The prayer book doesn’t just show us how to worship; it also inculturates us into classical Anglican theology that is heir to both the teachings of the Historic Christian West and the Protestant Reformation. One of the best and most effective vehicles for this theology and spirituality are the short prayers called collects.
Prayer without action is passivity; Action without prayer can wind up being about more narrowly political and social agendas – it can lead us to miss the dream of God in the work we are called to do. Genuine prayer will lead us to action. But it is folly to dismiss either of these as “simply poetry.”
The Zen master talked for a long while to Tammy in Japanese, then brought out a long wooden stick. “He is going to walk up and down and watch you,” Tammy announced. “If you want you can bow to him” — she showed us how, head down and palms together — “to tell him that if he sees you are not sitting up straight or concentrating, you would like him to hit you.”
Do we recognize that Judith sings a new song celebrating the omnipotent Lord who set enemies aside at the hand of a woman? Can we who sing it hear the textual echoes and transformations of God’s spirit in Exodus not now being sent to drown the Egyptians but to effect the creation of the world?
My prayers have taken a certain turn in recent months. Increasingly my supplications tend toward “Whatever God.” Not spoken in a flip, slangy tone, but with the growing recognition that I am in no position to dictate terms to the God of the Universe.
This week I’ve been having an online discussion with a small group of friends around the world. We’ve been talking about prayer. How do we pray? Why do we pray? What, if anything, do we ask for? Do we use words? Or do we pray better through our desires and actions? What is going on in our hearts? These are questions that can become the focus of reflection for each one of us in Lent.
We’re right on the cusp of Lent here—and I’d like to offer a suggestion. If you’re looking for a discipline to help you take Lent seriously this year, I’d like to recommend the Daily Office—or at least a portion thereof. Let me give you a quick orientation to what we’ve got here.
I have a strong sense that movement is more of a royal road to awareness and spiritual transformation than we imagine. Human beings danced themselves into spiritual awareness long before language emerged. Ritual is primal. Doctrine is a latecomer. I wonder whether as the implications of post-modernity gradually sink in we might realize just how alienated we are from our bodies in the religiosity our very recent ancestors invented.
A multi-religious dinner table always presents a bit of a problem when it is time to say the grace before meals. But Thanksgiving presents a particularly sticky situation, because it is the one occasion on which even the irreligious feel that some sort of invocation should be made. But who, or what, should we invoke?
For Christians, action is always rooted in prayer. The heart of this prayer, of course, is corporate worship, above all the Eucharist, in which through the Church’s Spirit-graced act of giving thanks, the Lord Jesus gives himself to us anew and draws us ever more deeply into his dying and rising. It is here, above all, that we become rooted in the vine, so that the branches might bear fruit.