Mary Oliver offers an opening poem – it’s from her most recent collection which she titled Thirst, written after the death of her partner of forty-plus years:
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak
I want to talk about paying attention – but since this is Sunday and we’re in church, let’s call it prayer. “Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul,” said 17th century French Catholic priest, Malebranche.
Following Mary Oliver’s advise, I’ll ‘patch a few words together’ and I won’t ‘try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest, but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.’
Isn’t that a wonderful idea – to pray is a doorway into thanks – and a silence in which another voice may speak…a ‘still small voice,’ perhaps.
Maybe you’ll hear ‘another voice’ speaking; maybe you’ll hear the voice you need to hear, even if you didn’t know you needed to hear it; a voice giving assurance, letting you know that it’s okay, that you’re okay; letting you know that you are loved, not because you’re perfect, not because you haven’t made some mistakes, but just because…just because you’re you, and you’re hear, listening. There’s nothing elaborate about that.
Praying is the process whereby we talk until we listen; perhaps the true prayer doesn’t begin until we stop talking – until we begin to listen, until we hear what we need to hear, from a voice that comes from the depths…down there where the spirit meets the bone.
You may not call it prayer, but you know what I mean. You know that it’s about paying attention.
The question isn’t whether or not you pray, but how you pray. Some pray with words, some with silence.
Some use a prayer book, some use the beach, or a hike in Devil’s Den. Some use a set of golf clubs, some use a candle. Some pray at the keyboard, while others sit in the sanctuary listening to the sounds from the keyboard.
It comes to the same thing, because it brings us to that place, which is beyond the words, yet behind the words, ‘down there where the spirit meets the bone.’
Prayer is all about paying attention; or, paying attention is the essence of prayer. Sometimes it’s about paying attention to the world around you—the autumn leaves, for example, or a baby, or a loved one. It’s about feeling a sense of connection with the natural world and a sense of re-connection with a divided self.
Like Mary Oliver, Jesus told his friends that prayer isn’t a contest – he talked about the contest entered into by those who ‘like to stand on the street corner and be seen praying’ or those who ‘like to stand in the synagogue to be seen praying.’ He said that the reward for that kind of public display was very small compared to the benefit that comes when you go into the depths of your own heart and pray in secret. “When you pray,” he said, “go into your closet and shut the door.”
The Psalmist said, “Silence is the highest form of prayer.” Ps. 65
The Buddha said that, “The greatest prayer is patience.”
Some of us are impatient with public prayers, used by television preachers peddling their brand of religion, or by candidates for their party’s presidential nomination. Some of us have a built-in resistance to prayer.
The dictionary says that prayer ‘is an act of petition to God; an entreaty – request, petition or plea.’
Part of my task is to help you to overcome the resistance; we need permission to pray without naming the listener of the prayer. The rational mind can prevent us from prayer.
That’s why I chose Chief Yellow Lark’s wonderful prayer in which he addresses ‘the Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to all the world.’
Early in my ministry I had an experience with a long-time highly respected, much admired member of the congregation – her name was Alice Wetherel. I got to know Alice in 1972; she was born in 1888. In my first years of ministry I learned a lot from Alice – she told me about her days of marching with the suffragettes and voting for the first time in 1920. In 1978, just after she turned 90, I sat with her as she lay dying. At one point I asked her if she would like a prayer.
She smiled, gently, squeezed my hand and said in a kindly way, “No, I’ve never found it useful.” After an awkward pause, which felt like a rather big slice of eternity, she opened her eyes, and looked into mine, and said, “I’d love to hear some poetry.”
I recited from Whitman, Frost and others, then I remembered Chief Yellow Lark’s poem/prayer and I recited it as she lay listening with her eyes closed, again. When I finished, she opened her eyes, nodded her head and smiled approvingly. “That’s a beautiful poem,” she said, ‘that’s a beautiful poem.”
Not all poems become prayers; not all songs become prayers; not all autumn leaves become prayers; not every face turns into a prayer…
But sometimes, here and there, a poem becomes a prayer, a song becomes a prayer, a single autumn leaf can become a prayer and a face a blessing…
“From moment to moment, from day to day, we search the eyes of others for that certain yes.” Martin Buber
From moment to moment, from day to day, we look for another opportunity to feel our connection to the natural world.
