Radical Trust

Contemplative Prayer and Singing in the Dark

This is last week’s newsletter! Forgive the delay in posting it but I didn’t want not to. Such a week of contrasts.

Our daughter got married last Saturday and it was a glorious, glorious occasion: a true celebration of love. The music, the prayers, the vows, the feasting, the speeches, the dancing and the sheer joy was a bright beacon of hope in a dark world. For all such beacons, I give thanks.

Following the wedding, I’ve had family visiting from America. Like so many people I know, my family represents both sides of the divide. It seems impossible to bridge that divide with words. This is one reason I’m so passionate about contemplative prayer. It promises the otherwise impossible. In silent prayer, we reach towards, and sometimes touch, the mystery of Christ in whom all things are reconciled.

Because I’ve been rather preoccupied one way and another, I’m passing on words from others that have encouraged me this week, in case something might also encourage you.

Richard Rohr writes: To pray is to practice that posture of radical trust in God’s grace—and to participate in perhaps the most radical movement of all, which is the movement of God’s Love. 

Take a moment to still yourself. Open to grace.

Reading

Psalm 62

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
   from him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
   my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

How long will you assail a person,
   will you batter your victim, all of you,
   as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence.
   They take pleasure in falsehood;
they bless with their mouths,
   but inwardly they curse.
          Selah

For God alone my soul waits in silence,
   for my hope is from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
   my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my deliverance and my honour;
   my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Trust in him at all times, O people;
   pour out your heart before him;
   God is a refuge for us.
          Selah

Those of low estate are but a breath,
   those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
   they are together lighter than a breath.
Put no confidence in extortion,
   and set no vain hopes on robbery;
   if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.

Once God has spoken;
   twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
   and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.
For you repay to all
   according to their work.

Reflection

Contemplative prayer allows us to build our own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within our house and to recognize that it is not our house at all. To keep praying is to have no house to protect because there is only One House. And that One House is everybody’s Home. In other words, those who pray from the heart actually live in a very different world. I like to say it’s a Christ-soaked world, a world where matter is inspirited and spirit is embodied. In this world, everything is sacred, and the word “Real” takes on a new meaning. The world is wary of such house builders, for our loyalties will lie in very different directions. We will be very different kinds of citizens, and the state will not so easily depend on our salute. That is the politics of prayer. And that is probably why truly spiritual people are always a threat to politicians of any sort. They want our allegiance, and we can no longer give it. Our house is too big. 

If religion and religious people are to have any moral credibility in the face of the massive death-dealing and denial of this era, we need to move with great haste toward lives of political holiness. This is my theology and my politics: 

It appears that God loves life: The creating never stops. 
We will love and create and maintain life. 
It appears that God is love—an enduring, patient kind. 
We will seek and trust love in all its humanizing (and therefore divinizing)forms. 
It appears that God loves the variety of multiple features, faces, and forms. 
We will not be afraid of the other, the not-me, the stranger at the gate. 
It appears that God loves—is—beauty: Look at this world! 
Those who pray already know this. Their passion will be for beauty.¹ 

Reflection

A Time of Silence

Suggestion: 20 mins. But take even a few minutes if you can!

Silence is not always easy. The mind is hard to quiet. If you don’t yet have a way, you might find a single prayer word or phrase - perhaps from something you’ve just read - and return to it each time you find your mind wandering. Don’t worry. It will wander. Just gently return.

Widening the Circle

Take a moment to give thanks for the grace of silence, and extend that grace to all those on your heart and mind right now…

The Lord’s Prayer

Pray the version you like best. It contains all that we most need.

Poem

All Souls Letter

Come back, all you spirits,
come back through the open
door & sit with us at the table.

Be kind & tell us what you learned.
Be patient & forgive us, if you can,
our daily ignorance & anxiety.

Help us see that not seeing
may be the best we can manage.
Give us hope that we can make

the long journey that you
took so well & arrive
in that realm where you live.

Help us believe that we
won’t make a terrible mess
of this process of transformation

into a higher form of being.
Do not let us down as we pray
for guidance & good cheer.

Give us a seat in your boat.
Ferry us across the deep waters
toward that shore where light

opens & expands like a flower.
Come back, spirits, come back.
Lead us to the land where you live.

—Norbert Krapf, Songs for All Souls (Fernwood Press, 2024)

Closing Grace

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore.   Amen. 

Music:

Question for the Week: for Journal or Comments

What are your beacons of light this week? What is your song in darkness?

A Prayer for America, Sam Wells

Mysterious God, your ways are sometimes hard to fathom and your purposes amid the turmoil of life are sometimes hard to perceive. Bless America. Be close today to those who behold the election result with dismay. Be with migrants who fear hostility and deportation. Uphold women who anticipate disrespect and feel their wellbeing in jeopardy. Give hope to the people of Ukraine who imagine a perilous future. Have mercy on the Palestinian people who wonder if their faint hope of a future has been extinguished. Sustain all throughout your world who sense the peril of the planet and its ecosystem. Make each one of us quicker to understand than to condemn, eager to work together even with those with whom we profoundly disagree, and hopeful despite despair. As you have so many times before, surprise us with what your Holy Spirit can do in the face of setback and bewilderment; and draw us to that place of surprise, that we may in some small way be part of it. In Christ your risen Son our Lord. Amen.

1. Richard Rohr. Daily email November 2024

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