One of the longer ones in The Attentive Life, Chapter 6 (as least to my sensibilities) rambles a bit. While there’s nothing wrong with a good ramble, I nevertheless I sometimes find myself wishing that Ford would get to the point more quickly than he tends to do so. And, if I may, another quibble: more and more I’m finding that Ford provides citations of sources quite selectively. More than once I wanted to see the source of a quotation only to be disappointed. For example, Ford tells us that John Cassan is responsible for defining acedia [sloth, indolence] as ‘the noonday demon” (121); but when I went to the notes to see where, I found no documentation. Or again, when Ford tells the little story of the conversation between a “woman trying to practice centering prayer” and Thomas Keating (129), there’s no citation in the endnotes. Such disappointments, I suppose, for quite natural for the likes of me, a retired professor who over the course of more than thirty years has tried to teach thousands of students the joys of citation--especially for readers! But, as I say, these are minor quibbles.More importantly, I do appreciate Ford’s repeating the story about centering prayer. In case you need to remember it, here it is:
A woman trying to practice centering prayer told Thomas Keating: “I try to keep my mind on God, and to pay attention. But it seems as if I am always being distracted. I must be distracted a thousand times in twenty minutes.”
His response to her is a a good final word in making peace with our distractibility: “Wonderful,” He replied, “You have a thousand opportunities to turn back to God.”
Upon reading that story (worthy of inclusive among any told by modern Desert Mothers and Fathers), I thought it might here be helpful if I share with you something of what I wrote to a friend this morning about my experiences with Centering Prayer. I hope my friend does not mind if I excerpt the following from my letter to him. Here it is, albeit considerably edited:
Normally in the morning, like you, I rise fairly early. Quite frankly, it’s often because I have to go to the bathroom. At seventy-one my bladder is a pretty good alarm clock. Gratefully I no longer have to shower immediately after getting out of bed and dress for teaching at the university; as a consequence, I usually put my legs into a pair of old jeans, slip on a shirt and sweater, and make my way to the kitchen where I ritually make a carafe of coffee, an old-fashioned way, with a French press. Liking strong coffee, as close to industrial strength as possible, I grind the beans up fine, and fix about four cups. While the water is boiling, I check my liturgical calendar (today, for example, the Church is remembering the life and witness of St. Francis) and look over my prayerbook (in this instance, the Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary) to make sure that the pages are ribbon-marked at the rights spots; after the coffee has steeped, I go outside on a cement patio just off the kitchen and light up a Coleman lamp so that I can read. Whenever possible I pray outdoors, under the stars. When it gets too cold to do that, I go into my workshop across the yard and beginning the morning there. My first prayers are marked as Vigils: some opening versicles, a hymn (which I sometimes sing if I know a melody to the text, but more often read as poetry), three to four psalms (spoken quietly), a reading from Scripture, concluding prayers in the form of a litany with self-announced intercessions, and a final benediamus and blessing. During the Vigil I let things happen slowly and often simply sit quietly as I move through things.
After the Vigil, I enter Centering Prayer, usually for twenty minutes. By now my internal ticker knows about when thirty minutes has gone by, but nonetheless I set a little red timer to 30 and place it on a shelf in the corner of the patio. To enter this time of prayer, I begin with the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us”), saying the prayer over and again slowly for about five minutes; from the Trisagion, I move to the Jesus Prayer (again, an Orthodox form of prayer), again repeating it for about five minutes; and from there I slow down into Centering Prayer with the word “Abba,” saying it to as to present myself to God with the intention of coming as fully as possible into His Presence. During much of this I use a one-hundred knotted Orthodox prayer rope, passing my fingers over a single know as I pray the Trisagion, the Jesus Prayer, or quietly say God's name, "Abba."
Normally in the morning, like you, I rise fairly early. Quite frankly, it’s often because I have to go to the bathroom. At seventy-one my bladder is a pretty good alarm clock. Gratefully I no longer have to shower immediately after getting out of bed and dress for teaching at the university; as a consequence, I usually put my legs into a pair of old jeans, slip on a shirt and sweater, and make my way to the kitchen where I ritually make a carafe of coffee, an old-fashioned way, with a French press. Liking strong coffee, as close to industrial strength as possible, I grind the beans up fine, and fix about four cups. While the water is boiling, I check my liturgical calendar (today, for example, the Church is remembering the life and witness of St. Francis) and look over my prayerbook (in this instance, the Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary) to make sure that the pages are ribbon-marked at the rights spots; after the coffee has steeped, I go outside on a cement patio just off the kitchen and light up a Coleman lamp so that I can read. Whenever possible I pray outdoors, under the stars. When it gets too cold to do that, I go into my workshop across the yard and beginning the morning there. My first prayers are marked as Vigils: some opening versicles, a hymn (which I sometimes sing if I know a melody to the text, but more often read as poetry), three to four psalms (spoken quietly), a reading from Scripture, concluding prayers in the form of a litany with self-announced intercessions, and a final benediamus and blessing. During the Vigil I let things happen slowly and often simply sit quietly as I move through things.
