PRAY

Breathe

A lot is written about the techniques and benefits of breathing for physical, emotional, and spiritual health.  Sometimes Christians dismiss this teaching as un-Christian, something they must avoid. I've written about the use of the breath in the Jesus Prayer.  I've also offered you an example of a Breathing Prayer.  That other religious and non-religious practices celebrate the use of the breath doesn't make the breath less important for Christians.  In fact the opposite is true.  The use of the breath universally is evidence that it is from God.

Remember, the breath is at the core of the biblical and spiritual tradition.

In the beginning the Spirit (Breath) of God came upon the earth (Genesis 1.1ff). After the Resurrection, Jesus entered the upper room and breathed on the disciples and they received the Spirit (Breath) of God. At the new beginning (the church) the Holy Spirit (Breath of God) came upon the church (Acts 2).

With such biblical evidence of the priority of the breath for hooking up with God, why resist it. When you don't breathe you die. When you're stressed, your breathing becomes shallow (and you're moving toward death). But when you open to God, and breathe in great gulps of the Spirit, you live.

Don't grieve the Holy Spirit by resisting the practice of breathing as prayer. Instead, draw in the fullness of the Spirit with deepening breaths.

A sure way during the day to come back to your senses in Christ is to simply return to your breath and let the Name of Jesus rise and fall with each breath.

Then smile.  You're alive.  Exquisitely, unexplainably alive.  A true miracle.

The kiss of God

Notes from my reading of the Ancrene Wisse, a medieval guide for anchorites (early 13th century); taken during my study at Oxford, summer 2007. Here's a lovely meditation on the priority of the heart, and the tenderness of the One we seek in prayer:

"'Protect your heart well with every kind of defense, daughter,' says Solomon, 'for if she is well locked away, the soul's life is in her,' (Proverbs 4.23). The Heart is a most wild beast and makes many a light leap out. As St. Gregory says, nichil corde fugiatus, 'nothing flies out of a person sooner than their own heart. . . .'"

"'Do what you should here and you will be fair elsewhere, not only among women but among angels. You, my worldly spouse,' says our Lord, 'will you follow the goats, which are the lusts of the flesh, to the field?'--the field is desire's breeding ground. 'Will you follow goats through the field in this way? You should beseech me for kisses within your heart's bower, as my lover, who says to me in the book of love: 'Let my lover kiss me with the kids of his mouth, the sweetest of mouths,' (Canticles 1.1). This kiss, dear sisters, is a sweetness and a delight of the heart so immeasurably sweet that every taste of the world is bitter compared with it. But our Lord kisses no soul with this kiss who loves anything but him, and those things it helps to have for his sake."

The Modern barrier to prayer

Such talk of prayer is likely to awaken objections---

"How do I pray continually when my life is so full of obligations?"

"When I'm not doing the things I need to do to get through the day, I'm thinking about what I need to do. Prayer is often the last thing on my mind."

"As much as I desire intimacy with God, the call to prayer loads me with more guilt than inspiration. The prayers I utter are basically prayers for help---for myself and for others."

There's no getting around the truth that Jesus summons us to unbroken communion with God and that the Apostles taught this practice to the first Christians. Throughout history, there's also an unbroken line of praying people who've kept the practice alive, handing it down from one generation to the next. That it's foreign to us is an indication that the Modern world isn't very hospitable to interior experience, to mystery, and the mystic encounter with God that is above and beyond the heightened rationalism so characteristic of these last centuries.

You were made for this

Prayer then, according to Jesus, is more like breathing than sitting down for a meal at certain times each day. Nevertheless, the ability to live in unbroken communion with God is fed by formal times of prayer alone or with others, by the Psalms, Scripture, and by offering intercessions. Unless you sit down and eat periodically throughout the day, you're not likely to do much breathing. But, fail to breathe and the meal hasn't done you much good.

Unceasing prayer as unbroken communion with God is not for super-Christians only---the spiritual elite---any more than breathing is for some special class of human beings. Prayer is life and life is prayer. You were made for this.

Toward unceasing prayer

Prayer, according to Jesus, is life. Prayer isn't a doctrine or a duty; it is bread, or better, breath. Jesus lived prayer. He not only joined in the formal prayers in synagogue and temple, but also he prayed in the middle of a meeting, walking along a road, facing intense suffering, and experiencing conflict. The Name of God was constantly on his lips. His words were heart-deep, as if drawn up from a well of an inner life that was, regardless of outer circumstances, in constant communion with God.

And he taught his disciples to "pray always and not lose heart" (Luke 18.1). "Keep alert," so God doesn't "find you asleep when he comes suddenly." So, "keep awake" through the practice of unbroken communion with God (Mark 13.33-36).

Christ's disciples followed his example. Saint Paul lived a life of prayer, and urged it upon all believers. "Pray without ceasing," (1 Thessalonians 5.17). "Pray in the Spirit at all times. Keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints" (Ephesians 6.18).

Prayer, then, is life and life is prayer.