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Praying in the Dark
Sarah was beyond child-bearing years, and had never had the children she wanted so badly. In her culture, that was not only a personal grief, it made her unworthy, almost ostracized. Her life was probably very painful. What I’ve been wondering about is this: how did Sarah pray? We can assume as a young woman, her prayers were full of hope and expectation. She waited eagerly for all the children she would have. When they didn’t arrive, I imagine her prayers shifting. Now they were full of yearning, aching, pleading. They were full of pain. In time, when it was finally clear no children would be coming, I wonder if she still prayed. Maybe she felt so abandoned by God that she stopped prayer altogether. We can see in today’s reading that she is still a wounded woman, for her laughter is a laughter of cynicism, of scorn, of mockery. The angel promises that she’ll bear a child, despite her old age, and she laughs. She is mocking the angel and that ridiculous news. “Yeah, right!” she says with scorn. In my life, this past year has been challenging. A job I almost had fell through; my partner was for a long time unable to find work she needed; we didn’t know where we were going to live; for awhile we’ve both been unemployed but Bank of America wanted our mortgage check anyway; we haven’t been able to sell our house; my workshops went very well, but there were not enough of them; an editor is interested in my book, but taking months to make a final decision about it; Susan and I were in different places most of the past 2 years, and sometimes both too stressed to be much support to the other. In the midst of all that, one of my young nephews died suddenly, and I had to evacuate my home because of threat of wildfire. It has been a hard time. Like Sarah, I began this new phase of life and ministry two and a half years ago hopeful and expectant. Like Sarah, I waited longer than I wanted to wait for my dreams to fall into place. And perhaps also like Sarah, my prayer was affected by the challenges life was presenting to me. My prayers went from hopeful to pleading to angry to cynical. Sometimes I could hardly pray at all, and on top of it all I felt guilty. Why wasn’t I coping better? Maybe the only thing that kept me trying to pray was the knowledge that I teach workshops on prayer and I’m supposed to have it figured out! But really, I was praying in the dark. I don’t know if you’ve had trouble with prayer like that, but I do know that every one of you has prayed for something, something perhaps you wanted more than life itself, but you didn’t get it, and you were left to make sense of that. So in life, but especially in my prayer life, it has been a dry time for me. During this period, I came across the writings of a Catholic Vietnamese priest (a cardinal by the time of his death a few years ago) named Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan. In 1975 he was arrested by the Viet Cong and imprisoned for 13 years….9 of them in solitary confinement! Had he endured like a stereotypical saint, his story would not have been helpful to me. But in his small book “Five Loaves and Two Fish” he tells that during that time he often couldn’t pray; he couldn’t remember the words of the Our Father or the Hail Mary that he’d said all his life. “There were days…that I could not manage to say a single prayer.” (p.26) My challenge was of course nothing whatever like his ordeal; even so, his confession about prayer was a great comfort to me. He was a faithful and holy person, and yet even he struggled when he found himself praying in the dark. Have you experienced that, praying in the dark? Praying, or maybe not praying, in the midst of the challenges or crises or losses of your life? Trying to pray your way through your broken heart or broken dreams? Just when you most need God, it feels like God has changed Her email address and forgot to tell you. Maybe when someone told you that God would see you through, you just felt angry at their glib faith. Maybe you felt guilty for being unable to trust. If you are used to being a person of prayer, it is painful when that road, which always before led you home, now has a “Road Closed” sign on it. I would like to share with you a few things that help me when I find myself praying in the dark. Perhaps they’ll be useful to you sometime. Find what opens your heart. Maybe it’s the wilderness, or the lake where you go weekends. Maybe its music. Maybe it’s playing with children. Maybe it is humor that opens your heart. I think of Anne Lamont’s morning and evening prayers, ideal for desert times. Her morning prayer: “Whatever.” Her evening prayer: “Anyway.” When you think of it, those are pretty profound prayers: Whatever this day brings, I’ll be faithful; whatever I feel or don’t feel, I’ll