Prayer aint easy

I have had this picture on file for a number of years. I cannot, I am afraid, quote its source. But I do know that I find it a powerful image. Here is a young woman whose face is hidden, who may at any moment lift her head and look at you, but never does. She kneels, a prayerful presence before us.

And the task she undertakes isn’t easy. It is full of complications and contradictions. Merton found that out in the three short years he spent in his hermitage at Gethsemani. Prayer is never easy.

He wrote that “………….Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and hearts have turned to stone”

In our confused and often troubled time of prayer, we presume that prayer is always about asking, using words, following rituals, when in fact prayer is about being in a relationship with God. It is the conviction that we matter to God and he matters to us.

Malcolm Muggeridge, a long-standing broadcaster in the UK who died in 1990, said in the months after he became a Catholic that “…I have spent my life trying to do without God. Unfortunately, I find he can’t do without me”.

There are times when the words aren’t there, when the feeling has gone and there is an aridness of spirit that seems overwhelming. And for days or weeks, we feel lost and empty. Like the nun above we are lost the darkness of our hands, hoping at some point we will understand again and experience the solace of the Lord.

The words that open Psalm 41 bring that pain to a point.

“Like the deer that yearns for running streams

so my soul is yearning for you my God”

and later,

“My tears have become my bread by night by day

as I hear it said all day long ‘Where is your God?’ “

Maybe we ought to reflect and rest a bit more in our silence rather than get too involved in our words. We are ever anxious to tell our story to God (who knows it already) rather than listening to his story for us.

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

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