Last Saturday night I was out with friends. It was a late night and so Molly had a sleep over with a couple of other friends. I say I was out with friends, when in actual fact I only knew some of the people and only two or three very well. A friend was having a leaving do as he was returning to live back in London. The group were mutual friends of his. Now I got talking to quite a variety of people that evening, all much younger than me, in their twenties, all millennials or Generation Z’s. My profession came up and as is always the case many assumptions, along with a great deal of surprise, followed. I got into one a conversation with a young woman who wanted to talk about her beliefs with regard to death and the afterlife. As is usually the case in such conversations she did most of the talking, I did the listening. She was very certain in what she believed and described in detailed what the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” has to say about life beyond this life. It was fascinating to listen to her and her views about the afterlife and reincarnation, She, was somewhat surprised to hear that I myself was fairly agnostic about what happens beyond this physical life. It is not that I don’t believe in anything, it is more that it is difficult for me to hold strong views about something I have no personal experience of. My spirituality is very much informed by experience. I also said something like “I prefer to focus on one life at a time”
I had a couple of other conversations with people who are struggling with life in some ways. They were asking about spiritual practice and how to improve on them, they described feeling overwhelmed and anxious a lot of the time. I shared some experiences, but mainly I listened, ministry is mostly about listening.
I have had many deep profound spiritual experiences in my life, sometimes incredibly beautiful and connective and other times quite unpleasant, as they have been around the death of loved ones. I have also experienced thousands of moments of transcendence and connection in the ordinariness of life. Moments when I have paid attention and thus seen life in new ways as well as moments of deep connection when I touch the core of myself and life, perhaps, dare I say, touched the heart of God. I had a wonderful opportunity to remember and share some of these the other day whilst being interviewed for a chapter in a book on “Happiness”, it will be published next year.
The many conversations I have had recently got me thinking about spiritual practices and their purpose, particularly prayer and meditation, something I engage with throughout my daily living. Yes, sometimes formerly with others as well as privately, but also informally as I live my ordinary life. Some might not consider these to be spiritual practices at all, they are to me.
I have discovered how vital of this is in order to live, to be fully alive in this world. I remember Bill Darlison once saying that “Spirituality” is about increasing our sensitivity to life. To me this means being affected by and thus becoming more effective in life. This helps me understand the purpose of prayer and meditation which enables me to do so, I have discovered. Such practices allow me to connect to the core of my being and thus to life itself; such practices enable me to connect to God which I see as being a part of everything, perhaps the core of everything and yet more than everything, a kind of panentheism, not to be confused with pantheism.
Henri Nouwen captured the idea near perfectly in his meditation “The Hub”
In my home country, the Netherlands, you still see many large wagon wheels, not on wagons, but as decorations at the entrances of farms or on the wall of restaurants. I have always been fascinated by these wagon wheels: with their wide rims, strong wooden spokes, and big hubs. These wheels help me to understand the importance of a life lived from the centre. When I move along the rim, I can reach one spoke after the other, but when I stay at the hub, I am in touch with all the spokes at once.
To pray is to move to the centre of all life and love. The closer I come to the hub of life, the closer I come to all that receives its strength and energy from there. My tendency is to get so distracted by the diversity of the many spokes of life, that I am busy but not truly life giving, all over the place but not focused. By directing my attention to the heart of life, I am connected with its rich variety while remaining centred. What does the hub represent? I think of it as my own heart, the heart of God, and the heart of the world. When I pray, I enter into the depth of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of Love. And I recognise, right there, the place where all my sisters and brothers are in communion with one another. The great paradox of the spiritual life is, indeed, that the most personal is most universal, that the most intimate, is the communal, and that the most contemplative is most active.
The wagon wheel shows that the hub is the centre of all energy and movement, even when it often seems not to be moving at all. In God all action and all rest are one. So too prayer!
The last few sentences are worth repeating again. They touch my soul so deeply.
“The great paradox of the spiritual life is, indeed, that the most personal is most universal, that the most intimate, is the communal, and that the most contemplative is most active.
The wagon wheel shows that the hub is the centre of all energy and movement, even when it often seems not to be moving at all. In God all action and all rest are one. So too prayer!”
