Toward God Ch. 6: Different Vantage Points

Casey tells us, with charming monkish reticence, "I guess it must be the same in a marriage."

He means our ongoing, unfolding relationship with God, and the fact that there will be many seasons, moments of growth, of challenge, of dryness, and even of seeming to stand still or even to go backwards.

If God is real and if our prayer-life, our living conversation and relationship with the real and living God, is real, then there will be all these moments and more.

I hear this as comfort and challenge. As I think I shared previously, Casey's book makes me face the fact that often I have regarded prayer and the spiritual life as a self-improvement project, and that there was some sort of state of serenity, a clear "achievement", to which I was supposed to reach and from which, of course, I always fell short.

Casey says instead that although there is effort calle for and though there may be such a thing as "progress", it is in light of the shifting reality of relationship. There will be seasons, and days. In fact, some days will seem worse after a day in which I may feel that my praying is really "in sync". To this Casey says, "the danger is that next time I come to pray, I try to re-create that prayer instead of trying to pray from where I am. In other words, I spend my time searching for yesterday's prayer. It has vanished as certainly as a champagne bubble. I cannot evade the task before me; I must pray from where I am today." (p. 61)

Casey quotes John Cassian, who is my "new favorite" early Christian author and spiritual guide, in speaking of the changing seasons of prayer and the possible reasons for the changes: spiritual growth (interior), and exterior circumstances.

Casey speaks about various elements of "exterior" influence in prayer, which for him include relationships with others, engaging the Scriptures, and contemplating the nature of the incarnation of the Son of God. Because of the power of the Incarnation, we engage with God's own revelation, the Beloved Jesus Christ, in our own and in others' lives.

For me this makes me think of my own very mixed life, where I've traveled, where I've ministered, lived, rejoiced, and suffered. Each place and each person has left a deep mark upon me, and often enough at prayer a face, a moment, an experience bubbles to the surface. I used to be troubled by this, as if they were distractions. I have slowly learned to pray those moments, those memories, bless them in the name of Jesus, or give thanks, or shudder and pray for those who were wounded including myself and pray for the grace to let go. If I don't pray my own life, whose life will I pray?

For me, one of Casey's most powerful lines in this chapter is: "Prayer, then, is a matter of our participating in the life of Jesus Christ. In him we have access to God's revelation of himself...and of us."