I’m hopeful that Pope Francis will bring a spirit of peace and love to our world. He asked for prayers for himself, and being a prayer person, I’m doing just that. He has placed the image of Saint Francis on the front page of the world’s newspapers and that just has to be a good thing. After all St. Francis was calling out and acting out Jesus’ message to feed the poor and care for the earth. And now the voice of Saint Francis is singing out through the voice of Pope Francis.
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I’ve used a line from this Oxyrtynchus manuscript for my daily quote, but I want to share the entire excerpt that I discovered in The Mystic Vision: Daily Encounters with the Divine, compiled by Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring. Worth meditating on. “Who then are they that draw us and when shall come the Kingdom that is in heaven? “The fowls of the air and the beasts, whatever is beneath the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea, these they are that draw you. And the Kingdom of heaven is within you and whosoever knoweth himself shall find it. And having found it, ye shall know yourselves that ye are sons and heirs of the Father, the Almighty, and shall know yourselves that ye are in God and God in you.” I have four close friends on my prayer list this morning, who, as I type here on the deck of my cottage by the sea, are in the midst of crisis’s. Two are in surgery, one for breast cancer, another for a knee replacement; one just went to the ER with low blood pressure; a fourth friend called last night grieving over the sudden death of his wife of 53 years. By the very nature of my call to pray for people, I get just that—people to pray for; by the very practice of keeping a daily prayer list, I get just that—a list of people to pray for. But four intense, immediate ones is more than usual. In fact usually I don’t personally know all the people on my list. Until the right time to visit, thank God for the telephone and email as a way to keep up. Thank God for the time I have at the cottage to pray--time to empty my head of the chatter that gets in the way of prayer, and then I just need time to pray. There is a word in the Eastern Orthodox tradition that resonates with me, logismoi , which refers to ‘ thought form(s)’. In The Mountain of Silence, Kyriacos Markides writes about negative logismoi as though forms that obstruct our vision of God. I have many little logismoi, all of which get in the way of prayer. I know that my prayer isn’t as powerful when I have critical and judgmental thoughts about the very person or situation that I’m praying for. And yet, even that paltry prayer is better than no prayer at all. If I waited for a pure heart, I’d hardly be praying at all. Through God grace I realize how limited I am and how magnanimous God is. God takes up the slack. According to the Orthodox tradition, we need to pray for catharsis, for the cleaning of our hearts and minds of negative logismoi. We are not to push these thoughts into our unconscious; certainly we must examine them. But we can release many from our mind the minute they appear; release all the chatter about a person or situation. And we can change our situation; if we want to eat healthy, don’t buy potato chips or candy; if we want to save money, don’t go to the mall. Some bad habits or thoughts have pervaded our lives for a long time and have become addictions. To overcome them takes enormous perseverance and support from others, ourselves and God. But many of our logismoi are small, trivial little thoughts, which, if we so desire, we take immediate control to eliminate. It’s up to us and God, and it can happen right now. All we need is the willingness. God’s grace is there. My daily prayer list is getting longer and longer. In fact, I’ve stopped using the smallest Post-it and have graduated to the 2” size. Here’s how it works. Every morning I write out a new prayer list for the day. First I add anyone who is in an immediate, desperate situation (surgery, death and dying), and then I go from there to ‘lesser’ needs. Recently I’ve been adding people who are in tough long-term situations, and that is how the list has become too long to fit on the little Post-it. For the most part, these people haven’t asked for prayers, but have indicated that they are stuck about something major in the lives and thus not at peace. Thus they end up on the long-term list. Keeping my daily prayer list to ten people is extremely powerful. I can pray intensely and often for then. But when I have to attend to a long list, my prayer become more rote and diluted. So today I set out for my walk with my written list of ten and my long-term list in my head. I figure that if a church service can have many parts making up the whole, so can my prayers. In fact, intercessory prayer is just one of several prayer categories. Let’s not forget praise, gratitude, confession, and forgiveness. I hope this prayer chat has helped you. Writing it has certainly eased my dilemma. I’m very grateful. I just discovered the most amazing site: that of The Society of St. John the Evangelist, a monastic community of the Episcopal Church, located in Cambridge MA. The Society of Saint John the Evangelist www.ssje.org/ This evening it is wonderfully amazing to me that I can listen to the sermons and homilies because they are all on audio. When I’m tired and my eyes are asking for rest from reading, this becomes an amazing blessing. |
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