Several things I enjoy about Casey. One is, he always rewards a re-read. I've become very choosey about the books I buy, and one criteria is whether or not I see myself re-reading a given book. As I go over these chapters, some of which I read months ago, I find new nuggets as well as familiar truths which I am perhaps more ready to hear than I was before.
I also like the fact that Casey is quietly challenging, even unsettling. He does not see the role of a "spiritual" book as a conveyor of "warm fuzzies".
This chapter strikes head-on two assumptions we make in our culture: a) you get what you want by your own efforts, and b) prayer is meant to "feel good" and is an optional self-enhancement activity.
Casey speaks to the first in his first sentence thus: "Prayer is strange in being an activity where no success is possible." Again he returns to the difficult truth that "real" prayer comes out of one's own real-life circumstances. "The ecstatic prayer of a mystic is in no way superior to the agonized stumbling of a sinner..." Often people who become enchanted with the "spiritual life" measure "success" by feeling or some sense of self-fulfillment: the mystically-minded progressive who feels whole and at peace at the Labyrinth workshop, or the Pentecostal who "feels the Spirit" and hence regards their prayer as "Spirit-filled." I include myself among those who passed through and still on occasion fall into this perception--ever since age 18 I loved "feeling mystical", whole and at peace and centered, in silent prayer or on retreat. I believe these experiences are fine, but they are easy to latch onto for their own sake such that when the feeling fades (and it always does) we get anxious and put a lot of energy into replicating it or seeking what "went wrong."
Casey suggests that in fact nothing may be "wrong"; what matters is that we pray, and by prayer he means allow Spirit to work in us, to pray in us in fact, and to reveal progressively our own wounds and fears and desires that they may be healed. We can trust God to work, and as Casey says God always succeeds even though we may not feel that way.
One simple story that I like that Casey does not cite is of a contemporary monk who was asked by someone how he seemed to have learned to "pray always", St. Paul's instruction that has haunted classical Christian spiritual teaching. He replied, "I think that prayer has always been inside me, like a spring covered by a stone. Then one day Jesus came and took away the stone." I sometimes pray now that Jesus will take away my own stone. Of course, maybe he has--who am I or anyone else to measure?
Throughout Casey retains his "positive anthropology" that we are in fact intended for God and are "hard-wired" for spiritual fulfillment that goes far beyond that sort of emotional or intellectual perception that we have "found it". I like the ball-held-under-water analogy, that not matter how it is held down the ball strains toward the surface. On down days I appreciate that sort of imagery, as well as the fact that Casey says it is precisely on those "down days" that the greatest amount of genuine growth is being accomplished in us. My moments of mystic sense of oneness are few and far between, let me tell you! In fact lately I have felt not a sense of total desolation, but rather a great silence and a sense of standing on dry ground. Beats a swamp, but still it's human to expect something more when one has put in a lot of time showing up, spiritually speaking! I hear Casey's counsel as comfort, to trust that Spirit is at work and that, to paraphrase a famous Russian Orthodox patriarch, the Holy One of Blessing teaches me to pray and in fact prays in me.
2 comments:
There is something about Casey's presence in this book that is refreshing -- and I think it's because he isn't a product of our American culture. I like that about him and it helps me to feel not so out-of-place in the world.
I was struck by his understanding of prayer as a passive event. It inspired me to change my prayer time a bit to stop yapping so much and simply be. It is a relief to know that prayer is happening in me and through me even when I'm not conscious of it -- and humbling to know that I'm not really in charge of it anyway.
This past year has brought an upheaval in my spiritual life -- leaving Portland and my community there, arriving in Nebraska where I've not had much luck in finding a spiritual home -- all in all a disorienting experience. Casey's words about the "night" were comforting -- and hopeful. Is it possible that prayer is working in me those things that I could not heal on my own, bringing a deeper experience of my life in God that I couldn't achieve any other way? Just this last week I cautioned myself not to push for a hasty resolution of "what to do next with my life," reminding myself that I must be patient to let the process work itself out. But, oh dear, what a test of my patience.
I'm off to stay at my sister's house in Lincoln. I've been snowed in a couple of times this last week, there's more snow to come, and it has been beastly cold. I've got cabin fever and need a change of scenery. I'll take Casey with me.
I found this chapter rather difficult, but interesting. One thing that I questioned was Casey's use of the term "prayer" to apparently describe what I would call "contemplative prayer." Thus he seems to rule out all the types of prayer which St. Paul refers to in his epistles. Casey begins his chapter with the statement, "Prayer is not a matter of actively thinking about God." Yet that is the priciple type of prayer in both the Psalms and in Paul's letters. "praise the Lord, for the Lord is good..." "First of all, then, I urge that entreaties, and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men..." I would have appreciated it if Casey had made the distinction better.
I did appreciate his insistence that prayer does include feelings. Being a part of Baptist circles, where feelings are down-played in religious activities, I have been more recently encouraged by the more charismatic branches of Christianity to "feel" my relationship with Christ. One of my favorite passages on this topic is Deut. 6:5--"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." As we are human beings with a mind, a body and emotions (and a spirit)--all of our self is to be involved with our relationship to God. It is not just a mental relationship (as the Baptists tned to encourage,) not just an emotional one (the charismatics) and not just a more "spiritual" one. But it involves all of our being.
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