Resting in prayer: the spirituality of darkness

Mount Tabor, called in the Gospels "The Mount of Transfiguration," is a little hill in Galilee. But it figures big in the history of Christian prayer. Jesus leads a few of his followers up the mountain. At the top, Jesus is suddenly transfigured, and is made radiant, clothes "dazzling white". Moses appears. Elijah too. The great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, engaged in conversation with Jesus. One of the followers, Peter, awed by the sight, suggests a building project. He wants to build three shrines to commemorate the moment. Just then a cloud envelopes the mountain. They are rendered blind and dumb, and then a voice comes, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" (Mark 9.2-8). Here's a metaphor for prayer. In prayer, we ascend the heights, our goal, a vision of God. But just when we think we've got it, darkness comes. Prayer is a dark path where we must give up all props and pretension, all assumptions and preconceptions. When we think we've got a view of God, all will go dark---for God cannot be seen (Exodus 33.23). See for yourself how often in Scripture the encounter with God is in the midst of a cloud (Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, the disciples with Jesus here on Mount Tabor, and again in Acts 1.9).

Peter's response to his experience on the mountain of prayer was to say something, do something.

You're tempted to do the same. You want all light and glitter. You want an experience you can take a picture of. Don't. Sit in stillness until the impulse leaves you. Persevere when darkness comes. The truth is, you're closer to God now than when all was light.

This practice, based upon the Mount Tabor story, is part of the hesychastic tradition of the Eastern Church. The Jesus Prayer is the chief "technology" for resting in God. Hesychia means "stillness" in Greek. It is the daring obedience of prayer that enters into the unknown, grasps at nothing, and seeks nothing but what the Holy Spirit gives by grace.

My gripe with the history of hesychasm is that the simple beauty and necessity of this prayer's been essentially the experience of monks. But the Bible repeatedly summons us all into an encounter with God that is stillness, just God, nothing else, in order that we may find out who we really are in God's presence, naked of our falsehoods.  Trends in spirituality today show that contemporary people seek just this kind of experience, but they're not finding it in the churches where prayer is wordy and busy and all too certain, despite the clear teaching of Jesus that we are to pray with very few words (Matthew 6.7), and in absolute humility, even emptiness.

After Christmas, I'll begin to explore the Jesus Prayer in greater detail. Until then, prepare for your encounter with the prayer, by

• sitting in stillness for 5-15 minutes twice a day,

• watching your thoughts like leaves floating along a gentle brook.

• Neither follow them nor fight them.

• Rest in God.

The Technology of Prayer

Technology simply means to make an aspect of scientific knowledge practical. Prayer is scientific---in prayer we study God according to God's own nature. Prayer isn't talk about God; it's not thoughts about God. Prayer is first-hand research into the Infinite, the Ultimate, the Source and Guide and Goal of all. It's easy to make too much of technology, but it's also easy to make too little of it. We make too much of technology, or the technique of prayer, when we get hooked on method. I've often gotten to the point where I'm rather obsessed with doing prayer just the right way. I can get more engaged with the method of prayer than with the object of prayer---God. The older teachers of prayer warn us to guard ourselves from getting hooked by technique. They'll tell you that you might master the technology of prayer, but if you do, your ego will likely get you all tangled up in feeling proud about what you've achieved and how much better at prayer you are than the person next to you (or your ego will tell you how rotten you are and unable to do what you desire to do).

But the masters have also realized that without some guide or method there are too many distractions that compete for our heart's encounter with the living God. Prayer is far more than merely asking God for things. It begins with words, proceeds through thoughts, and ends in absolute stillness before God, absorbed in rapt attentiveness before the Divine. And such experiences in prayer have real staying power in our daily lives, enriching all we do with a sense of the sacred---whether we're answering email, changing diapers, arguing a case before a journey, or walking a nature path.

To experience all this we need a guide, a method, a technology.

• You go to the gym and need a basic plan for your workout.

• You look at your income for the month and need a basic spending plan.

• And so, to ascend the holy mountain of prayer, you need a guide.

But there will come a point when the guide has served its purpose and the rest of the way you must go it alone, naked of all else but the Spirit to guide you.

For a description of my own journey into this deeper or higher form of prayer, and the Jesus Prayer as a temporary technology, see my ebook, Returning to the Center: Living Prayer in a Distracting World.

(in my next post I'll give a little more historical background to the use of this simple prayer; after that I'll expand on the prayer itself and the three basic steps of its method)

Prayer as a true science

The Jesus Prayer is an utterly simple method of prayer that unites you from the inside out with God. The older saints and mystics called it "scientific," and I suppose it is, so long as you think of science in its truest sense---a line of inquiry that examines an object according to its own nature. The Jesus Prayer, then, is scientific, for it provides not only the research method, but also the data. No more talk about God from a distance---in prayer, you are dealing with the Holy. No more chatter about prayer---you are entering the interior realm, facing your shadows, seeking the light, following the path of God's mercy, and training yourself to climb, with grace, the ladder of prayer (Genesis 28.12).

And the goal?

• Unending communion with God even in the midst of the busiest life

through

• Unceasing prayer even while engaged in your daily work

Some ways we've hijacked your spiritual life

Unfortunately, the spiritual life has too often been hijacked by well-meaning, but misguided agendas.  These agendas are largely responsible for the ache you often feel, the emptiness in your spiritual life, despite the best intentions of religious leaders.

• You've heard pastors tell you that you are "blessed to be a blessing," making your spiritual life an instrument toward some other purpose.
• Worship in the churches has often been reduced to entertainment, and you, a spectator---or worse a ticket paying patron of the artists who perform religious acts on stage before you.
• You've learned to think the faith, assenting to right doctrine, but despite your ardent belief, your heart misses the reality the doctrine is meant to communicate.
• And frequently your hunger for God's nabbed by those who want to enlist you in their great causes---as good as they may be, they exhaust you and leave you panting for more than what they can give you.

You want God, but we've given you religion.

Religion is not opposed to God, but it can too easily become a surrogate for the real thing. Prayer---genuine prayer---introduces you to the goal of all religion, and the Jesus Prayer is among the most ancient forms of genuine prayer.

Introducing the Jesus Prayer

How do I pray? How can I live more fully into the wonder and sacredness of this moment, this life that is mine? Is it possible to live with greater awareness of both the mystery of God's holiness and the wonder of my humanness in the midst of the dizzying distractions and competing claims upon my life? Starting today, I'll begin to introduce a form of prayer that doesn't so much answer these kinds of questions as much as it involves you and me in the Answer itself--and that is far better.

The Jesus Prayer is among the oldest forms of prayer aimed at the ultimate goal of the spiritual life--communion with God (John 17.21), where you are alive from the center with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3.19).