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

A Modern Prayer Bead Practice (pt. 2)

On Monday we began moving through the prayer bead practice I describe in my book, Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life.  We looked at how to make the beads, and went through the large Centering bead, the four Entering beads, and had landed on the first medium-size bead, the Naming bead.

Following the Naming bead there are five small beads.  These are for the "rote" style of praying I'd said was one of the two fundamental styles of prayer.  ("Improvisational," or, "spontaneous" is the other.)  With each of these five small beads you are invited to practice what is often called a "breath prayer."

Although often cited as a Christian practice, the concept of praying along with one's breath can be found in numerous other traditions.  The Vietnamese poet, peace activist, and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has written extensively about the importance in the Vietnamese Buddhist tradition of reciting gathas -- short verses repeated on the rising and falling of the breath.  His most often cited gatha is, "Breathing in, I relax my body and my mind. / Breathing out, I smile."  He teaches, though, that he was trained with a gatha for virtually every action of the day:

• On waking -- "Waking up this morning, I smile.  Twenty-four new hours are before me. / I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at beings with eyes of compassion:
• Washing your hands -- "Water flows over these hands. /  May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet."
• Using the toilet -- "Defiled or immaculate, increasing or decreasing -- these concepts exist only in our mind. / The reality of interbeing is unsurpassed."
• Driving the car -- "Before starting the car I know where I am going. / The car and I are one.  If the car goes fast, I go fast."
• Throwing out the garbage -- "In the garbage I see a rose.  In the rose I see compost. / Everything is in transformation.  Impermanence is life."

With this gatha practice, as with any of the "rote" practices, it doesn't matter how you're feeling on any particularly day, you still recite the gatha when you wake up, when you wash your hands, and when you through out the garbage.

The breath prayer you use with the five small beads in this prayer bead practice is a little different.  You will still recite the same prayer on you in and out breaths as you finger each bead, yet you will have written the prayer yourself.  You can, of course, use a traditional two-line phrase, one that is from the religious tradition you were raised in or associate with now.  You don't have to, though.  What matters most is that whatever you repeat on your in-breath and your out-breath is meaningful to you.

Or, rather, that it was meaningful to you when you first established it.  The practice with these small beads is intended to be a rote practice, so while you are encouraged to "improvise" in creating your own breath prayer, you are dis-couraged from changing it too readily.  Use that same in-breath/out-breath prayer every day you do this bead practice, no matter how you're feeling about it on any particular day.  This provides an opportunity for you to experience what those who really engage with the Catholic rosary, for instance, experience -- through repeating the same words over and over, those same words can come to express different meanings.

I would suggest staying with one breath prayer for these small beads for at least several months -- I'd suggest no less than six months -- before coming up with another.  Of course, if you keep finding yourself consistently saying other words instead -- especially if it's a small tweak -- I'd encourage you to listen to that leading.  Make that change, and then stick with those new words.

On Friday we'll pick this up at the second medium-size bead.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Modern Prayer Bead Practice (pt. 1)

Last week I outlined the prayer bead practice I describe in my book Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life, yet I know that not everyone learns the same way.  A written description is fine for some, but not for everyone.  So this week I'm offering a video I've made.

Types of Prayer

As noted in the last post, the prayer bead practice I describe in my book Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life uses what I call the two "styles" of prayer -- rote and improvisatory.  Today I want to say a little something about the four "types" prayer incorporated in this practice.

When you look at prayer practices from a distance, looking at them across traditions and without attaching any particular theological limitations to your exploration, you'll notice certain types of prayer are present just about anywhere the concept of payer, itself, is present.  The wonderful Anne Lammott suggests in her book Thanks, Help, Wow: the three essential prayers, that there are, well, three essential prayers.  Those prayers can be summed up in those three words:  thanks, help, and wow.  I think that she's missed one, so my practice leads you through four.

