Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Ringmaster

In the movie The Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman cuts a dashing figure in his ringmaster's uniform, standing center stage in the full glare of the spotlight.  The chiseled visage of a classical statue, dressed in  a bright red coat and vest (both with gold accents), black pants, shiny boots, cane in hand, topped off with ... well ... a top hat -- this is what a Ringmaster looks like in the mind's eye.  And we know that he -- although there are female Ringmasters, too -- kicks things off with the jubilant shout of, "Laaaadeeeeeeeeeees and Genntlemennnn ..."

But what, really, does a Ringmaster do?  According to the article on Wikipedia:

"A ringmaster introduces the various acts in a circus show and guides the audience through the experience, directing their attention to the various areas of the circus arena and helping to link the acts together while equipment is brought into and removed from the circus ring.  A ringmaster may interact with some acts, especially the clown acts, to make the various parts of a seamless circus performance."

In the 2014 article What, exactly, does a Ringmaster Do? , David Shipman, then Ringmaster for The Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, describes his job like this:

"I think that people have this idea of what a ringmaster is supposed to be:  loud, over-the-top, with a bombastic personality.  And it used to be that way!  It used to basically just be an announcer.  But the reason Ringling Bros. is the Greatest Show on Earth is because it keeps up with the time, and the ringmaster has now become a huge part of the show.  I sing, dance, talk with kids, and interact with the audience at all times.  There's just a lot more to the role now as a whole.  Basically my job is to keep everyone at the edge of their seat from the time they sit down to the time they get up and leave.  I want to make sure that the people who come to the show carry their memories with them for the rest of their lives, just like I do."

If part of the ringmaster's job is to help keep the chaos of the circus running smoothly, and if our lives are, at least at times, a whole lot like a three-ring circus, then we certainly need a ringmaster!  Yet if another part of what a ringmaster does is help the audience keep track of what's going on around them so that they don't miss any of the really good stuff ... then we probably need one even more!  It is so easy for us to get distracted in our day-to-day lives by minutia and trivialities (often in the guise of Something Important or Urgent) that we miss the really important things.  We fail to see the trapeze artist throwing that triple somersault because we're paying attention to the guy hawking souvenir programs.  

Scripture can serve in this role for us, redirecting our gaze to what's going on in "the center ring" of our lives.  (And by now it should be clear that within the category of "Scripture" I include not only the traditional scriptures of the great religions of the world, but also the works of poets and novelists, painters, scientists, playwrights, children, time spent in nature  ... any, and all, of the things that remind us of the "really real.")  A Spiritual Director can serve as a ringmaster, at least in this particular aspect of the role.

The greatest ringmaster, of course,  is God.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Fire Eating

Shade Flamewater

I was taught to eat fire by an ordained Methodist minister, the Rev. Margie Brown.

The 1970s and 80s were the heyday of what was called "the clown ministry movement."  People made use of a variety of performance arts as vehicles for sharing religious messages.  It seemed to me to be most common for Protestants of one sort or another to be involved, although I know that this movement also had adherents among Catholics and Jews as well.

For several years there was an annual event known as The Clown, Mime, Puppet, and Dance Ministry Workshop.  Imagine clowns, mimes, puppeteers, dancers, magicians, ventriloquists, and other folks, taking over a college campus for (as I remember it) a week of workshops, performances, worship services, and more.

It was at one of these workshops that I met Margie.  She was an extremely well-known clown/storyteller, and was a much sought after workshop leader.  She said that she had one condition for accepting an invitation.  In addition to whatever it was she was being paid to do, she requested time each day to teach a fire eating class (which she would do for free).  As a twenty-something at the time, how could I miss something like this?  I signed up for her class right away, and met with her and a handful of other students every morning for a week.

As I've said, Margie was an ordained Methodist minister.  She had learned to eat fire from a Catholic priest, Fr. Ken Feit.  Margie told us that Ken had told her that every religion we humans have ever developed has used fire as one of its sacred symbols.  Also, every religion has some kind of a shared meal as one of its rituals.  It only make sense, then, to eat fire as a religious practice!

Margie taught us how to make our own torches; how to bring the flame into our mouths; how to put it out, or keep some of the vapors in our mouths so that we could breath some fire.  She taught us to never breathe in while the torch was anywhere near our mouths.  And she taught us a bit of wisdom that has stayed with me, and guided me, to this day -- "you always have time to put out your sister's prom dress."

In the context of these Lessons From -- and for -- the Circus of Life, there are two things I'd like to lift up.  It took us a little while before Margie thought we were ready to actually bring the flames near our faces.  (She really did teach us to be safe!)  Several people asked her whether it was going to be hot.  You might think this a rather odd question.  The answer should seem so obvious.  Yet it's one of the first questions people ask me about this art/craft.  Margie's answer was simple, "It depends on what you're expecting."  People who anticipate excruciating pain are usually incredibly surprised -- and relived -- that it's nowhere near as hot as they were afraid it would be.  On the other hand, those who thought it'd be no big deal were generally the ones running for a glass of ice water.  One thing fire eating can teach us, then, is that our expectations are often closely linked to our experiences.

More importantly, though, is what Margie said to us on the last day of our class.  She noted that some of us would keep practicing and maybe go on to perform, while others would never pick up fire eating torches again.  She wanted us all to know -- whatever we did with this new skill from there on out -- that she'd only been teaching us to eat fire to show us something much more important.  I don't know if I remember her words exactly, but this is what has stayed with me.

Whether you eat fire ever again, you've done it now.  And that means you've taken something frightening and dangerous, and instead of running from it you've brought it right up close to yourself.  And by doing this, you've turned it into something beautiful.

That's a lesson worth learning, no?

Pax tecum,

Rev. Wik


One more thing:  about a year or so ago a friend of mine sent me this video.  It blew my mind.  The artist is doing things that I hadn't even known were possible.  I've since reached out to him, and he's not only an amazing performer, but seems to be a really nice guy, too.  And talk about turning fire into something beautiful:

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Trapeze

Sam Keen -- the author of such books as Fire in the Belly and Your Mythic Journey -- has had a life-long dream of being a trapeze flyer.  It began when he was a child and went to his first circus.  There were all the usual acts, but it was the trapeze artist who most captured his imagination.  He's said that when the flyer let go of his bar to fly to the catcher, in his mind's eye he remained in mid-air.  And he's remained there ever since.  "The Flying Man" became a mythic touchstone for him long before he had those words to describe it.  Yet as with most of us, as he grew up his childhood dream faded into the background of an adult life of family and work.

At the age of 62 he heard an ad on television for the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, inviting ordinary folk to come learn the skills and art of the flying trapeze.  Believing himself too old for such a thing, Keen nonetheless went one night to observe a class.  This was as close as he thought he would come to touching his childhood dream.  The teacher, however, didn't let Keen sit it out on the sidelines, instead prodding him to try.  He did.  He found himself returning the next week.  And the one after that.  Soon a new passion was born, a passion that eventually led to his putting a practice bar in his living room (which had 16' ceilings), and a full rig in his backyard.  It also led to his writing the book Learning to Fly -- trapeze: reflections on fear, trust, and the joy of letting go.

