PRAY

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December 31, The Seventh Way: Words

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by Ian Ozsvald

Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

You will, of course, want to pray along the way--that is, you'll find yourself wanting to speak words to God and about God.  Prayer, you think, is about words, and yes, you're right.  It is about words, there's no escaping that.  But prayer is so much more than words.

In truth, you've been praying all along--from before you awakened to your deep desire or desperation to follow this start to the End.  Prayer is not merely asking God for things.  It's not just using nice words to massage the Divine.  It may include these things, but prayer is essentially your awareness of God, your presence to the Presence.  It's not merely the mind or mouth in motion.  Prayer is an awakened heart, an interior awareness of God.  This is why the Bible often shows how the mind and mouth are made dumb--stone silent--when God shows up (Habakkuk 2.20 and Mark 9.7 are just two of many examples).

The problem with words is that we tend to become hypnotized by them.  First, we form them and then they form us.  We think that once we've attached a label to something we know what it is.  But consonants and vowels can't fully explain a flower, let alone its Maker.  I think that's why God played coy with Moses and gave him a riddle for the Divine Name rather than a label.  "I'm not going to give you a label by which you can think you've got Me figured out," said God.  "Just call me 'I Am Who I Am," (Exodus 3.14).  God wasn't going to let Moses or anyone else think that because he could utter a few sacred words, he had God figured out, tamed, or employed in some great cause.  God's too big for that.

Of course, you must use words with God, and words have a beauty of their own.   But the trick is not to be tricked by them.  You must not misuse them or attach too much too them or over-identify with the words themselves.  If you do, you'll be liable to reduce prayer to mere words and miss the Word Itself.  

So, when you speak to God or about God, don't babble or drone on and on (Matthew 6.7).  Instead, take up a Psalm or little twig of Scripture and lay it on the fire of your growing love for God.  Let those simple words guide your words, and improvise on them if you wish.  "But take care," says God, "and don't get too attached to words; their only aim is to light the way to Me." 

Today, I'll not heap up empty phrases.  Instead, I'll light a small fire on the hearth of my heart.  A few sacred words are all I'll need for kindling.

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December 30, The Sixth Way: Desert

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by Moyan_Brenn

Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

You're walking now.  It's night.  Away from the city lights you're more able to perceive the haunting beauty of the landscape around you.  As you do, two things begin to happen to you.

First, with each step you take farther on and deeper in, you sense a growing anticipation rising within you.  In your heart, there's a growing conviction that you've finally set out on the one journey that truly matters; you're pursuing the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Source and Goal of all life.  All you were made for and destined to be lies at the end of this journey, bathed in the pure radiance of the star's bright light.

Second, you notice you've begun to enter a new and strange land you've never seen before, never even known existed.  The familiar landmarks are gone.  You've moved off the map.  You're lost to all except the light of the star.  Anticipation emboldens you, but the strangeness of this new land unnerves you.

If you've not know something of this eagerness and nervousness, you've not gone far enough on the spiritual journey; your praying's been too safe.  At some point, all who seek God must find themselves carried into some kind of desert experience, for the desert is the furnace of transformation.  In the desert, we're stripped of all we've carried but do not need.  In the desert, we're stripped down, relieved of burdens and attachments, until the only thing remaining is the nakedness of the heart's pure trust in God.  All we've valued, all we've used to justify ourselves, prove ourselves, make ourselves worthy and lovable and useful is irrelevant here.  All we thought we needed to survive, we don't need.  Only one thing is needed, and That can never be taken from us. 

This is the very reason why every spiritual "athlete" from Abraham to Mother Theresa was pressed by the Holy Spirit into the desert.  Welcome.  You've now joined them.

Today, I'll acknowledge that the desert frightens me and I don't easily surrender all I've accumulated up to this point.  But I know I must not avoid the desert and its healing, liberating power of I'm to find what I'm looking for.  

