A different way of praying

These last days of fall have brought me an invitation to pray differently.

How strange, I think to myself, at my age and at this late date…when so many issues scream for my attention!

But are we ever done with learning about prayer, the voice of quiet wisdom asks.

As long as we are alive with a longing for wholeness, the answer must be No.

I think it happens at times that we come to the end of a certain capacity to stand in the midst of the world’s clamor and our own private noise, and recognize an “I,” a centering consciousness.

We lose the capacity for deep Presence for so many reasons it would take a volume to fill, but for starters – incessant distraction, catastrophic life events, chronic abuse, low-grade insecurity.

A fair roster, in other words, of the life many of us are living at the moment.

Once we have lost our center it is so very much easier to stray even farther — extended cocktail hours, obsessive online activity, fantasy football or liasons.  We can even stray relying on the old fall-backs: mindlessly redecorating one’s rooms, bookshelves, wardrobe, until we are like over-stimulated children who spin and spin and then fall down in a heap, exhausted and longing for asleep.

Though my closets are decidedly tidier since the start of the pandemic), the real problem was that my morning practice of contemplative silence, journaling, and scripture reading was not holding its staying power to keep me “true” — present, balanced — through the course of the day.

Just at the moment when I realized this, an invitation appeared in my inbox to attend a six-week class on the Ignatian way of prayer.  It was free, at lunch time, and it captured my attention.

Ignatian prayer is highly prized among Catholics, and those offering extended retreats.  Spiritual directors use its tools and insights widely.

The “method” relies on an astute and nuanced set of “spiritual exercises.”

I am only just beginning this journey, but it is exciting to me in ways I’d not anticipated.  Ignatius is as exacting as a Zen master in his insistence of preparation, attitude, and a kind of spare discipline.  One begins by mentally preparing the night before.  Upon waking, one turns with intention to the objective of prayer.  One prays, and then one “reviews” the prayer.  None of this necessarily takes long, but in some ways I find this last step the most critical — in reviewing the recent experience of prayer, the mind takes a step towards deeper consciousness, and remembering.  Prayer then isn’t a gossamer that floats away with the first tumults and interruptions of the day, but becomes more like a pearl that is threaded onto a silk twist at the center of one’s being, to be returned to, even fingered in one’s mental pocket, during the day.

Central to Ignatian prayer is the imagination. I am a rank beginner, but I find myself as intrigued by walking alongside Mary as she visits her cousin Elizabeth in the Scripture story as I am in mulling my own dreams.

Learning to trust what arises, staying with it, connecting deeply with a heart-mind-body intelligence, becomes a bit like meditating on a koan, except that it is my own story I am discovering as I prayer.  My own inner story that I am discovering, small bit by bit.

One of the beautiful aspects of Ignatian prayer is that Ignatius encouraged his followers to “relish” their prayer time.  To attend to it as if it were the last time they would ever have the chance to pray.  To extract as much as they could, and to wring it for its sweetest yield.

Prayer, then, is not so much a duty as it is an adventure, a foray into discernment, a way to recognize the ruts we are in, the boulders blocking our way.

Hard as it is to imagine a silver lining to the times we are living in, Ignatian prayer has opened me to questions I had set aside when I entered the pandemic/political survival mode.  Now, I see that this is precisely the time for me to listen as closely as I can to the questions central to my existence and my moving forward:

What is the Cosmic Divine calling me to do, or to be?  To choose or to change?  What fork in the road awaits me?  How can I enter more deeply into the central “I” that is aligned with the sacred forces of stability and truth and growth?

The answers await me in my prayer time, I believe.

Two quotes guide me.  May they speak to you as well.

“It is important that awake people be awake.

The darkness around us is deep.”

William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”

And this:

“Sing to the Lord a new song,” Ps. 96

Namaste.