I offered a reflection in February of 2019 to the congregation I serve about some of what I'd learning in my reading of this book.  I am sure that it is only the first of many.  After all, the metaphors of the circus are deep and rich ... and I'd only read about half of the book at the time I wrote that sermon!

Keen's subtitle is a synopsis of several of the spiritual lessons to be found among those who "fly through with the greatest of ease" -- fear, trust, letting go.  Quite literally, being a trapeze artist requires you to learn to let go in spite of a quite reasonable fear of falling if you do.  There's only just a few letters difference between flying and falling.  You could add failing into that mix, too.  We want to fly, but are afraid we'll fail and fall.  Sound at all familiar?

One of the things that trapeze has taught Keen is that it's not only important, it's essential for a flyer to work through the fear of falling.  Whenever you're trying to learn a new trick, you should first practice missing the trick, so that you can learn how to fall safely.  There is, he says,

“a fundamental principle — learn the fall before the trick; prepare for failure.  From the moment when a fledgling accomplishes the first free fall, progress in flying and falling go hand in hand. […] the great flyers have always been great fallers.”

That might sound somewhat counter intuitive at first. Most of us would probably rather put of letting go until we know there'll be someone or something there to catch us or for us to catch ourselves on.  Apparently, though, if you really want to fly you get there by preparing not to be caught, which teaches you that you'l survive the fall.  (If, of course, you've learned how to fall safely, which is a skill in itself.)

Does that sound scary?  Well, maybe it is.  He talks about Isabel Caballero, one of the few women who perform the triple somersault, who has said, "Even after all these years I am afraid all the time.  Every time I climb up on the pedestal I look down and think about how high up it is.  But," she adds, "I love flying more than I fear it."

How do we get there?  How do we get to the place where we can say, honestly, about our own lives, that we love them more than we fear them?  That we love Life -- with all of its inherent challenges ad risks -- more than we fear it?  I'll give Sam Keen the last word:

"We learn to fly not by becoming fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.”

Pax tecum,

RevWik

This is an image from Birds of Prey, Vol 1, #8.  For those who don't follow
the escapades of the Batman and the rest of the "Bat Family,"
this is Dick Grayson (the original Robin and, now Nightwing who was part of
his family's circus flying troupe as a child), and Barbara Gordon (the orignal Batgirl,
who was paralyze when the Joker shot her in the spine, and who became Oracle,
the eyes, ears, and computer wizardry of heroes throughout the DC universe).
When Barbara was complaining about feeling so "earthbound" after losing
the use of her legs (and her life as Battgirl), Dick brought her to the circus to
experience the joy of flying once more.

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Magic

The magician:  Master of the Mystic Arts, or simple con artist?  Like clowns, people seem to fall into two camps -- although for different reasons.  You like magic and magicians, or you don't.

The folks who don't like magic have a point.  We know that the magician is fooling us (i.e., making us look or feel foolish).  What they seem to be doing is impossible, we know, so there's got to be a trick to it, yet the magician appears to be taking themselves and what they're doing seriously -- insisting that our seeing should be believing.

The pictures below show two different approaches to the performance of magic.  In the photo on the left it is clear that I am receiving the accolades of the crowd.  I've done something amazing, and the audience is showing me that appreciate my skill.  And that certainly is one way to approach not only magic, but any kind of performance -- it's about the performer.  Yes, certainly, an entertainer wants their audience to be entertained.  Ultimately, though, it's about the performance itself.  For the magician, that means it's all about the magic.

In the 80s, I was lucky enough to meet a man named Bill Carpenter (who, at the time, went by his clown name, Gusto).  His Midway Caravan introduced me to a new way of thinking about my performances.  He turned the dynamic of performance on its head.  As I wrote in a blog post shortly after I heard of his death, Gusto's approach, 

... didn’t create a dynamic of a passive audience staring up at the impossible feats of the performer and saying, “Wow!  Look what you can do!”  Instead, the audience looked at the performers, who just moments before had been the audience, and said, “Look what we can do together.”  The performance was actually something of a ruse; the real act was the creation of community.

While working with Gusto I began to use my own role as magician/juggler/fire-eater/clown as a tool to take the spotlight that would be thrown on me and turn it back on the assembled crowd, the "congregation" that had gathered, the community-in-the-making.  (Even before I was an ordained minister, working in a parish setting, I understood my performance as a form of ministry, and the people who gathered, who congregated, in the hall or on the street corner where I was performing as "a congregation.")

This is what the photograph on the right captures -- the girl is the focus of people's attention, not me.  My job is simply to facilitate this opportunity for her to shine and, through her, for everyone to feel good about themselves.  Here the magic is not the end in itself, simply the means to the end.  This is why I would announce before each show that I was about to do a number of tricks, the secret of which wasn't really the important thing.  I would invite anyone who wanted to to come up after the show and tell me how they thought I'd done a particular trick.  If they were right, I would always tell them so.  If they were wrong, I'd give them hints to help them think it through again.

Yet if fooling people wasn't my aim as a magician, what was?  The experience of wonder.  I would tell people that I hoped at some point during the performance everyone would have at least one experience of seeing something impossible happen in front of their eyes.  In that moment -- that split second before their rational mind kicked in to try and explain the mystery away, to find its secret -- that's where "magic" happened.  The feeling they had was magic, the trick was simply the means by which I could remind them of what awe and wonder felt like.

That, it seems to me, is a lesson worth learning ... and remembering.  That sudden in-breath of wonder; that widening of the eyes in awe; that quickening of our pulse when we come face to face with the utterly impossible happening right in front of us nonetheless for its impossibility -- all of these feelings are real.  They matter.  They're important to pay attention to.  Albert Einstein is credited with saying:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.  [The one] to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead -- [their] eyes are closed.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

photos taken of one of my performances of the Ithaca Commons, Ithaca New York, in 1986

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Clowns!

Generally speaking, you either love 'em or you hate 'em, but very few people have no feelings one way or another about clowns.  They creep you out, or they keep you laughing.  They represent childlike wonder and playfulness, or want to lure you to your death (like Stephen King's terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown).

Having been a clown myself, I lean toward the more positive attitudes about clowns, although I can certainly understand their power to unnerve.  They are clearly human, yet their exaggerated faces suggest something else.  They are ... extreme ... and they definitely seem to be hiding something.  Whether that "something" is demonic or delightful is in the eye of the beholder.

In 1964, the Lutheran Council produced a film called, simply, Parable, for the Protest Pavilion of the World's Fair.  The figure of Christ is depicted as a clown, with the world as a circus.  It was only 22 minutes long, there's no dialogue, and it is largely unknown or forgotten today, yet the ripples it made continue to this day.  (Some say that it inspired the Clown Ministry Movement of the 1970s and 80s.)