Do you recall the words from Thomas Wolfe’s foreword to Look Homeward Angel?
“A stone, a leaf, an unfound door, of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.
“Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
“O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, and an unfound door. Where? When?
“O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”
The Psalmist said, too: “Out of the depths I cry to Thee.” Ps. 130
Prayer is sometimes a plea for help, to find the strength to carry on. Sometimes it’s a simple expression of thanks. Sometimes it’s an apology, a way of saying “I’m sorry,” without the need to be specific.
Prayer can be a way of coming home to the ‘angels of our better nature,’ to the self we want and need to be. Prayer can be the key to that door, so we can feel at home in this world, in this life.
Prayer – which is to say, poetry, music, nature – is the key that allows us to walk back out the door, so that we lose the sense of being locked into a small self, ‘prison-pent’ is the way Wolfe expressed the feeling – locked into a less-than-perfect self, whose imperfections create a sense of isolation with walls made strong by regrets.
It doesn’t matter whether we call it prayer – what matters is that we find a key – what matters isn’t that you find yourself, but that you create a self worth living for. G.B.Shaw said it: “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
We’re here to share the process of creation. The ancient story says, ‘in the beginning the earth was without form and voice and darkness was on the face of the deep, and God said ‘Let there be light.’
There’s nothing in the story that says creation is complete, that the job is done.
The story says that after the first six days of creation God took a rest, then he went back to work, interacting with that which he created; doing battle with his first two, warning them not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but they disobeyed, they did eat, so they were liberated from the prison of ignorance.
If they hadn’t eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would not have made the necessary step toward becoming fully human.
We have to pick up where they left off; we’re in the midst of it, this process of becoming human, of becoming a person, of creating a life and influencing Creation.
In our Sunday service, after our shared silence, I introduce the spoken prayer by saying, “I invite you to join with me in the spirit of meditation, prayer and reflection.”
That gives you some choice – first, whether or not to accept the invitation; then a multiple-choice: meditation, prayer or reflection. Or ‘all of the above.’
I don’t assume that you will, or should, engage in something you would call prayer. So I offer a couple of alternatives.
By the word reflection I mean mental concentration; careful consideration…paying attention.
Generally we’ve just heard people sharing cares, concerns and joys they’ve experienced or are in the midst of experiencing or coping with.
Careful listening can be prayerful. Careful, intentional listening can take on a religious, spiritual or sacred quality.
Kurt Vonnegut said, “If I should die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: the only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”
Music and poems sometimes create a bridge to prayers, partly because they help us to pay attention: ‘i thank You God for most this amazing day,’ says Cummings. Ciardi calls us to pay attention to the White Heron: ‘what lifts the heron leaning on the air, I praise, without a name.’
Music without words has a certain benefit, because words can get in the way; words appeal to the rational side of the brain, the thinking part of the mind. But instead of stopping to think, you stop to feel it, to listen to what’s not being said, then you might be carried away…by the sounds, by the music.
Sounds in Nature can do it, too, like the sound of waves washing onto the shore, or the sound of birds singing, or the voice ‘I hear in the wind.’
When does prayer happen for you? (Or meditation?)
Emerson said, “As soon as a man is at one with God…he will see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-reliance”
Prayer takes many forms – it’s an expression of gratitude, it’s sometimes a plea for help – to find the inner strength to get through a difficult time – it’s a way of apologizing or acknowledging one’s limits…a way into the humility that’s needed to reach acceptance…
Gibran, in The Prophet, put it nicely:
“Then a priestess said, Speak to us of Prayer. And he answered, saying: You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance…let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion…”
“I cannot teach you how to pray in words.”
Buddhists call it mindfulness. Attentiveness is a quality of caring for and about other persons. It’s also a matter of paying attention to the details.
Whitman says, “I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.”
‘A spear of summer grass.’ Now that’s a detail.
Look, again, at Mary Oliver’s poem, Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak
Responsive Reading
O Great Spirit…
Chief Yellow Lark
O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me. I come before you one of your many children, I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty and let my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made, and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people, the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength not to be greater than my brother but to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes so that when life fades as a fading sunset my spirit may come to you without shame.