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