First, there are prayers of gratitude.  While there are "technical" differences, I think that you can take prayers of thanksgiving, and prayers of praise, and consider them both to be prayers of gratitude.  And it makes sense to me that any practice of prayer should start with a recognition, a conscious awareness of and attention to, the beauty, the miracles, around us.   One of E. E. Cummings' most well known poems begins:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

I discussed this poem in an earlier post, and how many people start their day reciting this poem, or at least this stanza.  "i thank You God for most this amazing day."  The 14th century German philosopher, theologian, preacher, priest, and mystic Meister Eckhart famously said, "If you pray only one prayer in your life, and it is 'thank you,' it will be sufficient."  In the prayer bead practice I describe I call these prayers of Naming.  In and through them we name the things in our lives for which we are grateful.

Next there comes what I refer to as prayers of Knowing.  These are perhaps more traditionally known as prayers of confession, although that term carries a great deal of baggage and is something I'll explore in a later post.  As is so often the case, I think that the 12 Step programs once again give us very helpful language to understand traditional religious concepts in more accessible ways.  In the 4th Step we make, "a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," and in the 5th Step we, "[Admit] to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

In the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous explains the 4th Steps through the analogy of a business which, in order to stay successful must routinely take an inventory of its stock, getting rid of things that have, for instance, passed their expiration date, become moldy, etc.  It's also important to get a clear idea of just what usable items you have on your shelves, so that you don't run out of them when you need them most.  For our inner lives, too, it's important to regularly take stock, to look at what's no longer serving us, what's getting in the way of our growth, and what may actually be causing us harm, as well as to see what good things we might want to "order" more of.

The purpose of the 5th Step is described as being vitally important because it seems to be human nature to try to hide those parts of ourselves that we consider "broken" or "bad."  We can so easily become trapped in feelings of shame and worthlessness.  If we don't honestly acknowledge our whole selves -- our "bad" as well as our "good" -- we can never actually be whole.  So it's important to admit to ourselves where we are less than we want to be.  Yet if that's all we do, we still might live with that all too common sense that, "if they really knew me no one would like me."  Admitting to "another human being," then, is a way of demonstrating to ourselves -- actually experiencing -- that who we are is okay.  When we share the "shocking" with someone who doesn't immediately shun us, we step out from beneath the weight of shame and begin to experience the kind of freedom the spiritual life is all about.

In case it's not clear, this prayer of Knowing has nothing to do with groveling or adding to our feelings of shame and worthlessness.  Rather, it's about knowing who we are -- all of who we are -- and recognizing that in this moment we are what we are ... a mixture of positives and negatives, weaknesses and strengths, things we're proud of and things we'd like to change.  Having grounded ourselves by naming all that is good in our lives, we have the context to fearless face the knowing of all that is not.

Next comes what I call prayers of Listening.  Every religious tradition we humans have ever created has had practices designed to help us quiet our inner monologues, let go of the cacophony which often surrounds us, and tune into what the Hebrew Scriptures call, "the still, small voice" of God. (The New International Version translates this as "gentle whisper," and a friend's direct translation is, "a voice of quiet stillness.")  Whether you call this meditation or contemplation, whether you think of it as listening for "the voice of God" or getting in tune with your own "inner wisdom," there is not a religious/spiritual tradition that does not advocate for developing a practice of silence and stillness.  And, so, after naming the ways life's beauty and goodness are manifested in our lives, and then fearlessly facing and knowing ourselves in our fullness, we are then prepared for some deep listening.

Coming out of this listening, we are then able to really engage in the prayer practices which some traditions call petition or supplication.  There are what I'll call "technical" differences between these two types of prayer, yet it seems to me that they boil down to prayers aimed at caring for others (and ourselves).  This could be asking "God" to help someone who's sick or going through a hard time, sending these people (or ourselves) "good vibes," or simply lifting them up for us to consciously and intentionally become aware of.  In short, I think of these as Loving prayers, the last of the four types of prayer that are incorporated in the prayer bead practice I developed and encouraged.

Next week I'll use another approach to explain the process of this practice.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Styles of Prayer

In my book Simply Pray: a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life I suggest that there are essentially two styles of prayer:  rote and improvisatory.  Many people who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious," and even some who would call themselves more traditionally religious, prefer the later to the former.

