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jenny_islanderThis section is titled "The Foothills of Prayer." It begins: "We should never make prayer too complicated."
Foster points out that the Lord's Prayer is addressed to God as from a child to a parent. "Have you ever noticed that children ask for lunch in utter confidence that it will be provided? They have no need to stash away today's sandwiches for fear none will be available tomorrow. As far as they are concerned, there is an endless supply of sandwiches. Children do not find it difficult or complicated to talk to their parents, nor do they feel embarrassed to bring the simplest need to their attention."
This is one of those places in Celebration of Discipline where Foster makes a common error: He generalizes too far from his own experience.
Onward. "Children also teach us the value of the imagination. As with meditation, the imagination is a powerful tool in the work of prayer." He cites St. Teresa of Avila, who found herself unable to pray in the usual way and chose instead to concentrate on mental imagery. "I believe my soul gained very much in this way," she writes, "because I began to practice prayer without knowing what it was." Foster adds that "imagination often opens the door to faith" and asserts that this, too, is something children understand very well. He tells a story about being asked to pray for a seriously ill infant in her home. He taught her four-year-old brother how to imagine Jesus healing his little sister and prayed a prayer of thanks with him. "Now, I do not know exactly what happened, nor how it was accomplished, but I do know that the next morning Julie was perfectly well."
He also relates how a teacher in a special needs classroom solved the issue of a child who would crawl under his (the teacher's) desk and curl up there. The man would picture himself holding the upset student in his arms and pray silently for healing for the boy's pain and turmoil. At the same time he would find reasons to get up and walk around the classroom, doing his job, "so as not to embarrass him." He also encouraged the student, on calmer days, to talk about positive moments in his life and imagine them happening again, but with his friends there to rejoice with him--teaching him how to pray without words. He did this with every student in his classroom, and by the end of the year all but two of them were mainstreamed.
Foster describes other imaginative prayers for different people and situations. He warns, "We are not trying to conjure up something in our imagination that is not so. Nor are we trying to manipulate God and tell him what to do. Quite the opposite. We are asking God to tell us what to do...Our prayer is to be like a reflex action to God's prior initiative upon the heart." But he reveals his own limited imagination. For example, it isn't enough for him that a straying husband is breaking his oath, lying, putting his wife in danger of disease, and diverting earnings that are meant for his family. He has to add, "God desires that marriages be healthy, whole, and permanent." Certainly. But Jesus observed that sometimes marriages break (Matthew 19:9). There are other examples of adherence to a checklist in this chapter. Checklists are too limited for human experience--or for Scripture--but there's a strain of American Protestantism that doesn't seem to realize that.
To his credit, however, Foster also notes that the above example of praying secretly for one's students is a form of prayer in schools "against which there can be no law," but hardly talked about by those who are fervent proponents of prayer in schools. Remember that for all his immersion in modern American Protestantism, Foster is a member of the Society of Friends, which began as a counterculture--a counterculture persecuted as a threat to the Christians in power.
Back to prayer. Not having our prayers observed by anyone but God frees us to pray for anyone at any time. Foster relates suggestions from Frank Laubach, a writer on prayer, regarding praying continually (1 Thessalonians 5:16). One is to pray a brief silent prayer for everyone one passes on the street. Foster has tried it and notes that some people will "turn and smile as if addressed." The aisle of a plane or bus is another avenue for these quick prayers--for "the joy of the Lord and a deeper awareness of his presence" or similar words. If many people did this, Laubach contends, it would be a kind of solidarity of prayer, a protection against the Enemy. Only first try "swishing prayers" at everyone you pass on the street, and note the results. Like any skill, practice, assess, adjust, and try again.
But, says Foster, "we must never wait until we feel like praying before we pray for others." It is a task that needs doing, so begin it. Like other tasks worth doing, we may find that we settle into the flow of it and become absorbed by it--and then we "feel like praying."
This is not a matter of carving out time from our lives that may be needed for other things. Here he quotes Thomas Kelly, a mystic and fellow member of the Society of Friends. "It takes no time, but it occupies all our time...There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings." This is what I mean when I say that my goal, in revisiting this book, is to become more awake to the entire real world.
I repeat Foster's warning against treating any of the Christian disciplines as a pinnacle, attainable or otherwise. They are processes. "We have so much to learn, so far to go."
