Thoughts on Prayer

I just felt the need to share a couple of things with you all. First, the picture is one I took in Santiago Atitlan of the sunset and thought it would look nice on the page. Second, yesterday when I got home from checking my e-mail and walking around Antigua, I sat down and proceeded to lose myself in thought. The following is taken from my journal.

Prayer~
It’s such a simple and basic thing, spending time talking with and listening to God. All too often though it becomes talking to or at God, instead of with, and you quickly run out of time to listen. I too am guilty of this; I haven’t allowed myself to really sit with God since I got to Guatemala. That’s the most difficult part of prayer, becoming aware and then paying attention to God speaking to you, allowing the space.

This is all brought on by an event that happens daily in this house and the book I’m currently reading. Christine and Jorge sit together and pray everyday. They’re Roman Catholic so I think that most of it is repetitious and the same every time, but then there is more. I’m never sure exactly what they’re saying but I would guess that they are praying about their lives and those who share in it with them (family, friends, strangers…).

Two contrasting ideas; prayer as a personal, solitary thing, private: prayer as something to be shared with all, especially those closest to you, corporate. (For those of you grammatically or punctuation-ally gifted, sorry if that last sentence drives you nuts:) Neither one is easy, though they are both principally simple. I’ll work on shared prayer another time, right now I find my thoughts dominated by solitary/personal prayer.

In that current read I’m enjoying, Blue Highways, the writer, William Least Heat-Moon, just spent some time with a monk in Georgia who says it well, “When I go quiet I stop hearing myself and start hearing the world outside me. Then I hear something very great.”

I know that learning how to be quiet will be a life-long pursuit however; it is something that I will do for my whole life as well. As with my Spanish, I use what I have and know already daily, learning something new every time I do. I have good days and bad days, clear understanding followed by obscurity and confusion. Times when I can fully communicate and times when it seems as though I am in a foreign land where my words fall on deaf or closed ears. So it is with prayer.

“… a man becomes his attentions. His observations and curiosity, they make and remake him. …Maybe the [journey can] provide a therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one. …Whitman calls it ‘the profound lesson of reception.’ New ways of seeing can disclose new things…Do new things make for new ways of seeing?” ~W. L. Heat-Moon

The ordinary and the obvious are different in Guatemala than in the states, but should still facilitate the opening of my inner eye. (Perhaps more so than in the states) New perspectives can uncover new experiences and hopefully understanding and I have to believe that if one is tuned in, has good ‘reception’, that new things or experiences must lend themselves to the discovery of new perspectives or ways of seeing.

What does all of this mean?

I can only answer that for myself and for me, I realize that I have to work hard to not fill all of my time with stuff. Leading up to moving here I was certain that it would be easy for me to slow down and spend more time with myself and God. Easy; right! I am addicted to doing things and being with people. The reality of any addiction holds true for this too. I have to be a lot more: aware of my own signs, weaknesses and strengths, and more intentional.

Now, to my own defense, the last month of my life has been a continual whirlwind of activity. I have gone from person to person, place to place, all the way up to stepping on the plane. Then, as soon as I got off the plane the same pattern emerged. Only now are things starting to settle out, and come the end of this week it will get stirred up again as I will be moving out of the Velasquez home to (???). Perhaps it’s a justification; perhaps it’s the truth; perhaps, and more likely, it’s a combination of the two.

Therefore, I promise myself here (and in all of your presences) to be more aware and intentional while at the same time honoring the new relationships and experiences to come; to spend more time with myself and God while leaving the future un-written and trying not to impede the writing of the present.

A speacial thanks to Ann Smith for giving me Blue Highways, it is a great book and I have really enjoyed reading it. Please add your thoughts, observations, or wisdom.