“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.