Or Perhaps It's Prayer

Or perhaps it’s prayer that takes us through the doorway. Perhaps as we’re sitting in our comfortable chair. (My chair is burgundy and is aptly designed to recline.) Or perhaps as we’re kneeling beside our comfortable chair. Or in front of it. Or perhaps as we’re lying in bed or kneeling beside the bed. Or perhaps as one is standing outside under some trees and the sun is filtering down through the trees that are moving in the breeze.

Or perhaps as one is standing outside and one is doing so at night and the moon is full and magnified on the horizon and is yellow-orange and is ten or more times bigger than it should be. And it is just past evening and now night. Or perhaps as one is paddling one’s canoe out onto a glacial lake in the evening, the sun evening down red and the few clouds are orange and the sky is still blue and there is no wind, only a smooth lens over the water. A liquid lens extending for miles and miles over the curvature of the earth. A curved surface of God’s eye all smooth as glass and a placidity that one rarely finds.

Or perhaps one is walking somewhere on a dirt path and comes across a deer or a group of deer and they are placid and are accepting and do not run away but look at one expectantly. As if one might have something for them or have something to add to the conversation of silence they have been sharing, and one does add one’s particular silence to their silence and so together there is this comforting silence in which we converse among ourselves, saying we do not know exactly what because this kind of prayer is prayer without words.

Prayer without articulateness. Without any specific attention to oneself and attention only to the peacefulness and the gentleness and the sense that we are in the presence of something here that we need to attend to. That we need to attend to with all our senses. This conversation we are having with something that we do not know quite what it is or where it is except that it is here.

Or perhaps we are alone and walking in Manhattan. Perhaps we are walking a long ways one day in Manhattan. Perhaps we know exactly where we are going, or we have no idea where we are going. But in either case, we are just walking and carrying a sudden sense of peacefulness and quiet with us in all this hurry and noise and people and grandness and history and excitement. We are simply carrying a silence and peacefulness with us as if it were a small music box, let’s say, that we are holding in our two hands.

As if it were a gold box that had some precious music in it that no one had ever heard and that only we knew and were holding silently in our hands and taking to someone or keeping for someone. We aren’t quite sure. It feels like this or something like this as we’re walking along through time. Through space-time. With this timeless sense inside ourselves that seems unassailable. That seems invincible. That seems perfect and complete in itself.

And that seems a gift. A great beneficence. A great tenderness. A feeling that we have been touched by the holy one himself. And that he is with us. With us always on this little walk of ours through one of the great cities of the world. Through all the history making of the day. Through all the distractedness and nowness of the day. And here we are, separate. Separated off by God for himself.

Blessed by God himself for this time of quiet contemplation and quiet joyfulness. Gentle lovingness. Or perhaps we are with someone who is dying and we are saying over and over again, Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on this man. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on this man. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on this man.

And let’s say we say this for hours over the dying man and there comes the sense that you and this man are alone together. Alone in all the universe together. No matter what has come before and what may come afterward. No matter if anything came before and if anything will come afterward. You are alone together now, each doing what he has been made to do at this moment. And you are ministering to one another in doing what each has been made to do.

And this is not easy. This is in fact very difficult for both of you. This is in fact something you would rather not do, but you will do it because. Well. Because you were made for this. This moment. To be here with one another and do this. And there is therefore a rightness to it. A feeling that one is doing what one was made for, even though it is not easy. It is not fun. It is not pleasant. It is not quiet or peaceful or serene or smooth or comfortable.

It is none of this. It is right, however. It feels perfectly right. It is faithful. It happens in God’s sight. And that is how we both know we will do this. We will keep doing this. Until we are done.

Or perhaps it is fixed hour prayer. Perhaps we must duck into a bathroom to perform this task or close the door to our office, if we have an office and we have a door. Perhaps we have a book of prayers that we use. And perhaps again, even though we clear a spot of time in our day for this, we do not feel ourselves enter through the doorway, even though we have. In other words, there is no emotional pleasantness. No emotional well-being.

We are being faithful. We have on the one side a meeting to decide, for example, on the disposition of certain invention disclosures and on the other, a meeting to decide whether we will in fact use a particular open source software product that could require us to make a good deal of our proprietary software available and thereby compromise our product’s unique advantages. We do not feel a change from the quotidian to the eternal. But this doesn’t mean anything.

This doesn’t mean we are not in eternal time. It just means that we don’t feel a difference today, at this particular moment, in the different kinds of time. But feelings can be misleading. Feelings are secondary. And so we say what we say because we are faithful. And it brings us comfort because the words we use have been used for hundreds or thousands of years by many Christians. By many believers. Around the world. In all sorts of circumstances.

And it links us. Connects us all together. Networks the living and the dead all around the curved space of the world. In one saying. One praying. That is continuous. That is harmonious. And that praises. Whatever its particulars. Him.

Or let’s say we are praying and a sudden sense of warmth comes over us. A sudden release of warmth over us and through us and in us. Like a spiritual Florida ocean summer warmth. Like an at the beach warmth on a warm, sunny day at the sea. The place of healing. A place in which it feels as if we’ve been placed within a shell and the sound of the sea is everywhere around and through and in.

The sound of the sea and wind between our ears and in our hearts and through all our fingers and toes and in our skin. The feeling that we are completely warm and peaceful and disconnected from all our cares and connected now into another plane entirely, another realm altogether, another reality that exists out here beyond our everyday experience. A world that has God in it. In which God is everywhere at once. Is in everything that is and that could possibly happen. That is in the water and in the sand and in the air and in the sky and in the sounds the wind makes and in the sounds the people make. The sense that he has made this just for us. This haven. This vacation from the world.