Prayer when? how? why?
AMES, RUTH M. & Macchiarola, Frank & Craighead, Meinrad & Mulhollan, Daniel & BURKHART, MARIAN & Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti
PRAYER WHEN? HOW? WHY? MEAD CAIGHEAD QA&IEL MULHQLLAN SITOABA GREZlffl HARRISON MARIAN BUHBCHART FRANK MAGQHIAROLA HOTH M. AMES As we begin the observance of Lent this yuai, wo arc reminded not...
...Nor do I hesitate to take God to task when life seems not worth the bearing, when my soul seems singularly unhealed, for at such times I have no heart or mind to lift to God, except a heart and mind frustrated, enraged, and in pain...
...Dear God, what do I do now...
...MARJAN BUKHART has taught English in and out of New York is haokjcitenti, uit Jtiho Hntei an occasional hterart cwtuy FRANK MANK MAJll IA ;s n pwftwor d biuinrsn at Colttmbiq UNIVERSITY Ur k a former prrsidini r( ihr Atatltnx...
...I should like very much to meet Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford (who said that Waugh's description of the resurrection of the dead put her in mind of a bunch of guests madly scrambling for their coats at the end of a long and probably drunken party) in heaven...
...I do freely associate, thank God occasionally, collect into my prayers those who have informed my life, and plead for what those dear to me, including myself, need...
...Luke 21:36...
...The variety and vitality of their responses, kept to a minimum at our request...
...I am enabled, then, to flesh out my feeble praying by offering him what I do well-reading, thinking, conversing, cooking-even bed-making, if we are really considering the quotidian...
...Paul by Caravag-gio, for example...
...The way Irelate to others, approach learning, accept responsibility, and take on a challenge are all extensions of prayer...
...or the familiar world transformed by snow...
...I throw the remaining water into the fire to hear the sound of the union and watch steam fill the belly of the vessel...
...Lord Jesus, be the center of my life...
...Now I don't wish to leave you with the impression that I am in a rut...
...I end my prayer with water...
...My prayer moves around the fire, around the four sides of the altar, honoring the cross of the four directions (our universal landscape), the seasons, and the elements...
...Because she looks at you, you paint...
...But it is not a habit yet: other habits or events intervene, such as not being able to find the deodorant or discovering that the car windows need scraping...
...Blessed Mother, help little Julie...
...By the time I have made the sacred prayer circle the fire has burned to embers...
...He did, in the blink of an eye, enabling me to live...
...My morning prayer begins with fire burning in a terra cotta vessel that sits on an altar...
...i ominumn lemlerf, KLf TH M AWI-.S ft a wriifi and teacket whost bank God When the sun rises over the Sandia Mountains, a fire burns facing it...
...IAKUAKA (RK/UI...
...Daniel Mulho Uem Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me...
...This is a form of superstition, and of nostalgia, and of faith, too...
...When I pray for favors, I don't exactly envisage a Ptolemaic universe with saint-studded stars, but I don't exactly not, either...
...One of these prayers means so much to me that it has become with me almost a mantra: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof...
...in keeping with my needs...
...Since action and prayer most often go together for me...
...When I leave the altar I go into my studio and begin another day of painting...
...When I approach the altar in the dark before dawn, before I lay the cottonwood kindling and light the fire, I take ashes from yesterday's fire and rub them on my head (if every day is Resurrection, every day is Ash Wednesday...
...I have spoken with the living and the dead, ancestors, godmothers and godfathers, animals and the elements, and last night's dream...
...Well, let me tell you, it is easier said than done...
...tiitlhor tmj eauvi SI Hhow bunk* wctuth- Visuinsiif tiloi-\ am OM-Cxmcr...
...nttcwiikotut aw*buck...
...Pretty soon I find that I am functioning, at least sort of, without saying the prayer at all...
...Thus, I begin with ritual-night prayers, grace before meals, the Mass-because even if I am so weary or so distracted that the rite is reduced to rote, I am, nonetheless, acknowledging both my creatureliness and my relationship to all those others in the church militant who say or have said prayers, too...
...The Jesus Prayer certainly helps to remind me that anxiety is attempting to will that which cannot be willed, especially when I have a carload of kids and beach gear, and the storm clouds appear on the horizon as I park...
