show up in the same space
at the same time everyday and you'll be amazed by what can happen.
Confronting the distractions that often come in prayer, the
late 14th-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing advises the
one who wishes to show up in prayer to "do your best to pretend not to
know that they [the distractions] are pressing so hard upon you." Such
pretending can be hard though, and so the author has the novice imagine the
distraction butting in "between you and your God." Like an unwelcome
interlocutor at a party, when all you really want to do is be with and talk to
a dear friend, distractions in prayer may be swayed if you "try to look
over their shoulders, as it were, searching for something else."
Dispatching distraction with a spiritual cold shoulder, we can focus on the One
we've shown up to see, the One for whom we long— God.
If looking past distraction doesn't work, the Cloud author
offers another technique: admit defeat.
"Cower down before [your distractions] like a wretched
coward overcome in battle." This dramatic response is the spiritual
equivalent of throwing up your hands in surrender. It is an admission that
prayer is not something we do on our own. In fact, it's not our doing at all.
We show up and God does the rest.
As Meister Eckhart preached in the time preceding The Cloud of
Unknowing, "Some simple people think that they will see God as if he
were standing there and they here. It is not so. God and I, we are one. I
accept God into me in knowing; I go into God in loving." That is to say:
we are called into union with God by our very being.
Thus, "knowing God" is not a call to comprehensive
knowledge but rather to open yourself completely to a God you cannot
comprehend, to know that you do not and cannot know God totally and to be free
in that.
The same can be said of loving. One goes "into God in
loving" as one returns to the source of Love, the Word, deep within them.
This return is the call of all created beings. We come from a God who is love
and are called to return to God by loving.
The "work" we set out to undertake in prayer is
union with God. In a liturgical season like Lent, we strive to deepen our
relationship with God through intentional prayer and action that draw us closer
to the One who has made us in and for love.
Sometimes that love is conveyed in the smallest of words:
Thanks. Love. Peace. Trust. You.
Focusing our prayer with these short, deceptively simple
words grounds us in the moment and allows us to surrender to God, who longs to
be with us in this moment.
“Short prayers pierce heaven,” the author of The
Cloud of Unknowing instructs the novice pray-er. Centuries later we
might listen too to the wisdom of these insights. Keep it simple. For all the
uncertainty we face, simple presence offers us the opportunity to break through
to a deeper sense of knowing and being with God. That presence is far greater
than any 40-day challenge, it is the work of a lifetime.
Choosing to pray in this way is a practice of simplicity and
humility. God embraces us as we are, challenging us to go deeper, to give
freely and to love abundantly. Centuries of practice show us that embracing
that challenge — showing up and bearing all to God in loving union— is
certainly worth undertaking … not only for our own being but for the life of
the world.
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