Prayer and the Voices of Longing
Prayer is the voice of longing; it reaches outwards and inwards to unearth our ancient belonging. Prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. Longing is always at its most intense in the experience of vulnerability. There is a frightening vulnerability in being a human. Culture and society are utterly adept at masking this. Humans behave generally as if the world belongs to them. They exercise their roles with such seriousness. Life is guided by rules of action and power. Some people gain a certain control over our lives. We are very conscious of them and careful that they receive the necessary attention and affirmation. Sometimes you would find yourself at civilized gatherings of those worthy ones; the conversation and behaviour observe such a careful pattern of mannered unreality that you have to work at stifling the surrealistic inner voice that wants to declare some wild absurdity to stop the games and offer some respect to the concealed vulnerability. When it is present in its raw form, in poverty or pain, we prefer to look the other way. The sight of extreme and unsheltered vulnerability makes us afraid that our good fortune too could turn. It also makes us feel guilty; we do so little for the abandoned and forgotten. Underneath all our poise and attempted control of life, there is a gnawing sense of vulnerability.
Mystical Prayer as a Mosaic of Presence
Because we are so limited, it is difficult for us to understand who we are and what happens to us. No human can ever see anything fully. All we see are aspects of things. Being human is like being in a room of almost total darkness. The walls are deep and impenetrable, but there are crevices which let in the outside light. Each time you look out, all you see is a single angle or aspect of something. From within this continual dark, you are unable to control or direct the things outside this room. You are utterly dependent on them to offer you different views of themselves. All you ever see are dimensions. This is why it is so difficult to be certain of anything. As the New Testament says, “Now we see in a glass darkly, then we shall see face to face.”
Most of the time we are so rushed in our daily routine that we are not even aware of how limited our seeing actually is. In this century, Cubist painters attempted to paint what an object might look like if it were seen simultaneously from all perspectives. Picasso and Kandinsky often take simple objects like guitars or animals and portray them in a fascinating multiplicity of different visions. If you could only step back from your life and view it from different angles, you would gain a whole different sense of yourself. Aspects of you that may disappoint and sadden you from one perspective may be perfectly integrated in the image of you as seen from another angle. Sometimes things that really belong in your life do not seem to fit because the way you view them is too narrow. We see a good illustration of this in friendship. You have different friends. No two of your friends see you in exactly the same way. Each one brings a different part of your soul alive. Even though your friends all like you, they may not like each other at all. This is one of the sad and joyful things about the wake when someone dies. Different friends have diverse stories of the departed. A funeral involves the creation in a stricken community of a narrative whose ending makes a beginning possible. All the stories are like different pieces that combine to build a mosaic of presence. All the stories go to make up the one story. This is like mystical prayer. This wholesome and inclusive seeing, in which all the differences can be seen to belong together, is what mystical prayer brings. Mystical prayer brings you into the deepest intimacy with the Divine. Your soul receives the kiss of God. Such closeness has great beauty and frightening tenderness. Embraced in this belonging, all talk and theory of the Divine seem so pale and sound so distant.
Mystical prayer is never trapped. Most of our viewpoints are trapped like magnets to the same point on the surface. Mystical prayer teaches us a rhythm of seeing that is dynamic and free and full of hospitality. Far below and beyond the fear and limitation of the ego, mystical prayer teaches us to see with the wild eye of the soul. It sees the secret multiplicity of presences that are active at the edge of our normal field of vision. In this kind of prayer you will find what Paul Murray describes as
A ground within you
no one has ever seen
a world beyond the limits
of your dream’s horizon.
Prayer as the Door into Your Own Eternity
There are no words for the deepest things. Words become feeble when mystery visits and prayer moves into silence. In post-modern culture the ceaseless din of chatter has killed our acquaintance with silence. Consequently, we are stressed and anxious. Silence is a fascinating presence. Silence is shy; it is patient and never draws attention to itself. Without the presence of silence, no word could ever be said or heard. Our thoughts constantly call up new words. We become so taken with words that we barely notice the silence, but the silence is always there. The best words are born in the fecund silence that minds the mystery.
As Seamus Heaney writes in Clearances, “Beyond silence listened for…” When the raft of prayer leaves the noisy streams of words and thoughts, it enters the still lake of silence. At this point, you become aware of the tranquillity that lives within you. Beneath your actions, gestures, and thoughts, there is a silent tranquillity.
When you pray, you visit the kind innocence of your soul. This is a pure place of unity which the noise of life can never disturb. You enter the secret temple of your deepest belonging. Only in this temple can your hungriest longing find stillness and peace. This is summed up in that lovely line from the Bible: “Be still and know that I am God.” In stillness, the silence of the Divine becomes intimate.
On That Day You Will Know as You Are Known
The shape of each soul is different. No one else can ever get inside your world and experience firsthand what it is like to be you. This is at once the mystery of individuality and its great loneliness. Those close to you can best sense and imagine what it is like to be you, but they can never feel, see, or know your life from the inside. The deeper ground of individuality is to be sought in the originality of the Divine Imagination manifest in the relish of beginnings. The Divine Artist is utterly creative, makes each thing new and different. Each individual expresses and incarnates a different dimension of divinity. Each one of us comes from a different place in the circle of the Divine. Consequently each one of us prays out of a different inner world and each one of us prays to a different place in the Divine Circle. This is the place we left to come here. This is the empty nest in the Divine where the secrets of our origin, experience, and destiny are stored. When we pray, we pray to that space in the Divine Presence which absolutely knows us. This could be what is suggested by that lovely moment in the New Testament when it says of our return to the invisible world: “On that day you will know as you are known.”