The Natural Prayer of the Soul

Reading: Matthew 6:

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them…But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your (Spirit) who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And in praying do not heap up empty phrases …that (you) will be heard for (your) many words. Pray then like this:

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us fr-m evil.

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Reading II

In his well-known essay, Self-reliance, Emerson says:

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life fr0m the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good…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”

Sermon: “The Natural Prayer of the Soul”

Malebranche, a 17th century French Catholic priest put it this way, “Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul.”

We who are rational Unitarian Universalists have an ongoing issue with prayer. For many of us it doesn’t come naturally. It seems unnatural, to say the least.

It’s not that we are opposed to prayer. That’s not it. It’s just that we tend to think about it so much that we’re likely to pray ‘to whom it may concern.’ Like Jesus, we’re suspicious of piety- the outward display of religiosity.

The language of prayer is in a special category.

Language takes many forms. Some language is elaborate, and sometimes seems pretentious or insincere.

Some religious language seems incompatible with the rational life; and some is simply morally offensive, like the exclusivistic God-talk that sets ‘us against them,’ or says that ‘God is on our side,’ or that ‘some people will go to heaven and others will burn in the eternal fires of hell,’ as if one should believe in a monster-god who stokes the fires of hell to punish those who refuse to believe.

Some religious language sometimes sounds like the kind of piety that people practice ‘before men,’ as the famous passage in Matthew, words attributed to Jesus, suggests.

In our search for that special language of prayer we reach for poetry, and music, and dance, which is language for liturgy and different fr-m the literal language of rationality. Many people in our culture today say, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.”

You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it. What does it mean to be spiritual but not religious?

People who say they’re not religious mean that they’re not actively involved in a church, synagogue, mosque or temple of some kind. By saying they are spiritual, however, they recognize that there’s something ‘going on down there, where the spirit meets the bone,’ as the poet Miller Williams put it.

The natural human tendency toward compassion is the most obvious, personal and visible sign of spirituality.

Compassion may be all we can know of God’s presence. The Bible says ‘God is love.’ For many, many people that’s enough theology. God is love.

Prayer, then, is a natural expression of appreciation. It comes on its own- naturally. Remember the way the Christian mystic Meister Eckart put it: “If the only prayer you know are the two words ‘Thank You,’ that’s enough.”

Prayer is also a way of saying ‘please forgive me.’ “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” is the way Rabbi Jesus put it.

If the only prayer you know are the three words ‘I am sorry,’ maybe that’s enough.

The language of prayer is different fr-m all the other forms that language assumes- it’s in a special category by itself.

Petitionary prayer is a request for favor, for oneself. A request for a favor, or for help and support and courage for someone else is called an Intercessory prayer.

Some prayer is simply a conversation with God, like an annual report on how things are going, or maybe a complaint about the His Creation.

The spring fling skit that I was in with Bill Bell, in which I played God and he played Senator Hatch, ended by the good Senator saying to me, God, “The next time you decided to create a world we suggest you take fourteen days so you can get it right.”

(We should note that since that night Senator Hatch changed his mind about the proposed ban on cloning to allow for that category of cloning which does not involve the use of sperm but has the potential to advance medical science in ways that can help cure some of the most dread diseases that have wrecked such havoc in so many lives.)

(I think Emerson would have included this kind of work of the scientist leaning with microscope over the petri dish among those things he calls natural prayer- the farmer kneeling in the field and the rower leaning on the oar.)

Prayer is sometimes silent, without language. The whirling dervish prays by dancing, getting out of the mind trap and into the spiritual or mystic realm.

Native American prayer is often accompanied with drum and dance. The incantation of an om is the prayer of the Hindu and Buddhist, or some such syllable repeated over and over- a mantra.

Prayer is the creation of a vehicle to move froom anxiety, worry and the pressures of everyday living, to move toward that wordless place of peace which has a healing power whenever we reach it.