The great traditions offer a treasure trove of practices, that can help us to connect more fully to life, the most obvious being prayer. Prayer means many things to different people and has done so throughout the ages. You may find yourself praying without even realising it. It may sound strange to see this, but can actually be quite a physical practice, this manifest in a variety of ways in different traditions While a Christian may bow their heads and fold their hands, a Sufi will whirl and a native American will dance. A Buddhist will sit quietly in a particular position, while a Hindu will offer a sacrifice. Jewish and Muslim prayers are very physical. A Jewish person while praying will bob their heads back and forth while a Muslim will physically prostate themselves. Prayers are not just about silence and spoken words. You sing a prayer too, isn’t that was hymns are. I think it was Augustine who said singing was praying twice; I myself love singing mediation. I also believe that joy and laughter can be considered a form of devotion, for it connects to those deeper aspects of life.
The spiritual life is about increasing this connection, it’s about enabling us to pay greater attention to the world around us, to be affected by life and to live more effectively in life. Thus, you feel more spiritually alive.
Spiritual practice can take many forms and should not be seen necessarily as a solemn activity, done in isolation. Yes, we can close ourselves away and pray in isolation as Jesus suggested we should, but it’s not essential. Neither do we have to necessarily use words when we are praying, every activity we engage in can be a form of prayer.
In the Japanese Shinto tradition prayers and blessings are calliagraphed on paper streamers and tied to the branches of trees and bushes. As the streamers wave in the wind the blessings then fly out over the world. In Tibet prayers are carved into wooden band wheels which are spun like a top sending the prayers up into the sky. Sometimes the wheels are positioned in a stream so that the current of the water spins the wheels and the prayers are then carried off without the need of human assistance.
One of the five pillars of Islamic practice is to pray facing Mecca five times every day, here it’s not so much the words but the direction of the prayers that matter. During the middle ages monastic orders that took vows of silence considered work done by the hands as a form of prayer – therefore everything that was done in life was considered a prayer to God. This seems very similar to the mindfulness practiced by Zen Buddhist – in which every action is practiced with deep attention. Such practices are not self indulgent they are there to enable the individual to better engage in life itself, to pay deep attention, to be affected and thus become increasingly effective. It helps me find my voice and thus speak of what it means to live spiritually alive, they actually change me at a deep level. They are meant to. To quote Rheinhold Neibuhr “Prayer does not change things; prayer changes people, and people change things...Prayer is not hearing voices, prayer is acquiring a voice.” Everything we do, if practiced with intention, if we pay attention can become a prayer. As Dorothy Day put it “I believe some people – lots of people- pray through the witness of their lives. Through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people.” In so doing we can unlock our true human potential and become all that we were born to be.
The spiritual life is about increasing our sensitivity to life. It is about being affected by and thus becoming more effective in life. What it really does for me is that it enables me to truly pay attention and not to turn away, even when I am tempted to do so. Sometimes it is hard and deeply painful to pay attention, but it is the only way to truly feel alive. Paying attention is of course prayer, to quote Simone Weil “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer,”, but it is more than that though, it is deeper, for as Mary Oliver said “Attention without feeling, is only a report.” What we pay attention to has to affect us, it much touch us in those deeper places, this is prayer and requires prayer to practice.
This is beautifully portrayed in Mary Oliver’s wonderful poem “A Summer’s Day”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver “A Summer Day”
To live spiritually alive is about increasing our sensitivity to life, its about paying deep attention, intentionally, its about being affected and thus becoming increasingly effective in life. This requires prayer in its rich variety of form. It won’t change the world, but it will change us and enable us to live fully in this world, for as Reinhold Niebuhr said “Prayer doesn’t change things, prayer changes people and people change things.” Over the years I have discovered that it is prayer that enables me to open and connect to life in all its joy and suffering, it allows me to increase my sensitivity to life and thus be touched by life and in return respond in more loving and open ways. Prayer for me is a kind of opening of myself to something larger. In many ways it is the whole of my life, this life. The next, well I no nothing about that, well at least with certainty.
May life be your prayer. Whether that be your devotional practices or just the way that you act with friends and loved ones. Whether it be the reflective pause before you do or say anything, or a quiet time at some point in the day, whether it be dancing or singing around your kitchen or some dedicated pleace. Whatever it may be let all that you say and do reflect all that you would hope your life to be. Open yourself up to every encounter in every moment and you will bring to life the divine within you and in every aspect of your life.
So, let’s live more spiritually alive. May our lives become our prayer.
Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"
