Anxious thoughts - 9 March 2012

The third of Jesus’ central teachings about prayer may well be the one we have most trouble with in the western church. It is where he talks about our material anxieties:

I bid you, put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive and clothes to cover your body...

Well, we can say right away that Jesus is not trying to turn us off the basic necessities of life. Not only do we have food and drink, we enjoy food and drink, and we give thanks to God for it. Greed and gluttony are another matter of course, and I have my doubts about neenish tarts and chocolate lamingtons. Clothes also are also quite a good idea. Quite apart from warmth, our physical configuration seems not to improve with age, and wearing nice clothes is a gift we offer to the world around us.

Jesus is not against food and clothing. He is against anxious thoughts about food and clothing, especially at the time of prayer. Perhaps contemplative prayer is likely to be difficult for the convener of the parish social committee. I learned on the radio the other day that a girl can’t have too many shoes. Does anyone actually worry about that? A woman on TV said: All my lifestyle dreams have been shattered -- those were her words -- because someone had built a pylon 9 meters outside her boundary. Her dream lifestyle was in ruins.

We all have at times plenty of real reasons to be anxious. But the time of contemplative prayer is when we quite specifically choose not to be ruled by anxiety. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. We are content to sit still and silent in the presence of God, in life and in death itself. It is the time when, quite specifically and deliberately, we cease looking for happiness in the wrong places. Our faith is expressing itself in silent trust.

The most famous saying of the English mystic and hermit, Lady Julian of Norwich, was: All will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of thing will be well. But on her lips this was never some blind denial of hard facts of life and real reasons for worry. She knew very well what life is like. The teaching comes straight out of her contemplative experience, and the faith that all pain will be swallowed up in the mercy and love of God who meets us here in God’s silence.