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Praying made simple

EXTRACTS FROM BOOKS

THE HERMIT - A Personal Discovery of Prayer

"Knowledge alone is not enough," said Peter. "Knowledge alone will never change anyone permanently. But the experience of being loved will!"

It's one thing to see a truth with the cold eye of an intellect, but quite another to see the same truth with the eye of the mystic, or the poet.

It's all the difference between looking at a stained glass window from the outside and looking at it from within, all aglow with vivid colour, bursting with vibrant vitality and life. Peter was able to view a truth from the inside, not just because he had a facility with words but because he was inside, himself.

For years I identified wisdom with knowledge and sought it with all the intensity of the alchemist in search of the "philosophers stone". The haphazard plundering of dusty, mystical tomes gradually gave way to devouring the latest exhilarating continental theology that was invading the country at the time.

After years of intensive reading I emerged with a wholly new and exciting vision, only to realise that the visionary had remained the same. If knowledge about God could not change me what about knowledge about man, man with whom Christ had identified himself? All I had to do was to discover their needs, learn how to minister to them with all the professional expertise offered by the new "salvific science of sociology"

I became a dedicated exponent of the Social Gospel, with all the verve and vigour of the new convert. Only somehow my practise didn't measure up to my preaching. My enthusiasm changed with the seasons, only to get snowed up in winter, where my reserves of philanthropic energy hardened and froze over. There was still a flicker of fire in my head, but no fire in my belly. Then it suddenly struck me like a flash of lightening why hadn't I seen it before? The words of the Delphic Oracle rang out loud and clear in my mind. "Know thyself". Of course it was obvious why I hadn't  seen it before! The real problem was within me, knowledge of myself would set me free, surely this was the philosopher's stone for which I had been searching, it was true self-knowledge.

I went away for a year to do a course in pastoral psychology and counseling. You name it we did it! Group dynamics, sensitivity sessions, personal analysis tutorials, counselling techniques.

I know the course did me a lot of good. I got a lot out of it. My faults, my failings, my problems of character, even my personal idiosyncrasies could be explained with detailed analysis of my childhood.

At first the experience was shattering. After the first few weeks I ended up like "Humpty Dumpty" in pieces on the floor, but bit by bit I was put together again, the better for my experience I'm sure.

At the end of the year I felt I'd been liberated. The truth had indeed set me free. It was only gradually as the weeks went by, that I realised once more that knowledge alone was not enough. The psychological knowledge about myself was true, I was quite sure about that, but it didn't give me the power to change myself. It showed me all the blemishes but it didn't enable me to get rid of them. At the end of it all I was back to square one.

Peter smiled and nodded when I told him something of my odyssey in search of wisdom, as if my experience were a carbon copy of his own, which it couldn't possibly have been.

"When will we ever learn" said Peter.

"Once upon a time it was the educationalists who would save us, open a school close a prison was the slogan. All problems would be solved almost overnight if we could only educate everybody. When the utopia didn't arrive, they had to find another scapegoat. This time it was inflation, unemployment, housing conditions. The new religion was economics, the economists and the town planners were the saviours.

"Then it was modern science that was hailed as the true liberator. It was the panacea for all human problems, the answer to every human need. Everything was laid at the feet of the new scientific messiahs, who would deliver man to offer him salvation albeit with a materialistic face.

"When people had had enough and began to prefer a human face, it was the turn of the sociologists and the psychologists, new gods, new religions, with their own dogmas, their own hierarchies, their own insufferable brand of infallibility." Peter paused for a moment as he mused on the tragedy of the human predicament. 

"You would wonder how generation after generation of rational animals could fail to see a truth so obvious, so simple that even a child knows by instinct, long before the age of reason dawns.

"We want to know fulfillment, we want to experience joy, to be lifted out of ourselves into endless ecstasy and to share our completion with others. Only the ongoing experience of love unlimited can satisfy this our deepest desire. Only then will we be able to see ourselves not only as the psychologist sees us, as we are, but as we are meant to be. It will give us the strength to grow into our true selves from the ruins that we are now. Then we will be able to reach out to the 'other' with the genuine hand of brotherhood, to give of ourselves totally and genuinely in selfless love to the 'neighbour in need', because we have love to give not just dreams to share.

"You see we might be brimming over with ideas and ideals for ourselves and for humanity, but something further is required if we are going to be more than armchair idealists. It's all very well to talk about caring for the deprived and the neglected, stamping out colour prejudice, helping the Third World, creating authentic community, but it's all 'eye-wash', it's all 'pie-in-the-sky' unless people's hearts are radically changed from within by God's love. This is the only power that can change the heart, and prayer is the only direct means we have of coming into contact with the power of his love.

"Now once you admit that prayer is merely the word we use to describe the practical way we go about allowing God's love to enter into our lives to change us, you have to admit that prayer is the most important thing in our lives. Nothing is more important than God's love because only his love can change human beings decisively and permanently for the better. Put it another way, Christianity is not primarily a moralism it's a mysticism. It's not primarily concerned with presenting perfect human behaviour. It is primarily concerned with communicating the power that will alone enable us to be perfectly human, then perfect human behaviour will follow as a matter of course.

" The Gospels show how this happened in Christ's life and promises that it will happen in ours also, if we only open ourselves long enough in prayer to enable God's love to possess us as it possessed Christ. Out main concern then is to be permeated by the love that was the main-spring of his every action, so that we can be penetrated by the same Spirit that was the source of all he said and did. That's why St Teresa of Avila said '"There is only one way to perfection and that is to pray, if anyone points in another direction they are deceiving you."

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