Whatever your particular relationship with clowns, the intent is to represent irrepressible joyousness and play.  A clown is essentially child-like, someone who looks at the world through innocent eyes.  Their actions and reactions are exaggerated, to be sure, yet they are also fleeting.  A clown doesn't stay mad for very long, and they almost always return quite quickly to a giggle or a guffaw.  Nothing phases a clown; clowns are eternal optimists.  Even a sad clown -- like Emmett Kelly's "Weary Willy" -- never gives up, whether trying to crack open a peanut with a sledgehammer, or sweep the spotlight off the stage.  Drop a stick of dynamite down the pants of a clown and they might fly up into the air, but they'll invariably come down into a forward roll with a smile on their face.  This is one of a clown's lessons -- don't give up, don't lose hope, and keep in touch with joy even during hard times.

Clowns also remind us to appreciate even the smallest and most mundane of things.  A clown doesn't need much to fuel their wacky form of whimsy.  Avner the Eccentric, a modern clown, needs only a napkin, a class of water, or his hat in order to generate the review his one-man show received from Joel Seigel on ABC-TV, "I laughed for two solid hours.  The show only lasted an hour and a half."

And clowns always "think outside the box."  While appreciating simple things, clowns are never satisfied to use a thing as it is, asking, "what else can I do with this?"  Clowns rarely employ the simplest solution to a problem; efficient productivity is not their goal.  So, instead, they are always looking for the most fun way.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Wire Walking

Nik Wallenda

I am not a wire walker.  I've tried a few times, and intend to keep trying until I get it, but this isn't a skill I can speak to first hand.

I have watched tightrope artists, though, and have read both their own words about the experience as well as the observations of others.  And I've worked with some teachers, and bring their thoughts to this post.  Here are some of the things wire walking has to teach us:

Don't look down:  A mistake that's often made by beginners is to look down at their feet.  This makes sense, you want to be sure that you're putting your feet in the right place.  Yet this will virtually guarantee that you'll lose your balance and fall.  Instead, you fix your gaze at the end of the wire, the place you're walking toward.  And you keep your eye on the goal, perhaps even especially if you begin to lose your balance.

Not too tight; not too loose.  There are both tight ropes and slack ropes, and they are each exactly what they sound like.  Neither, though, is exactly what it sounds like.  A tight rope has to have a little slack in it, a little play.  Similarly, a slack rope needs to be a little taught if order for someone to walk it.  This is like the story of the Buddha hearing a sitar teacher telling her student that a string must be tuned neither too tightly nor too loosely -- too tight and it will break; too loose and it won't make a sound.  This, the story goes, is where young Siddhartha discovered "the middle way" between hedonism and asceticism, which became core to his teachings.

RevWik

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Juggling

The longer I juggle, the more I learn about life.  This isn't hyperbole; it's absolutely true.  Let me offer just a few examples:

"St. Francis, Le Jongluer de Dieu"
by Br. Robert Lentz

Order out of chaos:  Although it might appear that a juggler is trying to somehow "keep everything up in the air," there's actually a very set, rhythmic pattern involved.  It isn't random, nor is it frantic.  (At least, it shouldn't be!)

Adapting to the unexpected:  It's true that there is a pattern, and it's equally true that no two throws are exactly the same, so the juggler is constantly adapting.  One ball is a little bit further out than the last; another has too much spin; a third is thrown a little lower.  These (hopefully) slight and subtle variations mean that your hands have to adjust to compensate.

One thing at a time:  There's no question -- there's a lot going on when you're juggling: balls are going up and down, from the right to the left, and there are all those little variations you need to constantly respond to.  Yet from a certain perspective there's really only one thing going on at a time.  You throw the ball in your right hand.  That leaves it empty to catch the ball coming in from the left.  When the ball you just threw from the right peaks before down to your left hand, you throw the ball that's there to make room for it.  Throw ... catch ... throw ... catch.  

Find your rhythm:  When you're first learning -- whether it's the basic three-ball cascade, or you're trying five, or seven balls for the first time -- it's hard to remember that there's only one thing going on at a time.  Everything seems to be demanding your attention all at the same time!  If you stick with it, though, you will generally begin to feel the rhythm, the pattern.  It will begin to make sense.  When that happens, you're back to seeing more order than chaos.  Here's a quick story:

After you've been juggling on your own for a while, it's really fun to juggle with someone else.  "Passing" is what it's called when you combine your pattern with another person's so that your right hand throws to their left hand, and vice versa.  If you've been juggling for a while, passing six balls between the two of you is relatively simple.  A friend of mine and I were working at one point on trying to pass seven balls, and this changes the usual rhythm in ... interesting ... ways.  The balls not only have to move faster than when you're passing six, the rhythm becomes a little syncopated ... uneven.  As we kept trying this new thing, both my friend and I had to admit that we were feeling a little frantic.  It felt as if the balls were moving too fast for us to keep up, and we weren't quite sure when they were going to come.  Each of us, though, eventual experienced a moment when the pattern suddenly "clicked."  And once we'd found the pattern, the rhythm, it seemed as though everything suddenly slowed down.  The balls were still moving as fast as they had been, but we had been able to slow down internally and it felt like we now had all the time in the world.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Introduction

Have you ever said, or thought one of these:

"I feel like I have too many plates in the air."   

"I keep dropping balls."   

"I'm walking a tight rope here. 

"My life is like a three-ring circus. 

Or, maybe even, "Not my circus; not my monkeys."

If so, you're not alone.   It’s actually not all that uncommon to hear images from the circus used to describe the chaos (and, sometimes, the joy and delight) of our lives.  Inside the Big Top there is a wild, out of control quality which is a large part of its allure.  What do we mean when we say -- as people have said throughout time -- that we want to "run away and join the circus."?  For many "The Circus" symbolizes adventure, a life without oppressive regularity, unbridled freedom; it's big, it's bold, it's brash, it's wild.  In the song, “The Greatest Show,” from the movie musical The Greatest Showman, the circus is describes as being “covered in all the colored light,” a place where “the impossible comes true.”

At the same time, though, most people recognize that “The Circus” might be a nice place to visit for an hour or two, it's a world most of us really only want to peer into.  Truth be told, we're just as glad when it pulls up stakes and moves on to another town.  To quote from Ryan Lewis, Justin Paul, and Benj Pasek’s song again, we know that in The Circus, “the runaways are running the night,” and that the whole thing has something of the quality of a “fever dream.”  It's not for nothing that Ray Bradbury used a traveling carnival for his 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.  At the same time that we're drawn to it, we sense something frightening in it as well.

There is something primal in The Circus, which may well be why we seem to so often turn to the imagery of circus arts when trying to describe a life that's a little (or more than a little) "out of control." Yet we also turn to those very same images to symbolize a life that’s in control, a life being lived skillfully.  A person can speak with pride about their ability to “juggle so many things at once,” while someone else might bemoan the difficulty they’re having “keeping everything up in the air.”

