Learning to pray - 25 May 2012

I find I am teaching Christian Meditation and contemplative prayer and life, not because I do it very well, but because, as we know, the best way to learn something is to teach it. There are very few teachers who know everything already, although my daughter did have one in about Year 7. There are some brilliant contemplative teachers and writers in our day, and we can learn a lot. But still, I find myself going back to the ancient teachers, the Desert fathers and mothers, St Augustine, the Cloud of Unknowing, Julian, St Teresa and St John of the Cross… there are many of them… despite that they saw the world as teeming with demons and spirits and they rarely if ever had a bath. But having reached a great age, it dawns on me that I have learned to be very wary of counsels of perfection, anyway. What draws me to St Benedict is partly that he knew that everyone is struggling and barely getting there. Counsels of perfection don’t help much. Neither do triumphalism and stories of shining achievement. One wonderful woman remarked to me after a funeral we had both attended, that she would have to hurry up and do something notable so that they would have something to say about her at her funeral. They will actually have plenty to say about her. The reality is however, that we are teaching prayer, silence and stillness always to burdened people in the midst of life. Memories can be stressful, and so can the results of all manner of events in the past. Home and family routine and family worries, may be sometimes joyous, but often bothersome and burdensome. Ill-health, chronic pain, ageing… And to this we add the bearing of the burdens of others, which is something we do. My point is that life doesn’t normally facilitate a calm and seamless flow into contemplative life and prayer. It is important to know that we are all pilgrims, on the way. We haven’t got there yet. The most we can do is describe the place we have reached today, and the view from there. We may have gone backwards. I think not, but it may seem so. But each time we become still and silent, inwardly consenting to grace and to love, of course we are moving along the trail. We are shedding our own presumed omnipotence, which is a silly fantasy anyway, and opening to grace and love – for ourselves, and through us to others.