“The disciplines: prayer as connection.”

H,

The ideal place we want is to move from discipline to nature. It has to move from the conscious learning of how to connect to the unconscious reflex of making it part of our lifestyle. There is a good reason this is so alien to us. It has been shoved down our throats as duty since we were children. We have been told that it is what we owe God before He solves our problems. We have to do it. It is required. God sits lonely in heaven waiting for a call so He can dispatch goodness to the soiled earth. He cannot act unless we act. We give Him power. The world is upside down because we are not yet on our knees.

We might not be able to unbundle all the nonsense in those false claims in one conversation but I think it is good to note that things may get lost in metaphor or analogy from their original meaning or intent. It might well be that we are taking the rational path to an emotive conclusion. Let me put it this way: if we are looking up to God for answers would He be looking down to us for attention? Does that tell us of what love is or is that merely an exchange of goods and services? Is the business of heaven joy or just business? Something does not quite chime with this image of a tin-pot, petty god more akin to a vampire who needs the praise and worship blood of creation before he moves in our favour.

When I think of prayer I do believe He wants to live in that space in us. I think as a father, as a mother, as a sibling, as close friend and as lover, God longs to live in the town of our hearts. I think prayer as connection is the most valuable part of that we have before the crucial face to face to come. I believe that love is compelling, both ways.

You know what I am going to say next. Do not mock me. When I think of God and prayer I think of Peter Gabriel’s “come talk to me.” Where truth is absent or unknown, honesty will do. I first heard the depths of this vulnerable and heart breaking song when I was a kid and so maybe I have always identified as the child in the words. It is about a father who is so heartbroken by the absence of connection with his child that he pleads for a conversation. I never connected it with my earthly parents. What Nigerian child wants to talk to their parents that deeply? For some reason I always connected with the song as a call to the sublime and the divine nature of things:

the wretched desert takes its form, the jackal proud and tight
In search of you I feel my way through the slowest heaving night
Whatever fear invents, I swear it make no sense
I reach out through the border fence
Come down, come talk to me

In the swirling, curling storm of desire unuttered words hold fast
with reptile tongue, the lightning lashes towers built to last
Darkness creeps in like a thief and offers no relief
why are you shaking like a leaf
come on, come talk to me

Ah please talk to me
won’t you please talk to me
we can unlock this misery
Come on, come talk to me

I did not come to steal
this all is so unreal
Can't you show me how you feel now
Come on, come talk to me

I can imagine the moment
Breaking out through the silence
All the things that we both might say
And the heart it will not be denied
Till we're both on the same damn side
All the barriers blown away

I said please talk to me
if you'd just talk to me
Unblock this misery
if you'd only talk to me

And so I did. 

“The disciplines: prayer as connection.”

H,

It has always been hard to connect immediate problems of life on earth with the high idea of a present God. We might see the Godhead in overarching themes but not in the daily drudgery of making a living or framing a life. This also means that God becomes not just a distant being but also a useful one. A disposal presence for the little stuff and inconvenient spaces of our lives but a fine refuge and help when we get into the more absorbing troubles of purpose and being. This dichotomy creates the space between what we profess and how we live.

Now, we all do this. We all reduce God. At least I can speak for both of us. We have had many conversations either way. The first one would be about how we can tackle some real issue in front of us, something based in brown earth and in need of a practical response that trumpets, robes and winged creatures might find unappealing. We think through it and we say such nonsense as “well, God gave us a brain to solve problems. We can think our way out of this.” The second one is trickier problem, a little rugged path and a mountainous quest. The thinking has failed and we are out of our depth and suddenly it is time to get the old miracle worker in the room. Cue: song, dance, lights, camera, prophecy and action.

In both responses we have missed the point of the whole thing.

Prayer connects us to God in the most intimate way possible in our present state. It is intrusive because we are reminded of our helplessness. Our great fear is to be helpless, to appear weak, to not be a hero and to be only a small part of a much larger wheel. Our great fear it to realise who we truly are. We cannot have intimacy without revelation. We cannot come close to the light and not be aware of the many plot holes in our ongoing storylines. We cannot come to real prayer without the vulnerability that we so desperately avoid in real life for fear of being weak and the much greater fear of being used by others because of weakness.

We forget that we are not being weak to lovers, friends, landlords, rivals, parents or even ourselves. We are being ourselves in front of our Creator. That is always a good place to start. 

“The disciplines: prayer as connection.”

H,

It has been a while since we spoke. I do not want to dwell on the details. I would rather focus on the recovery: the idea that we can get back on track and restart the honest back and forth in our pursuit of what is true and if that holds true through all things and is in all things.

We have always had a growing distrust for formula and fixed views of God. This is not because of any inherent distrust of the well laid paths of old. I think it is because we have seen formula fail and stoic views come up against reality without any real movement of the latter. If what we believe has no real take on present reality, if it does not answer to the real state of things and if it does not bring light to the darkened rooms of everyday life then, as A. Paul once noted: “we are of all…most miserable.”  We know from experience that mere religion, the objects and tenets and practices of any one single expression of our faith, cannot speak to all shades of the human experience. We know that one word here can be used to enslave some and another to empower others. We know the high price that has been paid by countless individuals throughout history as mad men, despots and mistaken prophets try to summarize truth into the petty box of the human ideal. There has to be more than chapels to make Christ real.

And beyond the high sprung ideas above about the nature of being there is the very personal struggle of attempting a life of value. We know the pitfalls, setbacks, surprises and ultimate failure of our demi-god state. We are more like lustful Zeus than noble Elohim.

We cannot get away from the ordinary life that daily calls us to be better than we could ever possibly be by telling us to let go of fear, to connect the great prose of the spirit with the full passion of the human heart, not for balance, such a dirty word, but to be fully alive and awake. To be in life and in love.

This daily encasement of our frail state needs breaking through. This is the first of a few letters on how we break through the stifling nature of our present states and reach out to be the fully realized bastions of grace and love we were always meant to be. It starts and ends with the most basic, and so most important, discipline there is in the inward sense: prayer and this as connecting with God, every day.