...19&>t...
...Before long, in this high desert climate, the ash is gray dry, the bed for tomorrow's fire...
...I have learned to pray in many different ways, alorte or with others...
...I also like to think of deceased friends of mine (especially former professors and colleagues-Frank Kilcoyne is a favorite) who did the kind of work I now do and who did it with quality and style...
...For example, I am sure he knows I'd like to meet Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford in heaven, so I don't tell him that...
...In any case, he seldom arranges people or events in a way that is consistent with my wishes-though all may be (how would I know...
...There it is-quite simple really...
...or a building I love (Brunelleschi's Santo Spirito, for example...
...I am a baby-swimmer, but I can do two rather extraordinary things with ease-I can sit in deep water without treading water (I can'read a book in this fashion), and I can stand perpendicularly in deep water...
...But I have never again gotten the whole candy store at once...
...I do not use prayer as a form of meditation...
...And pace science and theology, in the course of the day I address him and his saints in one-liners...
...I built the altar in the center of my land here, near the Rio Grande, as an act of thanksgiving for my fiftieth birthday several years ago...
...To answer some of these questions, or at to get vhbuj feeling lor then), we asked a theologian, John H Wright, practical!} experienced in this discipline tu reflect briefly on the nature of prayer-what it is, and what we arc doing when we pray...
...Lord, give me the grace to know your will and to do it...
...You drink her milk...
...THE EDITORS MEINARD CKAIGHEAD is an ftrtiit livtnt...
...I usually become aware that I am not repeating the prayer when I confront a situation when I begin saying it again-when a car cuts in front and scares the hell out of me, as it were, or I am waiting for an elevator and begin to grind my teeth...
...It is at great spiritual moments like these I am reminded to pray...
...That made me his for life...
...It is a feeling kind of prayer and involves a greater, more comprehensive sense of God's presence . The things I do have become a part of prayer, and I think that I do many of these things better is a result...
...But I am afraid that it will be a very long time before I can say that I went through even one day constantly praying...
...Each morning I baptize myself and say my name (which means "great counselor") and speak to myself saying something like this, "Meinrad, you belong to God...
...My only long prayer is the Mass...
...Yes, when I was counting I was not saying the Jesus Prayer...
...Marian Burkharl At praying I am inept...
...Speak but the word, and my soul shall be healed...
...In that process prayer is both a guide and a comfort...
...this makes me immensely happy (it also means that I'm unlikely to drown), and I forget myself...
...Ruth M. Ames Burbling with sympathy for a suicidal friend, I suggested tentatively that she repeat any childhood prayer she could remember...
...proved to be berth instructive and enriching...
...Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen...
...There have been moments of prayer when God and I have worked in tandem, the partnership an effective act, and I have known, for a while at least, that God holds my hand...
...And besides, what precisely is prayer" Is it worth the effort...
...so when I have wishes in regard to other people, I just say their names...
...in New Mrvatamt mithor-ill Huntfot of The Mother's Son.ss (Paulhti DANIEL...
...She looks at you...
...I'm often involved in some activity, and prayer that asks for help is a natural part of the process of thinking the activity or situation through...
...an nt&umatioa / l>usifs\, education, urn...
...Bui the question quickls arises, him do we accomplish that...
...HAKKISUN...
...I have worked hard to understand myself, and to do things with a sense of my personal strengths...
...The Scripture readings prove especially meaningful when I've studied them at home beforehand...
...Sometimes the variant-Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner-comes to mind, usually when I have an eternity to wait in the grocery line and find the person ahead of me has seventeen items and thus exceeds the fifteen-item limit...
...MULHOLLAN is American government at the izbrarv of Ctvigiv Omtiimrtf Rul Rt sivnii Scn-icc in Wtohmntim...
...Whatever the ball game, my personal prayers turfl out equally untheological...
...Sometimes I fall asleep floating...
...Perhaps I should...
...My favorite person to pray to is the Holy Spirit...
...In private, I pray like an old child, heavy with years and experiences, light of head and heart...