Rote prayers are those which have been set down through the ages and which we are expected to repeat, "as is."  The Catholic practice of saying the Rosary is a good example.  As described in the Wikipedia article about the practice:

The prayers that comprise the Rosary are arranged in sets of ten Hail Marys, called decades.  Each decade is preceded by one Lord's Prayer and followed by one Glory Be.  During recitation of each set, thought is given to one of the Mysteries of the Rosary, which recall events in the lives of Jesus and Mary.  Five decades are recited per rosary.  Other prayers are sometimes added before or after each decade.  Roasary beads are an aid toward saying these prayers in the proper sequence.

You are not encouraged to do it your own way.  The practice is the practice, as it "is, and was, and always will be."  To many modern minds this feels both forced and forced.  It doesn't treat me as an individual; no matter what my life's situation, no matter how I might feel in the moment, I'm still expected to say the same prayers I said yesterday and will say again tomorrow.  To modern ears, the word rote conveys the notion of "mechanical" and "unthinking."  Something that someone does "by rote" has no real meaning.  It's just something that we do.

Improvisatory prayers, in contrast, are entirely about how things are for me in the moment.  They could also be called "spontaneous prayers," because they come out of my current experience.  If I'm feeling joyful, I might express that joy with words of gratitude; if I'm feeling sorrow I might give voice to my grief.  Improvisatory prayers allow me to truly express myself.  They allow me the freedom to be who and how I am in that moment.

As with so many things in life -- and, perhaps, particularly in things related to spirituality -- there is a both/and quality to this seeming dichotomy.  Each approach has something to recommend it; each presents hurdles to a full spiritual life.

The rote prayers may, indeed, force us into a mold, yet they also connect us to a tradition that is hundreds of years old.  They may seem to squash our individuality, yet the spiritual life is not just about the individual.  If it's healthy and real, the spiritual life is also about community.  (Some might say more so.)  Rote prayers remind us of community -- generations of people before me have said these exact same prayers, and in the moment I say them, thousands of people around the world are saying them, too.  There's another gift in rote prayer which is easily overlooked.  The origin of the word "rote" is in the Old English, where it meant simply, "habit."  Whether or not a rote prayer is purely an unthinking, mechanical act is, ultimately a choice.  You can choose to really engage in, for instance, the Rosary deeply, and those who do report something remarkable -- although you say the same words in the same order, the experience changes.  Sometimes you find yourself focusing on certain words which seem to speak directly to what you're experiencing in that moment.  Another day other words might hold your attention, words you may have not even really noticed before and yet which today are just the words you need to hear.  By doing the same thing over and over again it can become such a habit that you no longer have to think about the doing of it, which can increase your ability to really experience it more fully.

Improvisatory prayers, on the other hand, certainly give you free reign to express yourself, yet that freedom can also be a trap.  In today's society, which makes an idol of the individual, it can be hard to remember that it really isn't "all about me."  I can so easily get caught up in my story, my reality, that I can lose sight of the undeniable fact of my place in the universe (which.is, in case you've forgotten in the moment, definitely not in the center).  And yet, while there may indeed be prayers which speak to my current situation in a traditional "book of common prayer" -- such as the prayer book of the Unitarian Universalist Christian congregation of King's Chapel in Boston -- it is likely as not that there won't be anything that is "quite right."  Sometimes you have to be free to say what's on your mind and in your heart.

In the 1997 Robert Duval film The Apostle, there's a scene in which Duval's character, a fiery Pentecostal preacher, is pacing back and forth in his room saying, "I love you God.  I'm mad at you, but I love you."  Well, maybe he's shouting more than simply "saying," but in that moment Sonny needed to give voice to his tremendous anger at God.  No prayer written down in some other time would do.  And if prayer is, as the Greek Orthodox priest Anthony Bloom asserts in his book Beginning to Pray and Living Prayer, about deepening our relationship with the sacred and holy (whether we think of that literally or metaphorically), then we do need to be able to express ourselves in our own words, just as we would when we're in conversation with any friend.

The prayer bead practice I developed, and describe in Simply Pray, includes both these styles of prayer -- there are elements which you are encouraged to do by rote, and those which encourage you to pray spontaneously.  It seems to me that both are needed for a full, whole, rich, and deep spiritual life, just as you need both protein and carbohydrates in your diet.

Pax tecum,

RevWik