I HOW TO MAKE THE FIRST MOVES
It happens to most of us at some time or other. A faint stirring somewhere that there may be more to this life than meets the eye? The thought just flits across our air-space â âI wonder ⊠is there something else?â Perhaps something really brilliant or really tragic happens, and weâre not sure what to do with it. Perhaps we meet someone who really impresses us and we discover that person is a Christian. Or we go into a cathedral and something gently tugs at our subconscious. Maybe it even gets as far as a sense of reaching out from inside ourselves for something. But what? That elusive âsomething elseâ.
Or maybe it even gets as far as a sense of gratitude, a sense of something given. âThank God for that,â we say, before we realize what weâve said. Because God for many of us is still very much an open question. So itâs really rather embarrassing to feel gratitude when weâre not sure who to thank. But we fall crazily in love with a person or a place or simply with life itself, and we reach instinctively for someone to thank.
All of these are common human experiences, but we usually donât notice them and they get buried under an avalanche of new experiences surging along behind. These stirrings, however, may be profoundly significant. This tentative âreaching outâ may be like a fragile plant pushing its way through concrete, but it may be the first playful sign of a huge spiritual adventure.
One writer talked about âsignals of transcendenceâ which litter our everyday experience. And indeed there are things going on all the time, like longing, laughter, falling in love, playing with a child, natural beauty (âbreathtakingâ), moments in music (âheart-stoppingâ) â all of which take us outside ourselves for a moment. Thereâs something else going on here. I wonder ⊠?
So the first move in the spiritual adventure that Iâm here calling âprayerâ is to recognize these moments when something stirs within us and to savour them. Not to let them be flooded and forgotten, but to notice them and hold them, tenderly, just for a while. And for the time being â thatâs enough! Just recognize those moments for what they are, or might be. Signals of something else. A hint of something good. A glimpse in the night. A scent on the wind. An invitation.
Thereâs nothing pushy or invasive about these stirrings. Theyâre gentle, quiet, courteous even. But then maybe thatâs Godâs way. After all, Christians say he crept in through the back door of human history in that child in a dirty stable in an occupied land. Nothing aggressive or demanding there. Just an invitation to live life to the full.
I wonder?
A different approach
Another way we get alerted to the possibility of âsomething elseâ is when weâre in trouble. It may be illness or an accident either to us or someone we care about. It may be a serious job interview or a fear of flying. Or it may simply be that there are no atheists in the exam room! But for whatever reason, we may find ourselves, almost against our wishes, appealing to God, fate or the Great Pattern in the Sky. Many a bargain is struck in the recesses of the heart when things look black, only to be discarded with embarrassment when the good times return. But it may still be a reminder that none of us is self-sufficient; we all face situations when we know we could do with someone big on our side. We may dismiss it as childish later on, but we canât deny the power of the instinct to reach out beyond ourselves. And reaching out beyond ourselves is the first move in prayer.
KEY QUESTION
When has something stopped you, stirred you, made you ask a deeper question? And how would you describe that experience â good? odd? disturbing? reassuring? Or what?
TRY THIS
- Try to notice these âsomething elseâ moments when they occur during this week. Hold them gently, there and then, if you can. And remember them, put them in your pocket, and bring them out in a quieter moment to think more about them and what they might mean for you.
- Try to pay a bit more attention to whatâs going on inside you rather than to outer events and activities. Listen to your moods and feelings and donât just brush them aside if theyâre different or strange. Listen to those moods. Our inner life is as full and rich as our outer life; itâs just that we usually donât notice.
QUOTES
At the back of our brains there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.
G. K. Chesterton
Although Iâm an agnostic, I sometimes pray, but I donât ask for anything, except sometimes the ability to get through something. Usually â this sounds unbearably pious â I give thanks.
