Prayer is never easy. Thomas Merton wrote that “Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and hearts have turned to stone” (1) There is a struggle implicit in those words, a struggle that each one of us experiences as we seek to pray. In a journal entry for December 5^th 1964 , he writes of his early days in the hermitage. “In the hermitage, one must pray or go to seed. The pretence of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice. It has to be real. Yet, what can one do? Solitude puts you with your back to the wall, or your face to it, and this is good. So you pray to learn how to pray!” (2)  

 It was certainly a struggle that Merton knew only too well. Isaac of Syria linked love and prayer in a way that points to personal circumstance when he wrote that “Love comes from prayer and prayer comes from remaining in seclusion” (3).  For although many of us experience prayer in the company of others, be it parish, school, family or in the monastic community, there is an essential core in prayer that identifies a personal relationship with God, and in that, we are alone. Mark tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel that “in the morning, long before dawn, He got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.” (4). Of course this is not exclusive to our Christian commitment, for many faith traditions invite the experience of solitude, a time of stillness and an opportunity to be. “Most of the time, we are lost in the past or carried away by the future. When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love”  (5)  

Sitting alone for an extended period of time, whether on an open hillside, by the shore of the ocean, or in a church or at a shrine, is not easy. Our attention naturally wanders, distractions come and go and we too often become caught up with lots of words and fine phrases in our attempt to be alone with the Alone. This quest for solitude and quiet is in fact a contradiction to the very nature of our society where noise and busyness abound and our purpose is to be found in our doing something.  

It was to help with such times that these beads were made. They are not intended as traditional rosary beads, though they can be used for that purpose, for the group of ten beads give the count for a single decade, but rather they offer a focal point for fingers to handle in a repetitive way during a time of meditation. The loop, slipped over the second finger of the right hand, leaves the thumb and index finger available to go from bead to bead, back and forth, maybe to the background of music, or the repetition of a simple phrase or just in silence. A small group of beads that are easily contained in the palm of the hand, offering a presence and a reminder whether outdoors in the garden, during a beach walk or in a city street; or indoors in the quiet tranquillity of an empty church or before a candle lit icon picture at home or in the dark hour before dawn. Whatever the setting, the intention is the same; that the handling of the beads might bring us in to the still presence of God, and that finding us there, we might listen to him.  

We may wish from time to time to use a simple repetitive phrase such as:  

·                    Lord in your mercy, hear my prayer.

·                    Love comes from prayer.

·                    In your mercy Lord.

·                    Jesus, remember me.

·                    Into your hands Lord.  

Maybe a line from a psalm that has some particular association for us can be repeated as our fingers move from bead to bead. We might say slowly the Our Father, handling a bead with each phrase, and allowing time before rushing on to the next phrase, for it is time that we must give if meditative prayer is to grow in us. It is this surely that the writer of the Cloud of Unknowing is moving us toward when he wrote  “We must therefore pray in the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of our spirit- and not in many words but in a little word of one syllable” (6)  

Each string of beads has a central group of ten beads with ten spacing discs or smaller beads. A larger bead, by the loop, heads the string and is separated from the central group by one or two other beads. Likewise, above the cross, hand-made from a hard wood, a further group of beads is placed. After a while, the cross and the beads develop their own patina from handling and the hours of our prayer struggle are evident in the worn wood.  

This piece, written some ten years ago, long before I made the first bead string, reflects the same story.  

          Hour of solitude  

       Space  for prayer time

          wordless hour of solitude

          inner         silent peace

          Silent peace for wordless

          prayer space

          solitude       of inner time

           Wordless           solitude

          space for

          inner peace

          silent      prayer time hour  (7)           

References-

1.         Seeds of Contemplation – Thomas Merton

2.         Vow of Conversation – Thomas Merton

3.         Isaac of Syria

4.         The Gospel of Mark: Chapter 1

5.         The Long Road turns to Joy: Thich Nhat Hanh

6.         The Cloud of Unknowing Chapter XXXIX

7.         A short time in expectation: personal collection 1995

8.         Now as Then|: personal collection 2009  

END

                              Strung Stones 8  

Words are shaped smooth round

beads,  handled each day, gentle

strung stones, passed between  

finger and thumb till darkened wood,

worn by touch, cross grained, is reached

and the return journey begins.