After the Vigil, I enter Centering Prayer, usually for twenty minutes. By now my internal ticker knows about when thirty minutes has gone by, but nonetheless I set a little red timer to 30 and place it on a shelf in the corner of the patio. To enter this time of prayer, I begin with the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us”), saying the prayer over and again slowly for about five minutes; from the Trisagion, I move to the Jesus Prayer (again, an Orthodox form of prayer), again repeating it for about five minutes; and from there I slow down into Centering Prayer with the word “Abba,” saying it to as to present myself to God with the intention of coming as fully as possible into His Presence. During much of this I use a one-hundred knotted Orthodox prayer rope, passing my fingers over a single know as I pray the Trisagion, the Jesus Prayer, or quietly say God's name, "Abba."
Back in 2002 Archbishop Rowan Williams in an interview with Roland Ashby, described what I and countless others experience while in this kind of praying:
During this time I don’t always become aware of the presence of God’s Spirit. All I know is that I am being held or attended to. I suppose I can express it by saying that there comes a level of prayer where it is no longer a question of “Am I seeing something?” Rather, “Am I aware of being seen?” Even though I’m sitting in the pre-dawn, it’s a sitting in the light and of just being and becoming aware of who I am. Often my thoughts wander all over the place as I mentally run after this or that. When I become aware of these meandering, I simply begin saying “Abba,” and so do quietly again and again. This part of the prayer time is the sort of steady and quiet drawing in and settling of all the tendencies that are wriggling out to lay hold of the world. The Spirit encourages me to gather them back into my heart which the Orthodox writers describe in their prayer stories. It’s what western writers mean by the simplification of the heart in prayer. By this we simply become what we are and just sit there being a creature in the hand of God.
Often I have no overtly discernable feeling during my prayer life. It’s here that I have found St. John of the Cross so helpful; he helped me understand prayer as being present before God with more than feelings. I realize, of course, that you can misunderstand that; you can say, I suppose, that prayer is nothing to do with feelings; that is, it’s matter of will and practice (something St. John encourages). But that is not what I think he’s ultimately saying. Prayer is a habit of being. It is a sinking of our own identities into something deeper which goes on whether or not we think we are consciously praying. This means that how we feel in not unimportant, but it doesn’t tell you all that you need to know about prayer. I may be feeling terrible and God may be active; I may be feeling nothing in particular, but God may be very active; I may be feeling wonderful, and that may have nothing at all to do with God’s doing. So a bit of distance from my feeling, not hostility to them, but a realism about them, and an ability to tell the difference between what God is doing and how I am feeling—that is, I think, fundamental to St. John of the Cross. (St. Mary Mary Magdalen Oxford, qtd. Anglican Communion News Service, July 2002 parish bulletin).
After the twenty or so minutes of such prayer go by, the little red kitchen ticker goes off (sometimes unexpectedly with a slight shock of noise; sometimes not), I say “Thank you, God,” get up, go inside, have a hot cup of coffee, and begin the day. It’s usually about this time that I do some writing, wake June up, fix a little breakfast, watch a bit of the Today Show with June. After breakfast, together we pray Morning Prayer, using a Lutheran office (again, much like Vigils, but at this time we sing the psalms, alternating with one another, psalm by psalm; read from the lectionary, make our intercessions, and so on). Then it’s off for the day. June to whatever she has plans (this morning, she going to visit some garage sales and buy an inexpensive item or two; last week she got a blender for the lakehouse real cheap) and I to the garden, maybe some photography, a good bit of writing, a coffee chat with a friend, some reading, bill paying, yard work, house repairs, and so on.
Well, that’s my sharing for this morning. Like the woman trying to practice centering prayer, I've had (well, maybe not a thousand!) lots and lots of opportunities to turn back to God. How about you? What are your mornings like?
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