“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” For years I misunderstood these words. I thought they were there to comfort those of us who felt inadequate in our fumbling practice of prayer. I heard them as saying, “You can pray when you like, where you like, in any style you like, as long as it works for you.” And of course in one way this is exactly what these words mean. They are saying there is no one way of praying. Don’t let anyone be prescriptive and tell you the way you pray is wrong.

What I did not hear for years in this phrase was the words, “Pray as you can…” or rather I didn’t take them seriously. Then one day I read something and I realised I had been praying really naturally for years. It was just that it was so natural to who I am, so instinctive so to speak, that I hadn’t realised it. What was more was that I realised it was a recognisable school of prayer. I hadn’t made something up. I was praying as thousands of other people have prayed for centuries. I was praying even like people in the bible, but I hadn’t known it.

What we are comfortable with in prayer is closely akin to who we are; our personality types. Some people are naturally spontaneous in prayer; some people like to meditate deeply on scripture; some like a wordless, contemplative style of prayer and others strive to create a deep intimate relationship with God. It is great fun to experiment over the years with different styles of prayer and I believe a healthy diet in prayer includes more than one style because each school of prayer offers a different way of approaching God using different parts of who we are. So in one style of praying we can find ourselves using our imagination. In another we question the biblical text. In another we use our senses more (smell, touch, taste, feel, hearing) and in yet another do nothing (seemingly) but sit quietly and silently waiting on God. But if we come across a style of prayer and it doesn’t work for us we shouldn’t think there is something wrong with us or that we are doing it wrong. It just will never be our preferred way of praying.

But there is one valuable point that we should take on board, whatever our preferred method of prayer is, and that is that some of our less preferred ways of praying do us a great deal of good. “Pray as you can, not as you can’t,” is a great starting point but it doesn’t take on board that we have undeveloped sides of ourselves that have great potential. Stretching those undeveloped muscles by praying in a different way, can really help build up my spiritual life, make me more disciplined and spiritually mature and challenge me to think and act differently. Pray as you can, yes – but sometimes pray as you think you can’t and see what happens.

We erect barriers all the time in our lives. They are created because of a kind of shorthand of cultural and learnt expectation. But every now and then things happen to us, which take us out of our usual comfort zones and wake us up to our prejudices and limited thinking.

I spent a rather unusual day at the beginning of this week, being alongside my husband as he went in for day surgery. We were taken to a sideward of six beds. The noises from a couple of the other beds as my husband settled in were not comforting. Two gentlemen who had had the same operation he was about to have were vomiting violently. The curtains round the beds were closed and anxious relatives hovered outside them as nurses administered anti- vomiting injections and cleaned up, all with the greatest of kindness and efficiency, it must be said.

I left the hospital for an appointment as my husband was taken into surgery. I was due to meet with a man with Asperger’s syndrome to talk about various topics around the spiritual care of people with learning disabilities, their carers and others who come into contact with them, and the theology of disability. I do not know exactly what I expected to meet; probably someone with whom I might find it difficult to make emotional contact? What I discovered was a man with immensely compassionate eyes and expression, who listened carefully and thoughtfully to what I had to say and who explained his theological understanding of disability simply and directly. Here was a man who had found God in his disability and made a deep and profound study of the spiritual needs of those with learning disabilities over many years. What struck me was how his heart had travelled with his head to reach the point he was at. I was joyfully surprised at one of those unexpected real “meetings” of two persons that we are sometimes blessed with. This was one barrier down – a barrier that I realised I had erected not purposefully or meaning to be unkind, but just automatically in my ignorance and cultural prejudice.

I returned to the hospital where I waited for my husband to come back from surgery. One poor chap was still being sick behind his curtain. My husband returned, thank fully without a bad reaction to the general anaesthetic. Patients got better, curtains opened and I saw behind the two curtains a Muslim man and a Sikh man. My husband and the others chatted and there was quiet and gentle sympathy of one person with another. A shared condition, the experience of the same operation, had broken down any shyness or self-consciousness there might have been. Curtains closed had meant that all we could know of another was that this was a human being, male, having a bad time. Christian, Sikh, Muslim and for all I know Jew, Buddhist and atheist in the other beds, were simply people together, glad and grateful for the care they had been given.

