Tag Archives: T.S. Eliot

Nuances of Prayer

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We are inextricably caught up in the time-space continuum.   Everything we think,
do, and say is influenced by our bondage to this master. It is called
“reality.”

When we pray, for example, we tend to think of God as “Someone” who is “out
there” and I remember some in my youth who appeared to even think it was
necessary to raise one’s voice in prayer as if volume made a difference. And
then “earnestness” was an issue—if we prayed with the utmost passion and
sincerity, the fervor itself would make a difference. And, of course, we had to
“live right” or God certainly would not hear us!  We had not heard of T.S. Eliot who described prayer as “more than an order of words, or the sound of the voice praying, or the conscious occupation of the praying mind.”

The nuances of language are very revealing, even in prayer, as they reveal our
attitude, our spiritual perspective. This led to a change in my word
selection when I prayed for someone else. For example, if I prayed for a friend
or relative back then who was in distress, I prayed, “Lord, send your Spirit to
comfort them.” But, I now see that God’s Spirit is not time-bound as we are and will not be sent anymore than He already has been sent.  Therefore, I now pray, “Lord, may he/she be aware of your Presence today and feel your Spirit’s healing, comforting touch.”

For God is always with us. He is intrinsic to our being itself. All we have to
do to commune with Him is to merely get out of the way.

Note re Christopher Hitchens

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-I was so sorry to see Christopher Hitchens go. He fought a brave fight and did
so even before he had cancer. Yes, he was arrogant very often, especially in
regards to those of us who deign to have faith. He was brutal to Mother
Theresa. He shouldn’t have been. But I forgive him, I know that Mother Theresa
does, and so does his Source.

I admire someone who “fights the good fight” and Christopher did indeed. I only
know what I’ve read, but he seemed to have a pretty good ride on “this old
merry-go-round.”

Let us all be humble. Christopher needed to heed this advice more than he did.
But, God have I ever been so arrogant so much of the time. And I might add, I
have been so arrogant with my “humility” which is to say that I wasn’t being
very humble. As T.S. Eliot noted, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is
the wisdom of humility. And humility is endless.”

“Teach us to pray”

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T.S. Eliot declared that, “Prayer is more than an order of words, or the sounds of the voice praying, or the conscious occupation of the praying mind.” He recognized that prayer is not a perfunctory performance “because it is what Christians do”. You know, “Wind me up and watch me pray and therefore I’m a Christian.”

Prayer is a mystery and I’m not for sure how to define it. I think it always starts as a “perfunctory performance” but at some point in one’s life it needs to go beyond, to become more of a meditative enterprise.

I love what Shakespeare had to say about prayer in Hamlet. Hamlet’s step father, Claudius, is on his knees praying and lamented, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Shakespeare recognized that when we merely throw words around, when we trot out the usual “prayer” verbiage, when we are consciously choosing our words so that we “pray right”, then our prayers “never to heaven go.”

I recently started reading Thomas R. Kelley’s book, A Testament of Devotion, and he noted the following re prayer: We pray, and yet it is not we who pray, but a Greater who prays in us. Something of our punctiform selfhood is weakened, but never lost. All we can say is, ‘Prayer is taking place, and I am given to be in the orbit.’

This is an overwhelming notion that I am presenting here. And I don’t have it figured out. And I don’t think the right thing to do is to wait until I have it figured out. The right thing to do is to pray and always remember what the Apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (See Luke ch. 11))

“humility is endless”

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Richard Rohr, a Catholic monk, is one of the most discerning spiritual teachers in today’s public forum.  His book, The Naked Now, is a powerful explanation of the need of “non-dual thinking” in today’s world.  “Non-dual thinking” eschews the tendency to bifurcate the world into categories, especially the oft spoken of “us-them” paradigm.  He also has a daily blog and will also send you a daily meditation which is always right to the point and powerfully worded.

In today’s meditation he declared, “When you truly know, the giveaway is that you do not know.  And by “do not know” he means that you “do not know.”  There is a pseudo-humility available in which you announce that “you do not know” but in the depths of your heart you are very sure of yourself and willing to pound people with the fact that “you do not know.”  This is just another version of Tolle’s “egoic consciousness” masquerading in liberal sophistry.

The “not knowing” he is advocating is a simple awareness that you do not know anything ultimately and that you are only offering one perspective.  Many others will have a different perspective and they too are blessed by God’s Grace.

It is our task to merely be willing to share our perspective here and there but not to get carried away with it and begin to wield it as a weapon.  When we do that we are merely another example of pig-headed fundamentalists attempting to bludgeon others into our world view.

T.S. Eliot, in The Four Quartets, declared, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility.”  And then he noted, “And humility is endless.”

Loss and spiritual experience

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Recently in a blog I borrowed a line from one of Donovan’s songs from the ‘sixties (First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.) and translated it into, “First there is a God, then there is no God, then there is.”    I was addressing the need to recognize that we learn a conceptual god early in our life, and must lose that god if we are to know God.  Someone has actually written a book about this subject, Anatheism:  Returning to God after God.

Richard Kearney delved into religion, philosophy, and literature to address the need of undergoing loss at some point in one’s spiritual development.  This loss, known in theology as kenosis (or self emptying) is articulated elegantly by Etty Hillesum, and quoted by Kearney:

One has to free oneself inwardly of everything, of all existing representations, of all slogans, of all comforts.  One has to have the courage to let go of everything of all standards and all conventional certainties.  One has to dare taking the giant leap…then life will be endlessly overflowing, even amidst the deepest suffering.

And Hillesum knew what she was talking about.  This was not an armchair hermeneutics exercise for her—she suffered persecution in Germany for being Jewish and eventually died in Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 29.

T.S. Eliot wrote in The Four Quartets that we must be willing to “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain, and therefore the fittest for renunciation.”  The thing most certain for some—god—often needs to be discarded so that—God—might surface.

It is only in loss that we come to know our Source intimately.