prayer and connection
St Paul's instruction to pray without ceasing is often misunderstood. We think he's referring to the head-bowed-hands-folded capital-P Prayers that begin with "Dear God" and end with "Amen." That's how we think of prayer. Especially people who come from liturgical churches seem to have trouble with the idea of spontaneous prayer.
But even evangelicals sometimes miss St Paul's point. He's obviously not saying that you should have a wreck because your eyes are closed while driving. (Much of the world's evil is caused by those who think we should have our eyes religiously closed while driving through it.) Knowing that, it seems that we just take his order as a metaphorical instruction to take things to God a lot.
That's not bad, of course, but what if there's some other kind of communication he's talking about? It hasn't been too long since the days of dial-up, when you were writing and you needed something, so you connected by clicking on the dial-up thing, waiting while it hummed and buzzed and tweeted, and then you were online. Then you looked up whatever it was you wanted to look up, or emailed whoever you needed to email, and then when it was done you clicked on the disconnect thing, and waited a moment while it disconnected. Back to work.
That's how a lot of us think about prayer, as well. But perhaps it's time to upgrade. These days, most of us are never really offline. When you're writing and you need something, you just go over to the web, or iTunes, or your email, and zip away. Your connection doesn't have a beginning, middle, or end. You're just on, and you always know that. You're always aware of it. Sometimes you foreground it by actually doing something, but most of the time the Internet is simply a presence.
Veranne Graham, who in Catherine's church holds the office of mother hen at large, said offhand once that "washing dishes is a prayer; stubbing your toe and hurting is a prayer." I've never forgotten it. When we're practicing the presence of God (to use Brother Lawrence's cosmos of a phrase), everything we do is done in his presence; everything we think is thought in his presence.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it well:
But even evangelicals sometimes miss St Paul's point. He's obviously not saying that you should have a wreck because your eyes are closed while driving. (Much of the world's evil is caused by those who think we should have our eyes religiously closed while driving through it.) Knowing that, it seems that we just take his order as a metaphorical instruction to take things to God a lot.
That's not bad, of course, but what if there's some other kind of communication he's talking about? It hasn't been too long since the days of dial-up, when you were writing and you needed something, so you connected by clicking on the dial-up thing, waiting while it hummed and buzzed and tweeted, and then you were online. Then you looked up whatever it was you wanted to look up, or emailed whoever you needed to email, and then when it was done you clicked on the disconnect thing, and waited a moment while it disconnected. Back to work.
That's how a lot of us think about prayer, as well. But perhaps it's time to upgrade. These days, most of us are never really offline. When you're writing and you need something, you just go over to the web, or iTunes, or your email, and zip away. Your connection doesn't have a beginning, middle, or end. You're just on, and you always know that. You're always aware of it. Sometimes you foreground it by actually doing something, but most of the time the Internet is simply a presence.
Veranne Graham, who in Catherine's church holds the office of mother hen at large, said offhand once that "washing dishes is a prayer; stubbing your toe and hurting is a prayer." I've never forgotten it. When we're practicing the presence of God (to use Brother Lawrence's cosmos of a phrase), everything we do is done in his presence; everything we think is thought in his presence.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it well:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God.
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
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