Kentigern John SSFKentigern John SSF, now living in Leeds after a
number of years in Scotland and some time in New Zealand, shares
what he’s learnt about prayer.
The best advice I've been given about prayer is to pray as you
can not as you can't. Which I've taken to mean that I need to find
ways, methods, attitudes of prayer that at some level go with the
flow of the type of person that I am.
The Religious life tends to attract introverts who like order
and space. So the daily cycle of offices and quiet meditation is set
up by them, quite unwittingly, because it suits them. And this sort
of prayer has been exalted above all other and might, by some, be
seen to be the only sort of 'real' prayer, with all others coming in
as the nursery slopes before their grande piste.
Prayer is spending time with God, attending to that
relationship. So if God and I are the teenagers in love needing lots
of words, symbols, emotive expressions and be all over each other to
convey that love or if we're the middle-aged lovers, busy,
pre-occupied and hoping that the other remembers the love as much in
the breech as the observance, or if at times we're the old married
couple, able to enjoy each other's company, knowing the other's needs,
wants and love without a word but through the merest exchange of
loving glances, then for all these experiences of relationship I
will need different sorts of prayer. And words like perseverance,
sticking-with-it and aridity are also part of the lexicon of my
prayer.
It is also worth noting that in the thinking about prayer, in
the experimenting, in the preparation and in the novelty and
familiarity, all of this is itself a prayer for this is part of
expressing my longing for my love and thinking about them and making
things ready for them - this is a demonstration of the relationship
as much as anything else is.
So I find God in going for a walk, in the faces of others, in a
story from the news, in preparing a meal, cleaning a toilet, in
laughter with friends, in being with someone attentively, in reading
a novel, doing some hand craft and sitting quietly by myself
meditating. The trick is to be attentive to what the relationship
needs at that time and to pray as I can and not as I can't.
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