Preachers are often accused of "finding a sermon in everything."  To a certain extent, that's a well-deserved stereotype.  Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote, "Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn't already been said better by the wind in the pine trees."  (Nature has often been called, "God's other Bible.")  Poets have demonstrated over and over again that anything can be used as a symbolic vehicle for the deliver of insight, and what is religious language if not fundamentally poetic?  So why not look at life through the lens of The Circus?  Over the next several weeks that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Leap of Faith (part 2)

Last week I wrote about that well-known phrase, "leap of faith."  It's like walking above a chasm on a bridge the far side of which is shrouded in fog, I wrote.  It's like taking a step up even when you can't see the entire staircase you've begun to ascend.  It's like stepping into cold water, trusting that it's really dry land.

Yet for all that, I think I wasn't really looking at a true "leap of faith."  For sure what I was describing was an act of courage and faith.  It might even be indescribably hard to take that step, especially when you really can't see through the fog to the other side ... when you can't even really be sure that there is another side.  I don't want to disparage this in the least.  A real leap of faith, though, requires something that's missing from these metaphors.

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade there's a scene in which Indiana finds himself in a cave at the edge of a huge cliff.  He as to get to the other side, but there just isn't any way to get there.  He can't go back and take a different path to see if he can avoid the drop altogether.  There's no bridge to cross, with the far side shrouded in fog or not.  He is well and truly trapped.

Yet he's been following the clues in an old journal.  It hasn't let him down so far, and the book says that there's a bridge there.  Apparently finding his way across is the last of the three challenges that most be overcome if one is to find the Holy Grail (which is what Indiana is looking for).  The clue for this challenge says, "Only in the leap from the lion's head will he prove his worth."  So our intrepid hero takes a deep breath and steps out into the empty air.

It's a great scene, and a great metaphor -- a true example of a real leap of faith.  He steps off the solid ground, the safe, the known, and into the quite possibly deadly unknown.  What happens next is what makes it such a great image:  as he steps off into the void, a bridge appears.

And that's the promise made by every religious tradition we humans have ever developed:  if you trust the universe -- God, the Spirit of Life, the Great Unknown, the Mother of All -- your trust will be met in kind.

Now, to be honest, it may not work out in the way you'd planned or hoped.  It may not even seem to work out at all.  In the prayer by Thomas Mertion I quoted last week, the Trappist monk said,

"I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death."

That's what makes it a true leap of faith.  Unlike with the fog enshrouded bridge, or the staircase that rises out of view, in a true leap of faith you don't know that there'll be anything to catch you, yet you go forward anyway.

This is not, however, an invitation to foolhardiness.  It's not about testing the universe, but, rather, trusting it.  There is a difference, and discerning that difference is something that a spiritual director could help you to do.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Taking a Leap of Faith

The phrase is used so often -- a leap of faith.  We're told that life -- and particularly the spiritual life -- requires us to take a leap of faith.  It's not entirely clear, though, just what people mean by doing that.  And it can be really hard to do something if you don't know, really, where you're going.

In his classic book Thoughts in Solitude, the Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton wrote a poem which I have always thought to be one of the most fully honest prayers I've ever heard.  (Alongside Meister Eckhart's famous assertion about the two word prayer "Thank you.")  Here's what Merton had to say:

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

I have no idea where I am going.  How's that for an honest prayer?  I have no idea where I'm going, which is true for all of us, isn't it?  Even when we think we know where we're going, the truth is that we really don't.  As the Scottish poet Robert Blake famously put it in this poem, "To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" -- "the best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley."  That translates as, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray," and, as they say, ain't that the truth!

So ... where we know it or not, whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not, every choice we make is a leap of faith.  We never really know what'll come next.

Yet there are times when we know we're taking the kind of leap for which that phrase is usually used.  We can clearly see the chasm before us, and we can't see the other side.  Truth be told, we aren't even entirely sure that there is another side, or, if there is, that it's within jumping distance.

Bridges are good for this.   At the congregation I serve we have an annual "Bridging Ceremony" at which we recognize our graduating high school seniors, and mark their transition from "youth" to "young adult."  I've shared reflections about bridges, noting that bridges are good for getting us from here to there in our lives.  I've shown the picture of the Golden Gate Bridge at the top of this post, with its far side obscured by fog.  You know it's there, of course, yet from what your senses show you, you could be forgiven for not really knowing for sure.  This adds to the power of the bridge metaphor.  Not only can a bridge get you from here to there, not only can it provide a way to cross an perhaps otherwise uncrossable chasm, often you have to start across it on faith.

In the Jewish tradition there is a midrash on the story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to escape their Egyptian oppressors. It is said that when Moses raised his staff and commanded the waters to part, nothing happened.  At least that's what the Israelites saw.  Moses told them that the waters had parted, that there was now dry land they could safely cross to the other side, but it seems that he was the only one who could see it.  Out of the crowd, a child came to stand at the edge of the water.  She trusted Moses, and if he said the water had parted, she believed him even if she couldn't see it herself.  So she took a step, and felt the water sloshing around her ankles.  She took another step, and then another, yet all she could see, and feel, was the water reaching up to her knees.  With another step it was up to her waist.  In no time it was up to her chest, then her neck, the over her chin and just under her nose.  The people on the shore were shouting at her to stop her madness, but Moses encouraged her to go on, and she trusted Moses.  She took one more step, now even her nose was submerged, when suddenly everyone could see the waters parted and the dry land path Moses had told them about.  It was her faith, her willingness to take step after step without knowing for certain where those steps were taking her, that was the real miracle performed that day.

Having faith that the bridge -- or dry land -- is there even when you don't see for certain where it's taking you (or even if it is taking you somewhere) -- can be hard.  Acting on that faith is harder still.  Yet if you trust the bridge (either literal or symbolic), even though it's scary to do so, you can take that step.  Using a different metaphor, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Take the first step in faith.  You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."  Here too, an encouragement to trust the bridge, or staircase, even if you can't see the whole thing.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going, but I trust that I am not going alone.  However you may name or know the Love that Merton called "God," his prayer may well describe the heart of the spiritual journey.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate (pt. 3)

This is the third in a series of posts looking at the challenges people often cite when explaining why they haven't been able to stick with a meditation practice, or who've never started one because they knew they would face these challenges and couldn't imagine a way around them.  On Monday we looked at the issues of "not having enough time" and "physically not being able to sit still that long."  On Wednesday the focus was on the issue of being "too easily distracted."  Today, let's consider the complaint which, it would seem, the younger monk must have just raised with his elder:  "What happens next?"

Is that all that meditation is about?  Sitting on a cushion (or chair) and counting your breaths or saying a mantra over and over again?  Isn't something supposed to happen?  The Buddha, we're told, sat in meditation for seven days under the Bodhi tree, after which he "awakened" and saw through to the depths of reality, the underlying Truth of existence, which he then taught as the Four Noble Truths.  The term "Buddha" means "the awakened one," and there is a story that the Buddha was once walking down a road.  A man he met asked what manner of being the Buddha was -- an angel, a demon, a God, and so on.  The Buddha replied, "I am awake."