John Diamond, a journalist who was living with cancer
STORY
At Dunblane after the murder of 16 school children and their teacher in 1996:
I made my way to the school gates. As I approached, the street outside the school was deserted apart from a handful of police officers and a gang of youths aged about 17â20. As I watched, they took from their pockets 16 nightlights and, kneeling on the damp pavement, arranged them in a circle and then lit them. They stood around the candles for a moment, then one of them said, âI suppose someone should say some thing.â As they wondered how to do it, one of them spotted me, identified me as a minister, and called me over with the words âYouâll know what to say.â Of course the reality was quite different. As I stood there, tears streaming down my face, I had no idea what to say or how to say it. So we stood, holding on to one another for a moment, and then I said a brief prayer. That was the catalyst. A question came first: âWhat kind of world is this?â Another asked, âIs there any hope?â Someone said, âI wish I could trust God.â âIâll need to change,â said a fourth one. As he did so he glanced over his shoulder to the police. He reached into his pocket and I could see he had a knife. He knelt by the ring of candles and quietly said, âIâll not be needing this nowâ, as he tucked it away under some of the flowers lying nearby. One of the others produced a piece of bicycle chain and did the same. We stood silently for a moment, and then went our separate ways.
John Drane
2 HOW TO SLOW DOWN
So there just might be something in it â this âsomething elseâ. And we might have noticed some germ of an instinct, some stirring inside. A reaching out. An in stinct to say thank you, a need to say sorry, or a desire to help someone. But we can all too easily lose the moment unless we make space for it to breathe.
And thatâs what weâre terribly short of in our culture â space to let quiet things breathe. The pace of daily life is accelerating and the demands are unremitting. Itâs as if we got on the 8.15 from Great Snoring, the slow train that stops at every little village, but instead of chugging its way gently through the countryside it gets faster and faster, accelerating steadily and inexorably, streaming through every station, until the carriage is swaying alarmingly and weâre hanging on to our seats and to our luggage â and still the speed increases! When is it going to come off the tracks?
Or hereâs another image. You know when your suitcase is full, and not just full, but absolutely full to bursting? You jam another shirt in and kneel on the case to shut it. And now thereâs a sweater youâd forgotten. You stand on the case to force it shut. No more, you say! And then you realize youâve left out your sponge bag. Itâs just no use. You canât fit anything else in. You need a different strategy. You need to start again.
In a culture where speed and the ability to âpack more inâ is becoming self-defeating, many people are crying out for space. They long to slow down. A group of porters were once rushing through the jungle at a ridiculous pace set by the Europeans who had hired them. Eventually they got to a clearing and sat down. The Europeans tried to get them moving again but the head porter said, âNo, weâre not moving. Weâve come so far and so fast that now we have to wait for our souls to catch up with us.â So does our culture.
Individually, therefore, we need to build some slowing-down time into our lives. Then we can listen to the quiet whispers from another country that weâre just becoming aware of. We need to look for the moments of calm in our day and stretch them out. We need to create times for stopping, taking everything out of the case and trying a different way of packing altogether. Slowing down is a vital part of the spiritual journey. Then we can stop panicking about when weâre going to come off the rails, and start noticing the fascinating countryside weâre travelling through.
Imagine a glass of muddy water. When itâs shaken up and disturbed the water becomes murky and unpleasant. Let the glass rest, however, and you see the cloudiness in the water gradually clear as the dirt settles to the bottom. Eventually you have clear water and a dark sediment beneath. In some such way, when we slow down, the water of our inner life clears and weâre able to see and understand whatâs really going on inside us. This is the next stage of our spiritual journey.
KEY QUESTION
When are the potential âslow-downâ times in your day? Donât pretend there arenât any! It might only be in the bathroom or in bed at night, but equally it might be walking the dog, driving, waiting at a checkout, or a dozen other times. So when are they â for you?
TRY THIS
- Before you start a new piece of work (home-work, house-work, office-work) pause for a moment before you get into it. Reflect on how you feel about what youâve just finished and what you are about to do. Are you feeling OK? Is it something to give thanks for, or to ask for help with? Or do you just need to stop and enjoy a moment of simply being yourself?
- When you walk from one place to another, try walking more slowly. It may be difficult to slow your normal pace, so be d...