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.

Why Do I Need a Spiritual Director?

Two weeks ago I reflected on what the word "spirituality" means.  I suggested that it could refer to the difference Henry David Thoreau saw between living life and that which is not life.  Most of us, most of the time, live a sort of not-life in which we miss the moments of our living (most often because we're preoccupied with the past or the future, and not focused on the present moment).  Spirituality, then, has to do with learning to live life.

Last week I explored the question of why we would need to do any kind of practice, have any kind of discipline, if spirituality is simply about living our lives.  The lesson of Pablo Casals' commitment to the disciplined practice of playing scales -- even after he was an acknowledged master of his instrument -- offered an answer by way of analogy.  You can make sound if you pick up an instrument from time to time; you can make music if you're committed to practice.  (I'd not that Siddhartha Buddha is said to have continued meditating twice a day for the forty or so years following his Enlightenment, and Jesus is remembered as praying regularly.)

Let's say that these two posts have made sense -- spirituality is about living deeply and fully, and doing that takes practice.  Still, why would you need anyone helping with that?  What could a Spiritual Director offer that you couldn't find on your own?

The Personal Trainer - Eemnes, Netherlands, 2017
(© Floris Oosterveld, used under Creative Commons license)

Do I really need to say more?

A personal trainer is someone who knows how to help you on your way to being more physically fit, but they don't lift the weights for you.  That you have to do.  And people do certainly work out on their own, yet a qualified trainer can help you to avoid common pitfalls, and can check your form in the moment to help you avoid injury, and can suggest exercises you may not have thought of on your own.  Yet they don't know everything there is to know about fitness, they really know very little about you, and they can't do your workout for you.

I keep coming back to that point, don't I?  There's a story I've read about a Zen monk who had a brand new, overly eager student thrust upon him.  This younger monk pestered the elder with questions, clearly wanting to glean all that he could from the learning of the more experienced monk so that his own journey would be easier.  Aware of this, recognizing that his young charge essentially wanted him to do the work on the other's behalf, the senior monk looked the younger one in the eye and said, "I will do everything I can to help you on your spiritual journey, yet there are four things I cannot do for you:  I cannot eat for you; I cannot go to the bathroom for you; I cannot get into your skin and walk around for you; and I cannot live your life for you."  It is said that upon hearing this the younger monk attained enlightenment.  [I've adapted this story from Sōkō Morinaga's marvelous book, Novice to Master:  an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity.]

A lot of people seem to have an image of a Spiritual Director as some kind of medieval monk, dour and stern, telling someone how long they should stay on their knees (preferably on a cold stone floor), and how many prayers of just what kind they should be praying.  (With, of course, the threat of eternal damnation if one should disobey.)  And that is certainly one way this calling has been understood and, unfortunately, is no doubt still understood by some. 

Instead, the Spiritual Director -- like the personal trainer who keeps an informed eye on how you're executing the various exercises you're doing -- travels with you to help keep you focused on your desire to see, hear, feel, love, live more clearly.  A Spiritual Director won't -- shouldn't -- tell you what prayers to pray, but will help you to see what "prayer" means to you at this moment in your life, and to look for the ways you are connecting, and to discover new ways through which you might connect, with life's depths (which some call "Spirit," and some call "God," and others call "Inner Wisdom," and others need no names for).  

Pax tecum,

RevWik