I share in this post some thoughts about this chapter"Short Prayers", and also share some thoughts about 'blogging on Casey's book and bringing this experiment to a probable close for now.
"Short prayers" is how I grew up. One prayer-gift of traditional Catholicism is that of both teaching and encouraging short prayers. One cannot escape a traditional RC upbringing without running head-on into standard prayers for memorization such as the "Hail Mary", the "Gloria" or "Glory be", what I grew up calling the "Our Father" only to learn later that Protestant folk called it the "Lord's Prayer" and added the "for Thine is the Kingdom..." portion. And these prayers, along with the Apostles' Creed and a few others, were all systemitized in the Latin or RC form of the Rosary. The drone of the "Hail Mary" over and over was what church-before-Mass sounded like, what the funeral home sounded like, sometimes what the home at prayer sounded like.
Sometimes the drone sounded jaded and mechanical, and later such prayer-practices were mocked and disparaged from the inside, by a post-Vatican II RC Church (now famous were the priests who would tear a Rosary into shreds from the pulpit and scatter the beads while exhorting people to "pray the liturgy"), and from outside, from Protestant folk who insisted that we "just pray, don't 'say prayers'". Funny how things came full-circle, and now Protestant folks are exploring prayer-beads and the Rosary traditions and I have been asked more than once by newcomers if we have a Rosary group they can join.
Beyond the Rosary itself was even shorter prayers, verses, a practice somewhat more ecumenical as I think Evangelical folk did the same sort of thing with memorized Bible verses. One traditional RC school referred to short one-line prayers as "ejaculations", giving rise to a lot of squirmy humor on the adolescent church-school level of things. But we were encouraged to place the desire of our hearts, spiritually speaking, into one phrase, a sort of "cry of the heart" to God. I can remember several--"Jesus I adore you", "Mary pray for us" leap out.
Anthony Bloom in his classic book "Beginning To Pray" calls these "walking-stick prayers", and in that context speaks of the Eastern Orthodox "Jesus Prayer" ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me") and the rich tradition that has grown up with its practice. We need to have a few words that accompany us throughout the day, supporting us when we're weary, focusing our restless thoughts and hearts.
I've come to the conclusion for my part that the actual words do not matter, or that no one formula is objectively better than another. What matters is that we pray, in season and out of season. In preparation for my sabbatical, one focus of which will hopefully be primitive monasticism, I have been reading John Cassian. "O God, make speed to save me" works just fine and is already familiar from its use in the Daily Office. And I agree wholly with Cassian when he says, and Casey quotes, that "prayer is only a faint whisper within us", and that to whisper once is far better than not to whisper at all.
I am interested to hear of anyone's experience with placing our prayers into a whisper of words, the ancient tradition of short prayers which Augustine said "the brethren in Egypt aim like arrows", short as to avoid wandering attention.
I want to share as well that I think my desire to finish reflecting on Casey's book before sabbatical is not realistic, and I will bring this experiment to a close for now. It has been on the one hand a good discipline for me to try to systematically reflect on a rich book and invite others to do so. On the other hand I had hoped for a stronger sense of conversation between readers. For my part I think I tried too hard to completely summarize each chapter, and so perhaps I unintentionally precluded conversation. And often enough I became distracted and so 'blog entries fell off of the weekly rhythm I had hoped to sustain. One of my personal secrets is that I am not a fast reader, and I know that a number of us finished Casey long ago and had moved on; hence these reflections might have felt like afterthoughts. Of late making 'blog entries began to feel like producing one more piece for consumption, and at this juncture, right before sabbatical, I am feeling my inner well to be quite dry and the bucket is clattering upon the stones at the bottom. I hope to find some filling-time, but have learned that laying that expectation upon God and upon a time of renewal is too utilitarian. I'll be filled in the way and in the time that God wills. Let me know any thoughts you may have about how we may sustain cyber-conversation in the future. And thanks for the reading, and for the reflecting.
1 comment:
I was reading Anthony Bloom's book, when Cathy told me about the Casey book. I really like Anthony Bloom's mode of expression. It stirs up my feelings more. He also quoted about the prayer aimed like an arrow. I think I need to read chapter 9. I tend to memorize longer prayers and say them when I walk, but often I can't keep my mind on them past the 2nd sentence. Lately, I tried just saying one sentence at a time when my mind is wandering a lot. That works. Thank you for writing the blog. That was a lot to add to Lent, early Easter preparations and furnaces failing. Holy Week was very inspiring. I'm glad to be a member at SPP.
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