keep on keeping on; whatever you ask of me, the answer is yes. The day was lousy start to finish, but Lord, I praise you anyway. For me, one thing sure to open my heart is beauty: the two hummingbirds visiting the evening primrose by my front porch; Mary Oliver’s poetry; the twin fawns and their mama that I saw recently. Just last Sunday it happened in church while we were singing something. When you feel that bit of softening, a sliver of light in your darkness, breathe into it. With words or silence, make that moment a prayer “Help me, God. Heal me. Thank you for this moment of peace, however brief, in my time of turmoil.” When I stay alert for those brief times when my hard heart suddenly softens, even just for a moment, they are slivers of grace bringing healing to me. If I am not aware of them, if I do not know what opens my heart, if I don’t notice them when they come, then it is like they had not come. Find what opens your heart, what softens you, and watch for it. Here’s something else that might help you. Let the tradition carry you. When you can’t find a Presence, when you can’t feel love or hope or trust, let the 2000+ years of our Christian tradition carry you. Read the words of scripture that have sustained people for millennium; don’t worry if they aren’t speaking to you right now. Trust our Christian conviction that Ultimate Reality (God) is relational, is, in fact, Love, even though you do not feel that relationship or that love. Clutch at the wisdom of our tradition: for instance, contrary to popular belief, our tradition teaches us that the value of prayer has nothing whatever to do with the emotions it stirs, or fails to stir. Maybe prayer used to comfort you, or make you feel at peace, or strengthen you. Suddenly you pray and you feel nothing whatever. Popular opinion will tell you that you are doing something wrong, or you don’t have enough faith, or maybe you should quit—it isn’t working anymore. That’s part of our consumer mentality; if it doesn’t feel good, change brands, buy something else. But the wisdom of our tradition tells us that we can’t measure the value of prayer by what we feel while we’re praying. Prayer is not about what we get out of it. So when you find yourself praying in the dark, let the tradition, its scripture, its rituals, its wisdom, carry you until you are able to walk again. And here’s one more idea that has been helpful to me. When you have nothing to give, be a receiver. When you have nothing to offer God, allow God to offer things to you. Let me tell you a story. An old man named Jim came to church every day at noon for just a few minutes, and then he’d leave. One day the priest asked him “Why do you come here every day?” “I come to pray.” “That’s impossible! What prayer can you say in the brief time that you are here?” “I’m old and ignorant. I pray to God in my own way.” “But what do you say?” “I say, ‘Jesus, I’m here. It’s Jim.’ And then I leave.” Some years passed, and Jim was in the hospital dying. A priest was visiting him. He said, “Jim, the nurses tell me that since you’ve come here, everything in this ward has changed for the better. Patients are happier, more content; they heal faster. Why is that?” “I don’t know. When I could get around I’d visit everyone. When I couldn’t get out of bed, I’d call everyone over here. I tried to make them laugh, to make them happy.” “But why are you happy?” “Well, aren’t you happy when you receive a visitor?” “Sure, but the nurses tell me that no one comes to see you.” “Oh, I have one guest who comes.” “What guest?” “I used to go to church to visit Jesus every day at noon. But when I couldn’t do that anymore, Jesus came here to visit me.” “Jesus comes to visit you? What does he say?” “He says, “Jim, I’m here. It’s Jesus.”1 Since I heard that story, times when I am praying in the dark, sometimes I hear it: “Janice, I’m here. It’s Jesus.” And sometimes that is all that makes its way through my layers of darkness, but it’s enough. I don’t know of course how Sarah prayed or how she dealt with the pain and bitterness that must have seeped into her prayer life. But I’m pretty sure she was familiar with those times, as I have been, when prayer does not seem to work anymore. I’ve offered you what has been helpful for me. When your strength fails you, when you are praying in the dark, when you are hardly praying at all, find the things that open your heart, that soften you ever so slightly, and lean into them. Let the tradition carry you, the words and the rituals and wisdom that have sustained people for over 2000 years. Even if they have no meaning for you right now, And when you have nothing to give, be a receiver. “Jim, I’m here. It’s me, Jesus. Nikki, I’m here. Ruth, Donna, I’m here. I’m here, David, it’s me, Jesus.” For Presence even in the midst of absence,
©2007 Janice Jean Springer |