Next post in this series: Fasting.
Foster points out that the Lord's Prayer is addressed to God as from a child to a parent. "Have you ever noticed that children ask for lunch in utter confidence that it will be provided? They have no need to stash away today's sandwiches for fear none will be available tomorrow. As far as they are concerned, there is an endless supply of sandwiches. Children do not find it difficult or complicated to talk to their parents, nor do they feel embarrassed to bring the simplest need to their attention."
This is one of those places in Celebration of Discipline where Foster makes a common error: He generalizes too far from his own experience.
Onward. "Children also teach us the value of the imagination. As with meditation, the imagination is a powerful tool in the work of prayer." He cites St. Teresa of Avila, who found herself unable to pray in the usual way and chose instead to concentrate on mental imagery. "I believe my soul gained very much in this way," she writes, "because I began to practice prayer without knowing what it was." Foster adds that "imagination often opens the door to faith" and asserts that this, too, is something children understand very well. He tells a story about being asked to pray for a seriously ill infant in her home. He taught her four-year-old brother how to imagine Jesus healing his little sister and prayed a prayer of thanks with him. "Now, I do not know exactly what happened, nor how it was accomplished, but I do know that the next morning Julie was perfectly well."
He also relates how a teacher in a special needs classroom solved the issue of a child who would crawl under his (the teacher's) desk and curl up there. The man would picture himself holding the upset student in his arms and pray silently for healing for the boy's pain and turmoil. At the same time he would find reasons to get up and walk around the classroom, doing his job, "so as not to embarrass him." He also encouraged the student, on calmer days, to talk about positive moments in his life and imagine them happening again, but with his friends there to rejoice with him--teaching him how to pray without words. He did this with every student in his classroom, and by the end of the year all but two of them were mainstreamed.
Foster describes other imaginative prayers for different people and situations. He warns, "We are not trying to conjure up something in our imagination that is not so. Nor are we trying to manipulate God and tell him what to do. Quite the opposite. We are asking God to tell us what to do...Our prayer is to be like a reflex action to God's prior initiative upon the heart." But he reveals his own limited imagination. For example, it isn't enough for him that a straying husband is breaking his oath, lying, putting his wife in danger of disease, and diverting earnings that are meant for his family. He has to add, "God desires that marriages be healthy, whole, and permanent." Certainly. But Jesus observed that sometimes marriages break (Matthew 19:9). There are other examples of adherence to a checklist in this chapter. Checklists are too limited for human experience--or for Scripture--but there's a strain of American Protestantism that doesn't seem to realize that.
To his credit, however, Foster also notes that the above example of praying secretly for one's students is a form of prayer in schools "against which there can be no law," but hardly talked about by those who are fervent proponents of prayer in schools. Remember that for all his immersion in modern American Protestantism, Foster is a member of the Society of Friends, which began as a counterculture--a counterculture persecuted as a threat to the Christians in power.
Back to prayer. Not having our prayers observed by anyone but God frees us to pray for anyone at any time. Foster relates suggestions from Frank Laubach, a writer on prayer, regarding praying continually (1 Thessalonians 5:16). One is to pray a brief silent prayer for everyone one passes on the street. Foster has tried it and notes that some people will "turn and smile as if addressed." The aisle of a plane or bus is another avenue for these quick prayers--for "the joy of the Lord and a deeper awareness of his presence" or similar words. If many people did this, Laubach contends, it would be a kind of solidarity of prayer, a protection against the Enemy. Only first try "swishing prayers" at everyone you pass on the street, and note the results. Like any skill, practice, assess, adjust, and try again.
But, says Foster, "we must never wait until we feel like praying before we pray for others." It is a task that needs doing, so begin it. Like other tasks worth doing, we may find that we settle into the flow of it and become absorbed by it--and then we "feel like praying."
This is not a matter of carving out time from our lives that may be needed for other things. Here he quotes Thomas Kelly, a mystic and fellow member of the Society of Friends. "It takes no time, but it occupies all our time...There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings." This is what I mean when I say that my goal, in revisiting this book, is to become more awake to the entire real world.
I repeat Foster's warning against treating any of the Christian disciplines as a pinnacle, attainable or otherwise. They are processes. "We have so much to learn, so far to go."
Next post in this series: Fasting.
