I spent nearly every Wednesday evening of my childhood in the
social hall at St. Luke's Church. Wednesday evening was Prayer Meeting night. The
faithful gathered at 7:30 to drone through a few familiar gospel hymns and listened
to Rev. Fulk elucidate, verse by verse and phrase by phrase, a chapter or two or
three of the Bible book of the month. We shared our prayer concerns; then we
entered our "Season of Prayer."
To the eight-year-old I was, or the teenager I became, these
were the most tedious moments of my life. We sat on hard metal folding chairs; my
feet dangled above the dark green tile floor. I stared through rows of
attentive elders. I looked out through the open windows into the backyards of
my neighborhood. I heard an occasional crack of a bat against a ball, accompanied
by screams and cheers. I heard dogs barking, bicycles skidding, crickets chirping.
I heard adults engaging in languid, lazy conversations on their front porches.
The voluptuous aromas of honeysuckle and baking
bread or the ionized purity of storm-washed air would waft through the hall on a
summer's breeze. I squirmed in my seat. I poked my sister's ribs. I fanned
myself or the woman in front of me with one of the cardboard fans donated by
Brown's Funeral Home. On some of them, Jesus stood forlornly at an ancient
door, knocking and knocking, week after week. On others, he sat gloomily with
his hands folded piously in prayer, his face raised devoutly toward a distant light,
his feet tucked snugly under a boulder.
The Bible study was difficult to sit through; the Season of
Prayer was impossible. It could last for thirty minutes, thirty of the longest minutes
on earth. Prayer time was never over until Rev. Fulk said, "Amen."
He never said Amen until everybody had had their chance to pray.
Over the years, I observed that there were
different kinds of pray-ers. Some were timid,
lifting up their concerns in quiet, inaudible voices that only G_d could hear. Some
were topical; they regurgitated what they had read in the daily paper. Some
were sincere, offering heartfelt prayers from within their various states of pain
or gratitude.
Then there were the heavy hitters. This was their moment
to shine. I learned to recognize the same phrases, the same cadences, and the
same passions week after week. They jockeyed for position, waiting to be
closest to the last "Amen." They sparred with one another in their prayers.
Tears often streamed from their eyes. They quoted scriptures, taught theology, and
voiced their politics in their prayers.
Sometimes I tried to find the gumption to pray something, too.
(I once prayed for the immediate end of the world. I guess I really wanted
out.) More often, as I started to speak, someone else intoned a "Dear Jesus"
more loudly and more quickly than I, and I lost both my nerve and opportunity. I
managed a few vocal prayers over the years, but my un-vocalized prayers were every
bit as earnest. I prayed for my mother, father, and grandmother, of course, but
most of all I (silently) prayed for the Season of Prayer to end before the last
inning of the game.
Yet I have come to recognize that some of the most important
directions of my life were laid down in those prayer meetings. I came to know and
even love G_d because of them. My deepest faith and my heart's vocation were established
during those "Seasons of Prayer."
Over the years, I discovered that I am something of a "contemplative."
Silence has never felt empty to me. On the contrary, much of the noisiness of
modern life oppresses me; quiet time is restorative. (Gretchen says that she's
going to have "Alone at Last" carved on my tombstone!) Silence can be
full, fertile, and refreshing; it can be intimate and embracing. It has the capacity
to enfold, soothe and heal.
As a child, I sometimes rose before dawn to hear the first bird
sing; it is still one of my greatest pleasures. As teenagers, several of us — Jewish,
Orthodox, and Protestant — rode bicycles to the park, hunkered down in a circle,
read a few verses from our scriptures, and then we just sat. Silently. It was glorious.
We discovered that we could be together — really together — in silence and
prayer when we could not be together in the public worship services of our respective
faiths.
To quietly paddle across a lake, to noiselessly hike a mountain
trail, to rest on a porch swing as thunder roars and rain falls, to walk hand in
hand with the love of my life, to watch a candle flicker, a star twinkle, a dragonfly
flit lightly across the surface of a river — these experiences contain more constructive
significance for me than more glamorous or costly pursuits.
But back to Wednesday nights. During those prayer meetings, there
were long — very long — pauses between the prayers. I called these "The Silences." In
these moments, in that room stilled by reverent expectations, in that holy
hush, when the sound of my own breathing encountered only an occasional cough
or creaking chair, when the sound of my own heartbeat was so near and the
sounds of playing children so very far, it was then that I encountered G_d and
G_d entangled me.
It took many years to discover this simple fact. Unfortunately,
I had identified "religion," "truth," "G_d," and "faith"
with the words that others said about them. Because I had trouble with so many of
those words, I was left with a kind of spiritual schizophrenia. I was unable to
affirm the words required of me and unwilling to deny the innate awareness of the
Holy One in my life.
Another aspect of those prayer meetings stands out after all
those years. It was the absolutely ordinary quality of our concerns and our
prayers. Week after week, year after year, we established a communal discipline
of regularly bringing the substance of our lives to G_d in prayer. Rev. Fulk wasn't
a guru from India. We weren't high rollers or high-wire artists, but common
people with common concerns: a new home, a baby's illness, a daughter's graduation.
We expected "no sudden rending of the veil of clay." The quietly transforming
presence of Christ's Spirit in the midst of our routine and average lives was quite
enough.
Finally, there was a real communion among us. Of course, we annoyed
each other. Can you tell? But we also cared deeply for one another, prayed for
each other, and shared the substance of our lives. In the same room where we
gathered for prayer on Wednesdays, we gathered for food, fun, and fellowship on
other evenings. We were encouraged to pray for those we most resented and examine
our own behavior in the light of Christ's claim on us.
The whole intent of our congregational life might be summed up
in a single word: "sanctification." Sanctification involves the gradual
but deep transformation of our very being. Our sincere desire to yield to the sovereignty
of Christ meets with G_d's exceeding graciousness toward us. It is a lifelong
journey toward wholeness and a return to our original nature. It is Christ residing
in us, love growing in us, the divine presence overshadowing us.
As we become increasingly aware of the magnitude of our frailty
and sin and our stubborn resistance to grace, we are driven toward remorse and humility.
As we become increasingly mindful of G_d's trustworthiness and our deep unity with
G_d's creation, we are given an ecstatic appreciation for the radiant beauty
that dwells within creation.
Sanctification involves aligning our will with G_d's and our
energy with the life-giving energia of G_d that permeates and percolates
through the world. I suspect this is close to what Orthodox Christians mean
when they speak of deification and what Benedictines mean by our "continual
conversion to Christ."
©Gilbert Friend-Jones
based on a chapter (“Sanctification”)
in Faith in a Minor Key
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