Another barrier down. Too often, I know, I judge people by appearances. I see the turban before the person; the Muslim beard disguises the human being underneath and I stop at them. The real curtains in the hospital allowed me to see the curtains veiling my mind and heart; the eyes – mirrors of the soul – in my new friend with Asperger’s helped me see myself.

Beginners’ Mind
Both St Benedict and the Buddha spoke of something called, “Beginners’ Mind”. St Benedict in his “Rule” wrote that however long we have been people who pray, we must always come to prayer as if we know nothing. It is so easy to think that knowledge is wisdom, learnt techniques of prayer, prayer itself. But prayer is about coming as openly and honestly to God as we can, it is about learning to “be still and know that I am God.” It is about understanding our utter dependence on God, “Without me you can do nothing.”

However, that isn’t as easy as it sounds. Our minds are often distracted and anxious in prayer. The great Dutch theologian, Henri Nouwen, wrote of a simple way of praying that had helped him over the years. When faced with a problem which filled his mind and heart and for which he didn’t know the answer, he would say, “Lord, I don’t know what to do about this….and I don’t have to.” In that, “I don’t have to,” was the moment of letting go and of letting God, of opening himself up to God and returning to “Beginners’ Mind.”

But “Beginners’ Mind” is not just an attitude for times of prayer. It is an attitude that we are invited to develop for our lives in general. The ego is always vying for the upper hand. Pride is our constant uninvited and sly companion. As soon as we learn something new, become “wiser in our own eyes,” most of us are tempted to vaunt our newfound knowledge and wisdom. What happens when we do that is that we close ourselves down to everything else. We are no longer open to that deeper place of receiving; we cease to see, to listen and to be aware of the Spirit moving deep within us and of others and their needs. We cease to have “beginners mind.”

St Aquinaus saw what he described as “the clear light” at the end of his life and decided that all his writings were as “chaff.” He became silent and never wrote again. Perhaps all his knowledge and wisdom in the end led him back to “Beginners Mind.”

Listen

Like many people I wake in the morning with a “to do” list in my head. Before I am even aware of where I am my mind is going through all that has to be done with quite a lot of emotions tagged on to how I feel about what is before me. Listening to the “Today” programme and going through the motions of getting up and getting out crowd my head with more stuff, so that although I have one of the shortest and most attractive journeys to work you can imagine, I can be oblivious to all of it, aware only of what is in my head.

But some days something happens and everything is changed. I listen.

I am deeply privileged in as much as I start my working day in a chapel, usually with time set aside before the first service of the day begins. Sitting on a chair in the chapel it is perfectly possible to continue the running commentary that began almost before I was fully awake. Minutes can pass without any awareness at all of my surroundings or myself, completely cut off in the world inside my head.

But sometimes the song of a bird or the tap of a branch on the window breaks through and suddenly, in a moment, all is changed. Hearing the bird and becoming aware of hearing the bird brings you suddenly into the present moment. Listening for the next call makes you acutely aware of the silence between as well as the call of the bird. And all this somehow makes you aware of yourself in the place in which you are. It is a kind of bird “watching” with the ears and it makes sacred the present moment.

Reading this you would be forgiven for thinking, “Well, it is all very well for you with your quietness broken only by birdsong, but I live on a main road in a town!” I was first taught to listen to the noises outside as a way of quietening myself and bringing myself into the present moment, when I lived in a town. Listening to specific traffic noises can wake you up to the present moment just as well. And even on a main road there are moments of surprising silence in which you wait, aware and listening acutely for the next sound.

