Edgework

The more carefully I listen to fellow Jesus-followers, and my own heart, the clearer it becomes that most of us struggle to maintain an active and consistent prayer life. However, I have known a number of people in my life for whom prayer seemed to come naturally and freely. I sometimes wondered why.

One of them was Ben Eidse, president of Steinbach Bible College when I began my tenure there in 1983. It was his practice to open most college chapel services with a prayer that was deeply personal and meaningful. There was no great eloquence but simply a humble encounter with God. His prayer was often the highlight of the chapel service for me. As I got to know Ben better, I came to realize that his prayer life had been shaped in the rough and tumble of missionary service when often the only recourse in times of crisis had been to cry out to God.

Another person of prayer I got to know was James Houston with whom I took a class on prayer at Regent College in 1992. When I sought him out in the context of a personal crisis, Houston cut through a lot of layers of pain and distress with a short prayer that left me breathless. Needless to say, he became my anchor as I walked a long path toward spiritual and emotional healing that year. I have learned so much about authentic prayer from his writings, especially his book, The Heart’s Desire: A Guide to Personal Fulfillment (1992).

A decade later I was blessed by often praying together with my close friend and mentor, Roy Penner. Roy had weathered a very difficult childhood that had left him deeply wounded. But when I got to know him he was beginning to find healing for many of those deep wounds. His prayers reflected a humble spirit and the joy he was discovering in the healing process. Even so, he confessed on his death bed in 2012 that he regretted not having prayed more. Nevertheless, his prayers sustained me through my recovery from the burnout I had experienced.

More recently I have been greatly encouraged by the heart-felt prayers of our pastors at the Seeds of Life Community Church in Altona, Ted and Darlene Enns-Dyck. I remember how, when at first we were driving in for Sunday services from Steinbach, their “centering” prayers of welcome and invocation touched me deeply. Their prayers, which sometimes included times of silent waiting, invariably touched my aching heart. Many times, following such opening prayers, I leaned over to Ruth and whispered that it already had been “worth the trip!”

So my appetite for a deeper and more authentic prayer life has frequently been whetted. I take note that many of my contemporary “mentors” like Brian McLaren, Brad Jersak and Richard Rohr keep insisting that the only way forward for authentic spirituality to flourish is to discover and practice contemplative prayer, personally and in community. I have also taken note that contemplative prayer is said to be hardest for those who are “number three” on the Enneagram, which I am. “Achievers” prefer to just get to work to get things done and so find it hard to “wait patiently on the Lord.” Nevertheless, I am on a personal quest to experience prayer at more profound levels.

Recently, I came across a thought about prayer that came from some early desert fathers and mothers brought forward in the collected texts of the Philokalia in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. They talk about prayer as “bringing your thinking down into your heart.” This thought has opened a door for me which I am gingerly walking through at the time of this writing.

Often the “imagery” involved in our prayers, and in many of the prayers in the Bible, is that of us down “below” on earth addressing God far “up above” in heaven. “Our Father, who art in heaven…” is an example. In his book, Surprised by Hope (2008), N. T. Wright wrestles with this spatial dynamic. He argues that

The early Christians…were not, as many moderns suppose, locked into thinking of a three-decker universe with heaven up in the sky and hell down beneath their feet. When they spoke of up and down like that they…were using metaphors that were so obvious they didn’t need spelling out. When the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space and time continuum. What we are encouraged to grasp is that God’s space and ours – heaven and earth, in other words – are, though very different, not far away from one another. God’s space and ours interlock and intersect in a whole variety of ways even while they retain, for the moment at least, their separate identities and roles (115-116).

So the idea of prayer being a “long-distance telephone call” which we hope will be answered by a far-away God in heaven may not carry as much theological weight as I supposed as a youngster.

If it is true that our bodies are the temple of God, can God not be found within our hearts? Is the immanence of God not a dimension of God’s transcendence? If it is, that could change the “imagery” employed in praying. Let’s say I am praying for my wife Ruth. What I am doing is holding Ruth in my heart-space in the presence of God. Both are in my “heart” and I invite God to meet her there and minister to her needs. And because I am the “host” for this encounter I invariably will have a deep sense of vested interest in the outcome.

If you are skeptical, try it. I am beginning to do this quite regularly and am amazed at how calmly and quickly it works. I just may have walked through a doorway in my quest for a deeper spirituality. What do you think?