This state of "awakeness," of seeing through to the heart of reality, is what most people think of when they think of "enlightenment."  And enlightenment is what most people think is the purpose of meditation.  When asked why they think meditation is important, or something they "should" be doing, folks often say that it will make them more peaceful, more calm, more easy going, more aware, more healthy, etc.  Yet nearly everyone knows that one of the results that's usually claimed for meditation practices is "enlightenment."  Yet whether it's purely for relaxation, or for some kind of spiritual deepening, most people think that meditation is going to do something for them.

Within the Zen tradition(s), at least, doing meditation in order to accomplish or achieve something is to fundamentally misunderstand the practice of meditation.  In fact, one might say that the extent to which you practice in order for something to happen, the less you are truly meditating.  As the senior monk in the cartoon says, "Nothing happens next.  This is it."  The purpose of sitting on your cushion, it's been said, is to sit on your cushion.  Nothing else.

There's a wonderful story told about Ludwig van Beethoven.  It is very likely apocryphal, but the story is that after playing one of his piano sonata's at some fashionable soiree, as he did, a woman said, "That was marvelous, Herr Beethoven ... but what did it mean?"  Beethoven is said to have sat down at the piano again and played the piece through one more time.  When he was finished, he looked at the woman and said, "That, Fraulein, is what it means!"

The Thing In Itself.   The music exists for its own sake; it has no meaning or purpose.  It doesn't exist so that ... anything.  It exists because it exists.  I'm put in mind of what the character of God gives to Moses when they meet at the burning bush and Moses asks God's name:  "I am that I am."  (Interestingly, the Hebrew can also be translated as "I was what I was," "I will be what I will be," or any combination.)  In other words, the name, the underlying reality of God, is "is-ness," is existence.  God is, and that's all that matters.

And that's true of us, also.  At least, if you look at life through the lens of in-this-moment mindfulness.  If this moment is really the only moment that exists, then I am not typing these words in order for you to read them.  I'm typing them because I'm typing them.  I'm typing them to type them; there is no other purpose.  If I were typing them so that you could read them, and something goes wrong with my computer and the file is erased, then I would have wasted this moment.  I don't mind if you do read them, of course.  In fact, I hope you will.  But if I am truly living with the awareness that this moment is the only moment, then I can't write them for any other reason than the writing of them.

Now, note that I said, "if you look at life through the lens of in-this-moment mindfulness."  One of the things the Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, John Daido Loori, used to say was that when you're sitting in the meditation hall you are aware that all things are interconnected, that nothing exists independent of anything else, that, "you and I are one."  However, he would say, when you're crossing traffic you need to remember that you and the car coming at you are different!

So yes, of course, as I'm sitting here writing this post I am doing so, at least in part, in the hopes that you'll read it, and that there'll be something in here that'll be worth your time.  That is, if you will, the way we look at things in "ordinary time."  Yet just as practicing scales is an exercise a musician does to be able to play their instrument more beautifully, or working out at the gym is a kind of peculiar time set aside to prepare one's body to function more healthfully and effectively, so, too, the time spent in your meditation practice is sort of a time set apart from "ordinary time."  It is, if you will, a time during which you train yourself to be mindful so that, in the moment-to-moment realities of our lives we can be more mindful.

As noted last week, meditation is a four-fold practice:  Focus.  Become Distracted.  Recognize that we've become distracted.  Make the decision to return to our original focus.  While in the middle of doing this practice, there is no reason for doing so except for the doing of it.  If you're doing it in order to become more peaceful, then that intention is, itself, a distraction from the focus on, for instance, counting your breaths.  If you're training yourself to focus only on the thing you've chosen for your focus -- your breathing, a mantra, a candle's flame -- than anything else you bring with you into your time of meditation is a distraction.

It is very likely -- extremely likely, in fact -- that if you engage in a meditation practice (or, for that matter, any spiritual practice) you will experience some "results."  Chances are you will feel more peaceful, calm, serene, relaxed, healthy, focused, etc., etc., etc.  You might even gain enlightenment and see through to the "really real."  Yet during the time you've set aside for meditation, you probably shouldn't feel as though anything is happening.  In that moment, there should only be the sitting.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate (pt. 2)

Last week I began to write a bit about meditation.  I noted that there seem to be three kinds of folks when it comes to meditation -- those who've tried to meditate but ran into too many challenges, people who've never tried to start a meditation practice because they thought the would run into too many challenges, and those who have a meditation practice (no matter how spotty) and who are committed to deepening it.

When asked about the challenges people have run into, answers tend to fall into three categories:  not enough time, can't quite our restless minds, and it's hard to keep the practice alive because nothing seems to be happening (i.e., it's boring).  Having looked in the last post at the question of time, I want to address the issue of what Buddhists sometimes call "monkey mind."

Everybody knows that meditation is about sitting still and quieting the mind so that you are not distracted by the usual inner monologue(s), right?  That's the point, isn't it?  A quiet, serene mind?

Well ... I don't really think so.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that those distractions are actually essential for meditation. Rather than a problem, they are at the heart of the practice.

I have studied a number of different meditation techniques over the years.  (I've even practiced some!)  And just like I believe that there are core elements in prayer that transcend any religious tradition's particular dressing, I believe that there are four phases in any meditative practice.

1. Choose a focus
2. Become distracted
3. Recognize that you've become distracted
4. Choose to return to the focus

1.  Choose a focus:  in some traditions you count your breath, one count for each in-breath and each out-breath -- "breathe in, one; breathe out, two; breathe in, three; breathe out, four" -- continuing until you've reached ten, and then start over.  In other traditions, the focus is a word or a phrase, a mantra.  Sometimes you're encouraged to look at a candle flame, or an icon.  Yet despite the apparent differences between traditions, nearly all at least begin by suggesting that you focus your mind on something.  Zen practitioners sometimes refer to this as, "feeding the hungry tiger," because besides being like a money (jumping from thing to thing) our minds are also like tigers which, if they don't get something to eat, become voracious.  Just emptying the mind of all thoughts, then, is a pretty advanced technique.  We novices need something on which to focus the mind, so that we can then let everything else go.  (Another metaphor could be that the focus we use is like the rodeo clown that gets the attention of the bull so that the other people in the ring can get free.)  In choosing a focus, we are choosing to engage with an exercise.

2.  Become distracted:  This is the part of the practice of meditation that causes a lot of people to quit, or not to begin in the first place.  Because we have this notion that meditation is about having a still and quiet mind, the fact that our minds seem to become even more cacophonous when we try to meditate is incredibly frustrating.  Some people believe that they just aren't able to meditate because they just can't get their minds to quiet down.  "Breathe in, one; breathe out, two; breathe in ... what am I going to cook for dinner tonight?  Did I remember to close the door?   Oh why didn't I stand up to my boss this morning?  Oh crap ... Breathe in, one; Breathe ... I'm a lousy meditator.  I can't do this.  What's the point?  Breathe in, one ..."  Some of us get further along in our counting than this, others don't even get this far, but the monkey mind always seems to reassert itself.  This isn't failure, though.  If we didn't get distracted, we'd have nothing to work with.