St Benedict famously began his “Rule,” with the words, “Listen, my son.” He meant listen acutely as if you were a doctor listening to someone’s heart through a stethoscope. If we really want to listen we have to concentrate on something other than what is in our heads. We have to be still, to concentrate, to forget ourselves and to allow the other, whatever or whoever it is, in. In doing this, strangely, we find ourselves, our true and whole selves. Listening anchors us in the now.

The Eye of the Needle

Jesus said, “It is easier to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” As a younger person I understood that saying literally and superficially. We should not have more than enough money when other people were poor, we should be generous, and having too much money somehow got in the way of our relationship with God. Simple solution: don’t seek wealth but be satisfied with enough.

Lately, I have begun to understand things differently. Somehow wealth and impoverishment go together and a person who is poor is not necessarily impoverished.

We live in the richest third of the world peoples and yet many observers would say that we suffer lives of great impoverishment. The reason for this is our very wealth can create a life style which is deeply unsatisfying. We are spiritually and emotionally malnourished; and, worst of all, our impoverishment is largely self-chosen.

Some wealthy people chose to live in gated communities. By cutting themselves off in this way they feel safe and they can avoid people who are not like them: they can avoid pain. Behind this life style choice is the desire not to see, to nullify and not to be confronted with those things that make them uncomfortable. The result is that, of course, they cut themselves off from life itself and choose instead to exist in a cotton wool ghetto. Their lives, whether they know it or not, are impoverished.

But with the life choices we are able to make many of us do something very similar. We too, want to avoid the discomfort and pain which is part of what life is about and is for our growth and our healing, if only we recognise it. The life style walls we build are just as much about avoidance. Our walls are called “distraction.”

Distraction could be considered a commodity. In the First World we buy distraction in and fill our lives with it. And we are buying more and more. Distraction is the quick fix solution which momentarily fills the void but gives no lasting satisfaction. It masks the pain but does not deal with it. It is the fast food meal that does not nourish the real hunger. From morning until night we chose distraction because we cannot bear the pain of our own emptiness, lack of satisfaction and longing. So we fill our lives with escapism: computers, iPhones, noise, popular entertainment, fantasy holidays, magazines, puzzle books. In our touch screen world everything is on hand all the time to help us to avoid ourselves, our loneliness and our hunger for meaning. Those who live in the Second and Third Worlds do not have such choices. They are poor but they often have stronger communities and oddly more satisfaction in life than we have.

It is hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven not because God prevents it happening but because we do so. Wealth has always allowed people to buy into distraction and out of reality. But it is only in daring to become real that true satisfaction can be found.

Giving abundantly from our poverty

In the story of the Widow’s Mite (Mark 12: 41 – 44), Jesus is sitting outside the temple with his disciples watching the people put their offering of money into the treasury. The rich give abundantly. Then a widow comes along who puts in two small coins, “all that she has to live on,” and Jesus, observing her, points out to his disciples that this woman has given more than anyone else because the rich who gave abundantly still have an abundance of money. It hasn’t really cost them anything to give, whereas this woman now has nothing to live on.

The poor widow is, however, rich in her attitude to God. In the giving away of her small coins which are, paradoxically, her greatest material wealth, she honours God by putting him first, by putting service to him above her own needs. She expresses a powerful faith: one that demonstrates itself in actions. She acts with great trust as she chooses to live for God in the moment.

And, of course, this anonymous woman has given us great riches from her poverty. When she put in her little coins she had no idea she was being observed, no idea that her story would be told over and over again; that she would challenge those of us who know we give only out of abundance, who know we don’t put God first, who recognise how partial our love of God is when measured against hers. This anonymous woman has challenged us and our attachment to material wealth for centuries.

The irony is that her very gift to us comes from her poverty. She never knew that her small act of the moment would change the world, challenge wealthy and powerful people hundreds of years later. But perhaps she knew that though she was poor, she was not impoverished: that her action expressed a greater freedom in its letting go and trusting God, than most of us will ever know.