It’s interesting to note that the word vehicle is employed as a pharmaceutical term for a substance of no therapeutic value used to convey an active medicine into the body.

Prayer can be that kind of vehicle. It’s like a little, one person, temporary boat fashioned to get across the river which separates us fr0m that peaceful place, or frrom our essential self or Soul.

On this side of the river we’re up to our eyeballs with the struggle, the suffering and the trials of day-to-day living. On the other side of the metaphorical river is the place we call spirituality–the spiritual realm, which is internal.

The statement attributed to Jesus in Matthew that one should ‘go into your room and shut the door and pray in secret,’ reminds me of the Jewish orthodox service I attended some years ago in Israel. At several points in the service the men put their prayer shawls over their heads, and they go into a kind of ‘room’ to which the door is shut, so they can ‘pray in secret.’

After all, Jesus was a rabbi, and the statement attributed to him in Matthew is consistent with that private praying.

Prayer can be a vehicle to get us across the river, but then there’s a mountain we have to climb to get to those heights, to gain perspective. It would be silly and foolhardy to carry the boat up the mountain. The boat is the vehicle to get us across the river.

Prayer can move us froom the materialistic and the mundane, to majestic, the magnificent- the spiritual.

Melebranche’s maxim speaks to this aspect of prayer. He says, “Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul.”

The 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.

Thoreau writes about paying that kind of attention to a square yard of earth at Walden pond on which he counted thirty-nine species of grass.

In Walden he writes,

Two turtle doves sat over the spring, or fluttered fr-m bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other’s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary’s front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him fr-m side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was ‘Conquer or die.’ In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had dispatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat fr-m afar,–for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red,–he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference…

I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler…

I’ve long remembered this passage fr0m Walden as an example of attentiveness, and often think of Thoreau when I watch one of those amazing nature shows on television that required a person or camera crew to observe with tremendous patience and the same kind of attentiveness that Thoreau described. I think how old Henry David loved to watch.

“Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul.” Nature, observed in this way, is a reminder of our origins, an intimation of our immortality, and a silver strand that connects us to that thing we call spirituality.

“I lean and loaf, inviting my soul…observing a spear of summer grass.” That’s as good a definition of the Sabbath as I’ve heard.

Have you heard of the Buddha’s famous flower sermon? In that fabled sermon he did not utter a single word. He simply held a flower in front of himself, for a long time, waiting patiently until its meaning dawned on one of his disciples. The legend says that the Buddha simply handed the flower to this disciple, who became his spiritual successor.

“To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.” William Blake

Before closing I want to say something about the small group ministries program that Barbara initiated. It’s an opportunity for attentiveness.

Groups of eight to ten folks, perhaps who live in proximity to one another, or form for other reasons, will commit to meet regularly- perhaps every two weeks at first, and then once a month.

Each group will have a facilitator who will provide a basic structure- opening each meeting with a selected reading, a kind of centering, and then leading a check in with each person offering a summary of how they’re doing or what’s happening with them, then some small group discussion either all together or in triads, and then a closing.

It’s very similar to the Building Your Own Theology sessions I’ve led for years, but these groups will stay together.

Whether you are new, or relatively new, or whether you’ve been here for five years or thirty five, I encourage you to think about getting involved in one of these groups.

There will be a sign-up sheet in the foyer, and you can talk with me or Barbara about it. The first groups will get under way within the next few weeks.

In her book about this kind of small group experience, People Making, Virginia Satir says it this way:

I am convinced that there are no genes to carry the feeling of worth. IT IS LEARNED. Feelings of worth can only flourish in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible–the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family. Since the feeling of worth has been learned, it can be unlearned, and something new can be learned in its place. The possibility of this learning lasts fr0m birth to death, so it is never too late. There is always hope that your life can change, because you can learn new things.

The closing hymn begins: “What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare- no time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows…no time to see; no time to turn at Beauty’s glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. A poor life this, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

Virginia Satir, People Making: