Sister Wendy on prayer. So so hard for people to leave behind the "Bring me a pony" concepts of prayer. And yet, maybe they are the ones that are right about that.
Interview with Sister Wendy
Interview by Pam Rhodes
PAM: What is prayer?
SR WENDY: I think I'd say prayer is God's taking possession.
PAM: What is prayer? Why do we need it?
SR WENDY: Well there are 2 questions there, Pam. If I answered your 2nd point first - why do we need prayer? I think because everybody knows they're not complete. The longing for completion, for a meaning, for a sense that they're not just passing time is one of the deepest things in human beings. It's why we're moved by beauty, music, art. All wakes that desire for what we haven't got. Now prayer is all concerned with what we haven't got. Prayer is God's taking possession of us but that's prayer at its most ultimate, its most absolute. Prayer goes all the ways up until it comes to taking delight in the sunshine - which is a perfectly valid prayer . I don't think people even need to be thinking of God or even knowing God's name to be rejoicing in his gifts, and by rejoicing in his gift and accepting it, be in some state of prayer. Then, from that you see, you go all the way down until you get to the deepest prayer which is simple silently letting God take possession of you.
PAM: So does prayer actually necessarily needs words?
SR WENDY: No and at its depth it can't have words. You know it says in scripture it that the Spirit sighs too deep for words. There are no words for that coming of God but that's at its depth. We can easily find words and thoughts at another depth but no prayer needs absolutely nothing except desire.
PAM: What then can we expect to find or perhaps not expect to find through prayer?
SR WENDY: We're not in prayer for ourselves you know. It's not what we find or expect to find is beside the point. Prayer is God's business. What God wants to do is be present in the world and prayer accepts him, lets him come in and work in us. I suppose our share in it is the joy of being in tune with God's desires.
PAM: People often speak of prayer feeling as if it's a two-way communication. Is that your experience of it?
SR WENDY: Well I suppose yes in that God is always communicating himself and he's always aware of how we're responding. So there's that two-way but I have known very holy people who have never felt any input from God. It's now how we feel that matters, it's what we do. I would say if somebody's truly striving to be good and true and responsible and loving and that person has prayed even if they have never heard of God, that's the fruit of God.
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PAM: So it could never be an easy way out of suffering or facing challenges?
SR WENDY: No, but it makes all the difference to suffering. I have seen at least one person completely transformed by suffering and I know that I've seen other people become selfish and small through suffering. But the former was a play girl who was aghast to have suffering but she looked at God and said I trust you and so that suffering has widened her and sweetened her. She's a holy woman now and she would not have been without the suffering. If I could have taken her suffering away I would have done and yet in God's plan - he didn't send the suffering, the suffering came from her body - but the prayer helped her to use it.
So it makes all the difference in suffering Pam that we're not we're not damaged by it. We're hurt but we're never damaged. We're set free.
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Selective Prayer
By Henri J. M. Nouwen
We tend to present to God only those parts of ourselves with which we feel relatively comfortable and which we think will evoke a positive response. Thus our prayer becomes very selective and narrow. And not just our prayer but also our self-knowledge, because by behaving as strangers before God we become strangers to ourselves.
The Only Necessary Thing
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The book I am reading (more than others) lately is The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition by Huston Smith. Today I read about aspects of energy, which I grasped only an inkling of in the cosmology books I read, compared to how prayer "works." I find this beautiful and logical to me, in my oddly illogical mind and heart.
"The most important scientific discovery of all time--anticipated by Einstein, worked out in Bell's Theorem, and experimentally confirmed by the EPR (Einstein-Podosky-Rosen) experiment--proves that the universe is 'non-local.'
"Described in everyday language, the story is this: Particles have spins. In paired particles, when one particle spins downward the other spins upward. Now, separate the two--distance is irrelevant; it can be an inch or to the edge of the universe--and when one particle goes into a downspin, simultaneously the other spins upward. For prayer, nonlocality suggests that the person praying and the person being prayed for are closer than side by side. Distance doesn't apply--they are in the same spaceless mathematical point. When the pray-er plunges deep down into his praying self, his prayer spins downward, so to speak, and spins its recipient upward. When Jesus prayed all night, and during the day, he was 'spun upward' by placing himself in the presence of his Father who so loved the world that he 'spun down'--into his Incarnation, Jesus--and transformed him." (58, 59)*
Intending to Pray
By Emilie Griffin
There is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. It is the split second between thinking about prayer and really praying. For some of us, this split second may last for decades.
The Experience of Prayer
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The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there.
—Psuedo-Macarius
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Simone Weil claimed "Attention is the only faculty of the soul that gives us access to God."
{Spiritual Theology}
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"Idolatry is, in its essence, a narrowing of vision, a distorted perception. In William Blake's words, "The Visions of eternity, by reason of narrowed perception are become weak visions of Time and Space, fix'd into furrows of death."
This narrowing of perception brings us to a condition where vision ends and the sun goes down on prophecy. We become imprisoned in what St. Paul calls the "carnal mind." For the essential feature of an idol is that it can be seen, unlike the true God, whom no one has seen at any time."
-True Prayer
Kenneth Leech
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