3.  Recognize that we've become distracted:  This is key.  If in our meditation we didn't have this opportunity to recognize when we've become distracted, there would be no practice.  It'd be like going to the gym without ever picking up a weight or getting on the stair climber.  At a certain point we realize that we've forgotten our decision to focus on one thing as a way of allowing all of our other thoughts to drop off.  We can, of course, berate ourselves when we discover that our mind has wandered, and many of us do.  This is why some of us quit trying to meditate.  On the other hand, we can see this recognition of our distractedness as a good thing.  It is a major step toward that goal of a still and quiet mind.

4.  Decide to return to your focus:  As I said, we could choose to self-flagellate when we recognize that we've strayed "from our meditation," or  we can accept this as part of the practice, each part of which is essential.  If we could choose a focus and then actually stay focused with no other thoughts intruding on our single-pointedness, we wouldn't actually be meditating.  And whether you need to return to your focus one hundred times during your practice or just once (right at the even because you hadn't even noticed that you'd been distracted the entire time!), each phase of this four-phase pattern is necessary.

Whatever the goal of meditation may be, as understood through the lens of any particular tradition's teachings, that practice itself fundamentally consists of these four steps:  choose to focus your mind on one thing so that you're fully and intentionally aware of it; lose track of that one thing in the flurry of the thousand and one things that we're usually swimming in; become aware that we've stopped being fully aware of what we've decided to do during this time; and make the conscious choice to return to our original focus.

One more thought -- there is a meta-dimension to this four-fold schema.  If you, like me, find your practice to be  ... spotty ... take hope.  The fact that you can't seem to maintain a daily meditation practice is analogous to the difficulty of maintaining focus.  Let's say you decide to meditate daily.  And you do, for a while.  But then life encroaches and you soon realize that you haven't meditated for days or weeks.  (Or, as has been true for me more than once, months.)  This is like choosing a focus and then becoming distracted.  So, just as within a particular period of meditation, notice that you've become distracted, and when you recognize that you've not meditated in a while, choose right then to return to your original decision to engage this practice.  See the parallel?  Make a conscious choice; loose sight of that decision; recognize that you've forgotten your commitment; recommit yourself.

So ... there's a way of looking at the distractions of your hyper-active minds that might just eliminate that as a hurdle to engaging in a meditation practice.  (Or that can support you in sticking to it.)  On Friday we'll tackle the last of the most frequently named challenges -- boredom, the experience that nothing seems to be happening.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Meditation for People Who Don't Like Meditation (pt. 1)

Meditation.  It's one of those spiritual things we're supposed to like to do.  It's important.  Everyone tells us that it's important.  Yet a lot of us don't do it.  (Like flossing -- we know it's supposed to be good for us, but, well ...)

The other night I led a class at the congregation I serve which had the same title as this post -- "Meditation for People Who Don't Like to Meditate."  I began by asking people to introduce themselves, including a little something about what had brought them to the class.  I suggested that people seem to fall into one of three groups:

• People who've tried meditation in the past who've just found it too hard for one reason or another;
• People who've thought about trying to meditate, yet haven't, because they assume that they are going to find it too hard for one reason or another; and,
• People who've got a great meditation practice going, and who come to things like this class because they just really love talking about meditation.

Virtually no one identified as belonging in that third group.

When I asked people what the reasons were that people'd found meditation challenging (or figured that they would), there were some common responses:

• My mind wanders too much;
• I don't have time for it;
• My body hurts if I sit still for too long;
• Nothing happens.

In the next two posts this week I'm going to look at the wandering mind and the lack of "results."  Today I want to address the concerns about how to make room for a meditation practice, and what to do about a complaining body.

The Vietnamese poet, peace activist, and Buddhist monk the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh says in one of his books that if you want to engage with a meditation practice you should set aside 30 minutes morning and night.  Unless you can't.  If you just can't manage to carve out that much time from your day, then try 15 minutes morning and night.  Unless you can't do that, either.  If not, do 10 minutes in the morning.  You guessed it -- unless you can't.  He keeps reducing the mandatory time needed for meditation to simply smiling a real, true smile when you wake up in the morning.  If that's all you can do, he says, then do that.

Other teachers would disagree, of course.  Yet Nhat Hanh's point is that if the purpose of meditation is to train us to be mindful of the reality in which we're living in at this very moment, then shouldn't one true, fully aware, fully present smile each day also accomplish that?  After all, being present is being present, whether it's for an hour or a moment.  As he says in one of his breath prayers (or gathas), "Breathing in, relax body and mind; breathing out, I smile.  Dwelling in the present moment, I realize this is the only moment."  This is the only moment and, so, being present to this moment -- that moment during which you smile a deep, real smile -- is the only moment you can be present.

The longer times are recommended because, as I've noted elsewhere, spiritual practices are just that -- practices. I like the analogy to playing a musical instrument:  if you only pick it up once in a while, or only for a few minutes, you can make sound, but you won't make real music.  And that's true.  So 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night -- with periodic times of even longer periods, such as during a retreat -- gives you more of a chance to practice.  Still, one of the most exciting sax solos I've ever heard is in the Miles Davis classic, In a Silent Way, when the incomparable Wayne Shorter plays just two notes.  But they are the perfect notes, in the perfect place.  You don't need to play an entire symphony -- a note or two can be music.  You don't need decades of dedicated meditation practice -- a moment or two of clear mindfulness is not to be sneezed at.

Now, what about that persnickety body?  After 10 minutes of sitting your lower back starts to ache, or your legs fall asleep.  Almost immediately after you start your meditation your nose starts to itch.  What can you do about that?  The first Zen retreat I attended at Zen Mountain Monastery in New York, I was a zazen rockstar.  I sat strong and still ... and I paid for it.  On the last day we each went to sit knee-to-knee with the Abbot, John Daido Loori.  We had the opportunity to ask him any question, but when I kneeled, I was flooded with white hot pain, so all I could say was, "I'm in too much pain to think."  "Well," the Abbot responded, "why didn't you sit in a chair?"  He went on to say that you should not let aches and pains distract your during your practice, yet neither should you intentionally set yourself up for pain.

It's true, there are all sorts of teachings about how one should sit, perhaps especially within the Zen tradition.  And sometimes these instruction include esoteric meanings in the postures -- this represents the teaching of non-duality; this other thing represents holding the cosmos; etc.  Fundamentally, though, there are some pragmatic explanations for why you do what you do.

Sitting on the front ends of a cushion, with the legs folded in full lotus, it was explained to me, is an extremely stable position.  You are grounded, unlikely to move.  (One monk said that it was really so that monks wouldn't fall over and knock each other down if they fell asleep during those early morning sittings!)  So, whether you sit on the ground, or in a chair, do so in a way that's sold and stable.  The same is true for just about every other traditional teaching about meditation posture -- taken as a whole their purpose is to help the body to remain as still as possible, since Buddhists new thousands of years ago that a restless body and a restless mind generally go together.