She taught us another thing, too: something the saints have proclaimed down the ages. If we live in God, when we are weak, we are strong and when we are poor, we are rich and it is in recognising our poverty that we have most to give.

How to love?

I remember asking my father when I was quite young, how it was possible to fulfil Christ’s commandment “to love one another,” including the most difficult of charges, to love your enemy. After all one could not will to love.

My wise Dad responded that although it was very difficult to love some people, we could and we should always treat people as if we loved them. That answer was good enough for me as I entered the tortuous territory of adolescence and went on being my touchstone for some years afterwards. But as I have got older it will no longer do. Christ calls me to love and this from the heart. Good behaviour on the outside, however well meant, is not in the end, enough.

A little while ago I came across this lovely quotation by the 13th Century Persian poet, theologian and philosopher, Rumi.

“Your talk is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built built against it.”

It came as an answer and as a bit of a relief. I was no longer charged with loving someone out of my own inadequate faith, ability and energy. Instead I was invited to seek and find, as honestly as I could, all the barriers inside me that stop me either giving or receiving love.

When I started to think about this at more depth I realised how manifold and slippery many of these barriers are. For example, I might just avoid someone or some situation that makes me uncomfortable: easy to do and no one is ostensibly offended or hurt. But if I do this I fall short of Jesus’ pro-active command to love and I remain blind to and in the thrall of the barrier, whatever it is. The challenge goes the other way, too. What barriers do I put in the way of allowing God and others to love me? It is strange how similar the barriers are that stop us loving others and being loved: fear, distrust, pride, anxiety about coming out of one’s comfort zone; all of these are alive and well whether we are trying to love or receive love.

The invitation, as always, is to self knowledge; to recognise the moment when the barrier is raised, to stop, to observe, to question and to challenge oneself. It is to resist what seems the easiest line of defence, blame of others. It is, as Jesus said, to stop looking for the mote of dust in the other person’s eye and to face up to the plank in one’s own eye!

I would not, however, want to suggest that this is a recipe for self-help. Everything we know about love teaches us that we learn to love by first receiving, experiencing and learning to trust love. The first letter of John puts this succinctly,

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10)

Christ first loved us. Our job is to try to seek and find those barriers which we all have that stop us from believing this and acting on it. As we understand what stops us from loving and receiving love we are healed and freed to love as Christ commanded.

“What’s in a name?

“What’s in a name?” Well, for some of us there is quite a lot in a name. I was, for example, extremely pleased to be serving in a church in my last parish which was dedicated to St John the Evangelist. Like many I find his gospel a never ending source of spiritual nourishment and revelation. Before that church I had served in two churches in succession whose dedication was to St Andrew. I could never get quite as excited about St Andrew as St John the Evangelist, but at least he was an apostle and as I got to know Andrew and preached about him on patronal festivals, I grew to love this seemingly modest man who was the first of the disciples to meet Jesus, introduced others, including his brother, Peter, to him; and managed to assist in solving a food crisis by introducing Jesus to a young chap who had two small fish and five loaves!

You will realise from all this that the name of the church I am serving in has quite a lot of meaning for me. So to be quite honest I was disappointed when I learnt that the chapel at Launde Abbey is dedicated to St John the Baptist. Although an essential character in his story even Jesus says that,

…the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he (John). (Matt 11:11)

The Baptist never knows Jesus in the way the other disciples know him. He stands as the last of the prophets in the Old Testament line and never lives to see Jesus’ saving work. So why was Launde Abbey chapel named after someone who never really knew Jesus? I didn’t get it.

But lately I have had an epiphany. There could hardly be a better dedication for the chapel of a retreat house than that of John the Baptist. The role of John the Baptist was “to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight.” The job of a retreat house could be said to be the same. We don’t by enlarge do the preaching and the teaching. We try to prepare a space where people can stop, be quiet, rest in body, mind and spirit and be enabled to open up to whatever God may want to say to them. The retreat house is there to help to help people prepare to listen; to help make paths straight by assisting all those who come see and remove the burdens and barriers that get in the way of our walk with God. John the Baptist is the warm up man for Jesus’ ministry. He sets up the scene and begins to engage the audience with the issues. Then he stands back so that Jesus can do his work. If Launde Abbey with the grace of God can do that we are fulfilling our function and living up to our dedication.