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December 29, The Fifth Way: Walking

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Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

Most of us live life mostly in our heads, but our thoughts are not where real life is lived.  Your thoughts may be memories of real experience, they may imagine experience yet to come, but they're not real experience.  They're interpretations of the past and projections of what may come.  They're illusions really, fantasies.  Powerful, to be sure, but not ultimately real no matter how much they'd like to persuade you otherwise.

by Brian Smithson

The only life you can live is the one that's coming to you right now.  Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own" (Matthew 6.34).  You cannot meet God in the past or in the future, but only in the present.  So, you must find a way to live here, now, "taking every thought captive" as St. paul taught (2 Corinthians 10.5).

This is why walking is a spiritual practice.

When you walk on the earth, your feet touch the ground.  You awaken more fully to your senses.  And your senses root you to this moment.  But you can't be in this moment when you're galloping along, eyes fixed on the future (or fleeing the past) lost in your anxious, calculating, or ambitious thoughts.

You're a wise a woman, a wise man, when you regularly get down off your high horse or lumbering camel, get out of your head, and walk the real earth for a while, aware of what's right around you.  The feet of the God you aim to meet walked this earth; yours ought to as well.

Today, I'll take off my shoes and feel the ground beneath my feet.  I'll wiggle my toes in the carpet, stroll in a garden, or walk into the kitchen or to the copier at work---and I'll pay attention while I'm doing so.  Remember, "the place beneath your feet is holy ground" (Exodus 3.5).

December 28 The Fourth Way: Wonder

by nevil zaveri

Part of the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

To live with wonder is to live with awe and reverence.  Wonder is childlike--wide-eyed and innocent before a mystery bigger than you are.  You don't have to be a child to know wonder, but most of us grown-ups no longer know what it's like to stand wide-eyed and awe-struck before a mystery that's beyond us.

Beauty is the surest way back into a sense of wonder.  Beauty renders your mind temporally dumb, your thoughts overwhelmed by splendor.  There are no words, no thoughts that can pull your mind into the beauty that's before you.

Prayer needs wonder like your camel needs water.  Not all the time or even frequently.  Frequently would be nice, and prayer-that-frequently-leads-to-wonder may come your way, but you're probably not there yet.  It's enough when it comes to you here and there.  Just a little taste of beauty-inspired wonder will carry you a long, long way.

Frankly, on your journey up to this point your prayers have often been more like a supply list of things you've needed to pick up at the next town along the way, or like a to-do list for the God you seek.  That's understandable.  But take care to get yourself our of yourself from time to time, and into something much, much bigger.  Wide-eyed and innocent again before beauty.  There's no better way to infuse your praying with wonder and a sense of the Divine.

Silent, still, and awe-struck before beauty--now you're speaking the language of God.

Today, beauty will cross my path, but I'll miss it if I'm preoccupied.  I must watch for it.  And when it comes, I'll stand silent and still, drinking deep of wonder.

December 27, The Third Way: Companions

by VinothChandar

Fourth in the Series The Twelve Days as Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Connection with God.

No one can take this journey for you.  The journey toward God is yours--start to finish.  Setting out has energized you, and following this Star is the one things you now know you must do.  You're afraid of this journey into the unknown, but you fear more staying put, staying where you were, stuck in the rut that's been your life up till now.

The journey toward God is yours, but that doesn't mean you have to walk it alone, nor should you.  You'll need companionship along the way, for this is neither a safe or easy journey.

As you proceed, you'll most likely want to choose your own companions.  Who doesn't?  There are scoundrels out there, and who wants to spend a long journey side by side with someone whose personality grates on you like fingers on a chalkboard?

Honestly though, those who will help you most aren't the ones you'd choose for yourself.  So, don't go looking for your companions.  Instead, keep focused on the Star, the One you seek.  Walk in the light that's given you and remain open to God's mischief along the way.  The Holy Spirit  will orchestrate surprise meetings with remarkable people traveling in the same direction.  You'll miss them if you focus on making your own friends.  These God sends your way might not fit in at a dinner party back home, but they're the ones who'll bring you the comfort, humor, wisdom, safety, and challenge you'll need along this road.

And when the night is darkest and the companions you need are nowhere in sight, here's the best mischief of all . . . the Light you seek at the end of your journey will walk beside you, thought you cannot yet see it.

Today, I'll trust that the companions I need will come.  I don't need to find them.  I will wait and watch in faith.  And when they're given to me, I will listen with my heart for the gifts they bring.