So when you sit, sit comfortably, yet solidly.  Don't let yourself be so comfortable that you'll slouch (which is actually an uncomfortable position to hold for too long), and so that your body can remain still yet alert in the same way you'd like your mind to be.  Thich Nhat Hanh even speaks to the proscription against moving while meditating with his profound gentleness.  He says that if your nose itches, why not go ahead and scratch it?  Just do so with intention and awareness.  And if your leg falls asleep and you'd like to move it, go ahead -- just be as aware of that decision and its concomitant movement as you are of your breath.

So ... there you go.  Time and body aches need no longer be a hurdle.  On Wednesday let's look at that wandering mind.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Modern Prayer Bead Practice (conclusion ... part 2)

Okay.  So we established last time that there is no "wrong" way to pray, and that even though I wrote a whole book about it -- Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your soul -- and have spent several weeks looking at this prayer bead practice in some detail, I don't assume that I know how you should do it.  You shouldn't assume that, either.  In one of my favorite of the stories about Giovanni di Pietro di Bernadone, otherwise known as Saint Francis of Assisi, while on his deathbed his friends asked what they were supposed to do once he'd gone.  It is remembered that he said to them -- and I imagine he said it with a compassionate and somewhat bemused smile -- "Friends, I have done what was mine to do, may Christ teach you what is yours to do."

All that said, though, I'm going to venture to say a few more words about this "modern spiritual practice to deepen your soul."

As with most spiritual practices, I'd recommend that you try to do it daily and, if possible, at the same time.  Most of the great spiritual teachers have suggested that it is important to make a habit out of your practice, and that you make it something you can depend on.  Doing it daily is one way of making your practice a habit, and doing it at the same time helps you to know that it will be there for you.  If it's something that you "get around to" when you can, it will be all too easy for it to become something that at the end of the day you regret not having done.  I once heard an experienced Catholic priest recommending to seminarians that they put on their calendar, "Appointment With God," just as they would put "Board meeting," or "pastoral visit with so-and-so."  "Make it an appointment," he said.  "Make a commitment to it.  Make it a priority."

How long should you make that appointment?  I find that it is possible to work my way through the entire bead cycle in about 15 minutes.  At that pace I'm not especially rushed, but I am able to easily fit that into my day.  You can take less time than that, of course, or a great deal more.  As an analogy, the acclaimed martial arts teacher Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming says that it normally takes 18-20 minutes to run through the entire Yang Style Taijiquan form.  Some students, though, seek to slow it down, to go deep into the meditative aspects of the practice, and that for such students that same 18-20 minute set of movements can take a full hour to perform.  Conversely, there are those who want to bring out the martial aspects of taijiquan, and so they work to do the movements faster and faster (because, as he says, "In a fight, speed is important.  You cannot say to your enemy, 'Slow down, you're too fast.'").  For these students, the 18-20 minute set of movements, which some can expand outward to take an hour, can be done in about three minutes.

I'm not sure exactly what the "martial" aspects of this prayer bead practice might be, but I know that for some people, 15 minutes is more time than they have.  You could certainly consider stopping only for the briefest of times at those medium-size beads.  Just as you simply touch the small Breath Prayer beads and move you, you could touch the Listening bead, for instance, and say to yourself, "I would like to be open to listening for the voice of quiet stillness within me," and when you get to the Loving bead simply say, "I send out my love to all things in the cosmos."  I would imagine that you could move through this practice in that way in a couple of minutes.

Another way to shorten the time, if you need to, is to separate the practice into different sections.  So, for instance, when you first wake up you take out your beads, do what you do with the large Centering bead and the four Entering beads, and then do your Naming.  A little later in the day, when you can again set aside some time, begin with the five small Breath Prayer beads that follow the Naming, and do your Knowing.  Later, you can do the next five Breath Prayers and then spend a little time Listening.  Finally, just before bed, perhaps, you could do the last five Breath Prayers, your Loving, and then use the four small Departing to bring a close to both your practice and your day.

An even simpler form of this practice -- which I'd suggest doing in addition to some way of regularly engaging with the whole practice -- is to carry the beads in your pocket and when, at any point in the day, you're feeling particularly grateful and full of joy, put your hand into your pocket and finger the Naming bead.  Similarly, if you're stuck on a long line in the grocery store, let's say, and you find yourself beginning to get irritated, you could reach into your pocket and touch the Listening bead (or the Breath Prayer beads) as a way of helping yourself to relax.  You could also touch the Loving bead, if you're up for it, and send loving thoughts to those people who've brought 21 objects into the 15 Objects or Less line.

Two final thoughts:

I should have said this earlier, when writing about the Loving bead, but I will say now that it is important that you include yourself in your loving prayers.  Within the Christian tradition, Jesus is remembered as saying that we are to "love your neighbors as yourself."  And within the Buddhist traditions there are loving-kindness meditations which begin with ourselves, move on to others, and then embrace all sentient beings.

The last thing I'll say (for now!) about this practice is that I would absolutely LOVE to hear from you with your thoughts, questions, and experiences.  I have received pictures of people's beads from around the country, and it's thrilling to hear how others have interpreted these ideas.  (I once heard from a military chaplain who'd been serving in Afghanistan, and who found Simply Pray to be writing in an open and inclusive style which allowed him to share it with soldiers who did not fit comfortably into any of the more rigid religious identities.  He told me that one day one of these soldiers gave him a set of the prayer beads that he'd made by tying knots into some paracord.  Some time later, this chaplain was being introduced to a local Imam.  Since custom dictated the exchanging of gifts, the chaplain reached into his pocket an brought out the paracord prayer beads.  He was writing to tell me that somewhere in Afghanistan there was a Muslim holy man carrying a set of "my" beads.)

I've turned on the comments for this post, and you can also reach me via the "Make a Connection" form on the right side of the page.

As always,

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Modern Prayer Bead Practice (conclusion)

 


Over the past several weeks I've been writing about the prayer bead practice I developed back during my days of Clinical Pastoral Training (CPE, aka, "chaplaincy training") at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and which I describe in my book Simply Pray:  a modern spiritual practice to deepen your soul.  I made a video, too, to show folks who learn more visually than verbally.  Still, the truth is that we've really only looked at the what of this practice -- what to do at each stage.  Today, by way of wrapping this series up, I want to explore a bit the how -- the quality or attitude to bring.

Some of it has already been said -- there is no "wrong" way!  There are suggestions, of course, such as that you keep to the same breath prayer with those five small beads around each of the medium-size ones, and that the order of those medium-size beads should be Naming, Knowing, Listening, Loving.  I know, though, that there are folks out there who've read my book, found the practice meaningful, yet who thought that there should only be four beads, or three, or seven in-between the medium-size ones.  I know that there are some people who have added more "stations," if you will, to the four I propose, or who've put them in a different order.  And that is just as it should be.

