Blue Eyed Ennis: Doors and Prayer Part Four

Doors and Prayer Part Four

Some doors open slowly !!

( See previous posts for Parts 1, 2 and 3 on Prayer and Doors)

Most of the guidance for people who want to go through the doors to prayer mention the key step " Be attentive. "

Paying attention would seem to be a easy task but reality contradicts this presumption. If anything, listening becomes ever more challenging because of the clamour and burdens of our hurried days.

The lack of true attentiveness is a cultural problem.

Numerous scriptural passages encourage us to listen:

God said to Job, " Listen to me; be silent and I will teach you wisdom."

In the Book of Proverbs, Holy Wisdom urges "And now my children, listen to me."

The cultivation of the skill of listening for God is embedded in many different types of spiritual practices and we need to regularly adjust our listening antennae to hear God through the scriptures, the liturgical life of the church, people, events, and nature.

Nothing, no person, place or moment is left out from divine revelation - our spiritual development depends on being alive and vigilant enought to hear the myriad of possible messages of transformation that weave through our daily existence.

The late Cardinal Basil Hume of England suggested this :

"Each of us needs an opportunity to be alone, and silent, to find space in the day or week just to reflect and to listen to the Word of God that speaks deep within us. Our search for God is inly our response to God's search for us. God is at the door but for many people their lives are too preoccupied for them to be able to hear."

Anthony de Mello had some wonderful nuggest of wisdom on the subject of prayer and prayers :.............

Grandmother : do you say your prayers every night ?"

Grandson : "Oh, Yes !"

"And every morning?"

"No.I'm not scared in the daytime."

Even if we have the intentional desire to listen it will be an important step.

Again, Anthony de Mello has some help for us here ......

" A cobbler came to Rabbi Isaac of Ger and said "Tell me what to do about my morning prayer. My customers are poor men who only have one pair of shoes. I pick up their shoes in the late evening and work on them most of the night: at dawn i still have work to be doen if the men are to have their shoes before they go to work.

Now my question is ; What shouild I do about my morning prayer ?"

"What have you been doing till now?" the Rabbi asked.

"Sometimes I rush through the prayer quickly and get back to work - but then I feel bad about it.

At other times, I let the hour of prayer go by.

Then too, I feel a sense of loss and every now and then, as I raise my hammer from the shoes, I can almost hear my heart sigh.

What an unlucky man I am, that I am not able to make my morning prayer.

Said the Rabbi, " If I were God I would value that sigh more than the prayer ."

Painting above untitled 1943 by Leo Lowit

PRAYER
Dear God,

You know my heart through and through.

Your gaze penetrates to the core of who I am,

where the truest and deepest desire dwells.

When I knock on the door with my requests

grant what will most influence my love for you.

May I ever seek that which you long for me to be.

I open the door of my heart to you.

I open the door.

Even if we do manage to stop and listen what happens when everything we do seems fruitless, when we feel estranged and God still seems remote ?

What happens when all our pleas and murky questions about horrific violence inflicted by humanity and other unsettling issues go unresolved and we are perplexed or bewildered and nothing makes sense ?

Never give up !!

Something inside me

Constantly bleeds towards God

That's why I keep writing,

Slipping messages under the door

Dorothy Walters

and remember God has a sense of humour !!.................

More gems from Anthony de Mello

A woman who had given up on praying decided to open the Bible at random for a phrase that would enlighten her. The first one she came cross said , " and Judas went out and hanged himself. "

Not surprisingly, she was a little disconcerted by this so decided to try another.

only to find that the second one was

" And I say to you, go and do likewise ! "

An atheist fell of a cliff but as he tumbled he caught hold of a branch of a small tree. There he hung between heaven above and the rocks a thousand feet below, knowing he wasn't going to be able to hold on much longer.

Then an idea came to him. "God !", he shouted with all his might.

Silence !! No one responded.

" God!" he shouted again. " If you exist, save me and I promise I shall believe in you and teach others to believe."

Silence again ! Then he almost let go of the branch in shock as he heard a mighty voice booming across the canyon,

" That's what they all say when they are in trouble."

4 comments:

claire bangasser said...: The joke I knew had another ending.

The man hanging on the branch cries:

Is there anybody out there?

He hears Godde's voice saying, Let Go!

So the man says,

Is there anybody else out there?

:-))); 29 July 2010 at 21:02
Blue Eyed Ennis said...: Oh, I like your ending too !; 29 July 2010 at 22:26
Tim said...: The atheist joke reminded me of a New Yorker cartoon of an atheist's tombstone that read, "All dressed up and no place to go."

On a more serious note, the cobbler's sigh. Haven't we all been there? I'm glad to know God hears our sighs. There's a famous introit we Pentecostals often use to open prayer services:

I love the Lord, He heard my cries
And pitied every groan
Long as I live and troubles rise
I'll hasten to His throne.

Sighs and groans--prayers in the sounding...

Blessings,
Tim; 31 July 2010 at 00:04
claire bangasser said...: Wonderful you!; 31 July 2010 at 15:24

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Doors and Prayer Part Four

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