...I also pray, as all mothers do, to bear their pain, but, on the evidence, God wants them to bear their own pain, more's the pity...
...Sometimes, as a quite unearned gift, the Eucharist offers a brief brush with another reality...
...MEAD CAIGHEAD QA&IEL MULHQLLAN SITOABA GREZlffl HARRISON MARIAN BUHBCHART FRANK MAGQHIAROLA HOTH M. AMES As we begin the observance of Lent this yuai, wo arc reminded not only of the historical events generally recalled at this season-Jews' ministry, death, ami resurrection-but of his practical instruction to always be on watch and to pray cowlantfy...
...When I look at a painting I love (that of St...
...Over time I have also begun to think that more often than not I am involved in a different form of prayer, one with a much more intense kind of communication...
...But I keep trying, I'm not quite sure why, although I certainly could point to the scriptural exhortations to pray continually...
...Italian I)Ayi.(Wri Jvn1e M ANlrofwm.Spring...
...I let him fill in the rest...
...And we asked six lay people - to share with us how they pray concretely in the course ot their busy live...
...It calms the heart," I said apologetically...
...or a cityscape that hammers at and (Continued on page 77) (Continued from page 74) enlarges my heart...
...One of the things that makes God God is that he knows everything (before I know myself, he knows me...
...It is not the thinking kind of prayer I just described...
...Believing in their goodness, I pray for the happiness of my children...
...An earnest lector, I sometimes get carried away myself, not, I hope, by my own hamming but by the encounter with the Word...
...There appears to be something very helpful in placing oneself in a poise of always seeking mercy, to be constantly reminded that out there is one beyond my limits who is without limits...
...In the Mass, I dip into the spiritual treasury of the centuries...
...You look at her...
...It slows the adrenalin," was the way the world's greatest pitcher, Orel Hershiser, put it, explaining his singing of hymns to himself between innings...
...If I cannot be saved but through the grace of God, that grace can act only through me and that place I am to fill in his eternal plan would without me be forever empty...
...I just keep on saying the names of people I love...
...it is soporific...
...Many years ago, I was full of hatred for a man who had had the effrontery to die-a man I'd lived with-and, not knowing that I believed in God, I asked God, as a last desperate measure, to take the corrosive, corrupting hatred away...
...Many is the day I have started off determined to say this little prayer continually through my waking hours...
...Just say this prayer constantly and your prayer life is set...
...I do not like to burden God with gratuitous information...
...My studio is named for and dedicated to Maat: "the all-seeing Eye of the Mother...
...My God is not an old man with a long beard, but he/she has to be more than First Mover or Designer Quasar for me to pray to him/her...
...Sometimes "Hail Mary, full of grace" comes along for periods of time and is the most comforting...
...ttf Political Sw Mri chancellor of the New York City school system, and fxrcstdttf fif i\f Yo'k (Uv Hfirtnt-rnhip...
...FRANK MACCHIAROLA Prayer is communication, and I usually think of it as asking for God's help in dealing with a problem or situation...
...The More is Jesus...
...Of course, prayer does not stop at ritual...
...Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer, because one's thoughts fly upward...
...and, in particular, when, sheathed in shining water, buoyed, weightless, amazed, relaxed, I swim, waves of joy spread all over me and find expression in multiple silent thank yous, which I hope God interprets as prayer, for that is surely what they are...
...I don't think he requires resumes or detailed specifications...
...On the other hand, I do make the sign of the cross a lot (shut up, make the cross, and go to sleep, my Calabrian grandmother used to say to me when I got above myself), for example, when I hear the siren of an ambulance, or when something terrible is on the television news...
...If I were to follow a formula for prayer (which I do not), I'd find one in the acronym submitted by Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford (whose work, piercing and gay, full of the joy of the mystery that permeates daily life, is a kind of prayer...if you ask me): ACTS- Adoration, Contrition, Thanks, and Supplication, in that order...
...I say the Hail Mary only when I am overwhelmed with physical panic...
...I paint within her eye and she watches me...
...Then there is the prayer at the Offertory of the Mass which completes my "mantra,": when we bless God "through whose goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made," for it compels me to focus on my own role in my salvation...
Vol. 116 • February 1989 • No. 3