Along with some of the (mis)conceptions of God I discussed in some of the earliest posts, a whole lot of people have a whole lot of ideas about prayer that I think move people away from, rather than toward the deepening of the spirit that is the goal.  One of these is that there is a "right way" to pray, and that if you pray "wrong," your prayers won't be heard, won't be effective, won't matter.

In the Christian tradition, for example, there is the well-known "Lord's Prayer."  It's called that because, as the story comes down to us, this is what Yeshua ben Miriam said in response to his friends' request that he teach them how to pray.  Serious arguments have broken out between people over minor variations -- I can never remember, for instance, when I should say "forgive us our debts" and when I should say "forgive us our trespasses."  But there's a real irony in this.

The story of Jesus teaching his friends to pray is recorded in both the books of Matthew and Luke and, as with most of the other stories found in more than one gospel, they're not exactly the same.  The more well-known of the two, the one that's said most often, is from Matthew (6: 9-13):

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever.  Amen.  [King James Version, of course.]

What I find ironic is that the author of Matthew remembers Jesus as introducing this prayer by saying, "This, then, is how you should pray ..."  That's how the New International Version translates it, yet in just about every translation I've looked at the sense is the same.  Jesus is giving the disciples an example of how to pray. He isn't dictating to them; he's demonstrating.  (I play with some possible ramifications of this in the second half of Simply Pray.)

Now, in the story as the author of Mark tells it (in Luke 11: 2-4), Jesus introduces the prayer with these words, "and when you pray, say ..."  In other words, in this version Jesus is actually telling his disciples (and by extension, all Christians) the precise words to say.  I'll use the King James Version again for ease of comparison:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come,  Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.  Give us day by day our daily bread.  And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Funny, right?  The prayer that Jesus is remembered as teaching word-for-word is hardly ever heard, while the one that the story says he gave as an example has been handed down the millennia as every every syllable were sacred.  We humans are an interesting lot, aren't we?

So ... where was I?  Ah yes!  There is no "wrong" way to pray, so there is no "wrong" way to engage with this prayer bead practice.  I may have put these pieces together and published a book about it, but the pieces were all there lying about for anyone to pick up and use.  And while the patterns and structures I describe in the book make sense to me, I do not assume for a moment that they should, then, also make sense to you.  Neither should you.

Well ... I too a bit of an unexpected detour there, so I'll come back with a "Part II" of this conclusion next week.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Modern Prayer Bead Practice (pt. 3)

Today we're picking up on a detailed explanation of the prayer bead practice I wrote about in my book, Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life.  On Monday we looked at how to make the beads, and began the "journey" as far as the first medium-size bead, the Naming bead.  On Wednesday, we looked at the five small beads which follow the Naming bead, and described how to use them to facilitate a breath prayer practice.  Today we'll be able to zip through the rest of the practice, because all of its elements have already been explored.

After the large Centering bead, the four small Entering Beads, the medium-size Naming bead, and the recitation of your breath prayer with each of the next five small beads, you come to the second medium-size beads.  This is the Knowing bead.  "Knowing" is one of the four primary types of prayer that I have found to be common among all of the great spiritual traditions we humans have discovered/developed.  Just as "Naming" corresponds in some ways to the Christian practices of "praise" and "thanksgiving," Naming the things in our lives for which we are grateful and which give us joy and an experience of the holy, "Knowing" is somewhat analogous to "confession," in that we take the time to Know ourselves in our totality, good and bad alike.  It is like the practice in 12 Step spirituality of taking "a fearless moral inventory" of ourselves.

So at this medium-size bead we are invited to stop, and to contemplate those parts of ourselves we would rather keep hidden away ... from others, if not also from ourselves.  This isn't a time for self-flagellation, for who we are is who we are, and pretending that this isn't true doesn't make it any less so.  My sins, faults, failures, weak and wounded places -- these are all a part of me, and if I claim to be engaged in a spiritual practice, if I claim to seek a spiritual life, yet do so without making the whole of me present ... I am deluding myself.

As with the first medium-size bead, the Naming bead, you can do this Knowing in all sorts of way -- speak aloud, think about it, or just allow the feelings to come to the surface and be recognized and acknowledged.  Some people have a list of things which they recite when they come to this Knowing bead; others allow their minds to go blank and see what arises on its own.  Remember -- there is no wrong way to pray!

Following the Knowing bead there are, again, five small Breath Prayer beads.  As you touch each of these you would recite the same breath prayer you used with the previous five.

You come next to another medium-size bead, which is the Listening bead.  Here you are encouraged to try to quiet your mind, to let go of any thoughts -- however important or random they may seem.  In the Hebrew scriptures the character of God is called "the still small voice within," although I've also heard this phrase translated as, "the voice of quiet stillness."  This Listening bead offers an opportunity to try to step out of the cacophony that defines so much of our lives, and in that space to listen for that quiet voice.  Following the Listening bead there are another five small beads with which you again recite your breath prayer -- one line per breath, one whole prayer per bead.

That will bring you to the last of the medium-size beads, the Loving bead.  This is where you move the focus of your praying from within you to beyond yourself.  Many spiritual traditions have practices designed to help you pray for someone else, and with this Loving bead you have the chance to do that, too.  Some people recite a list of people they know who are going through a hard time and who could use some good thoughts and "positive vibrations" sent their way.  Others simply go through a list of people in their lives, often starting with family, then close friends, co-workers, acquaintances, moving outward in expanding circles of care.  At the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, where I did my training in spiritual guidance, they teach a practice in which you empty your mind and, first, allow the thought of someone close to you to come into focus, and to then see what comes up as the needed prayer for that person.  Next, let the thought of someone who is not so close come into your mind and heart, and see what prayer arises for them.  Finally, you open yourself to the thought of someone you don't particularly like, or with whom you are currently struggling, and see what prayer arises for them.  [This practice grows out of their understanding that we don't pray but, rather, that God is always praying within us.  What we do during our prayer time, then, is work to quiet our own inner monologues enough to hear what God's prayer in us is.]

As with the other medium-size beads, there really is no "wrong" way of doing this:  speak aloud, see the images of people in your mind's eye, allow the feeling of love to bubble up in you and flow out into the world.  And unlike with the small Breath Prayer beads, you do not have to do the Naming, Knowing, Listening, and Loving in exactly the same way each time you engage this practice.

On Monday I'll write a bit more about how to put all of this together, but there are still four beads left before we've completed our circuit.  After the medium-size Listening bead there are four small beads between it and the large Centering bead where we began.  Do you remember the first four beads we used to "enter" into the practice?  I said that they're kind of like the stretching and warm-up before a period of exercise.  These four, then, are the cool down, and whatever you did with the first four, as a way of Entering, you do again with these four as a way of Departing.

And there you have it ... the nuts and bolts of this prayer bead practice.

Pax tecum,

RevWik