What on Earth?

Some years ago I had some friends who were quite a bit older than me. Although in many ways as English as they come in birth, upbringing and culture, they had found that the Hindu faith had spoken more to them as young people than the religion they experienced in 1930s and 40s Church of England services. We spoke often and at a depth which I found very enriching. We had much more in common than separated us and recognized in each other the same shared longings and desire for God. Although they largely read the great Hindu scriptures, they continued to read the Bible, too, and had a great attachment to the language of the services they were brought up within the Church of England; so they loved the 1662 Prayer Book. On one thing they were adamant. In the Lord’ Prayer, the wording should be,

Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done

In earth as it is in heaven.

“In” earth, not “on” earth.

As the years have gone by this translation has made more and more sense to me. Earth at the time of the 1662 Prayer Book did not simply mean our planet or the soil. Earth meant us human beings. It was a link with the idea of Adam being made from the dust of the earth; and with all we know now about the Big Bang and the way all matter is recycled over and over again, including the matter which makes up our bodies, it makes even more sense.

But even more importantly the whole prayer is slightly shifted when we use “in” instead of “on”. If we pray that God’s kingdom comes and his will is done on earth, it is out there: it is about justice, mercy and love, the kingdom values, happening in our world, yes, but out there. If we hold the older understanding in our minds, “in earth,” it becomes about us, you and me. May God’s kingdom come and his will be done in me. I then become responsible along with God, along with all others who pray the Lord’s Prayer for promulgating God’s Kingdom values and not just blaming the lack thereof on others, on the world out there.

It’s a small word shift, “on” or “in”, but it gives quite a lot of food for thought.

Pondering

Jesus said that the kingdom of Heaven belongs to the little ones, children, and that none of us can enter therein unless we become like a child. There are many ways in which we may be being invited to be childlike in our journey with Christ. We can use our time fruitfully in considering the qualities children have that we lose as we mature. One of the things I rediscovered some years ago on retreat was the art and the joy of ‘pondering’.

As a child I know I pondered. Those long holiday afternoons of childhood that most adults remember were periods of intense activity – of course, but there were also hours of lazy pondering; sprawled on the grass under a tree with a book I was enjoying put to one side for a moment. What happened in these times of meditation? Nothing much; time ticked by gently. I appreciated where I was without analysing or intellectualising. There was no sense of urgency, just peace. Psalm 131 speaks to me of the atmosphere of these times.

1 My heart is not proud, Lord,

my eyes are not haughty;

I do not concern myself with great matters

or things too wonderful for me.

2 But I have calmed and quieted myself,

I am like a weaned child with its Mother

like a weaned child I am content.

As a teenager I also pondered on long walks to school. Even as a college student I remember pondering, lying in front of a fire on Saturday afternoon, doing nothing. And then the “prison walls” as Wordsworth so succinctly put it, crowded in: the prison walls of adult responsibility, adult pressure; the imperative to make sure every moment was usefully spent and to fulfil the obligations of the ‘to do’ list.

We are told that Mary, the mother of Jesus, pondered. She is often painted with a book as a sign of her thoughtfulness. Pondering is a time when instead of grasping at the world or inflicting our agenda on it, we allow it to come to us. We are open and we wait to receive. Pondering is time in the early morning with a cup of tea sitting at a window. Pondering is something we might do before prayer, something that prepares us for prayer because prayer is about receiving, something that turns into prayer.

To ponder is to allow the grace of God to work in us. We have no agenda and we make no demands. We simply enjoy the gift of the moment and the gentle flow of thought as we waste time with our Mother God.