Tuesday, November 26, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Useless
There is nothing I would rather be. Nothing in this world. Henri Nouwen agrees:
In our utilitarian culture, where we suffer from a collective compulsion to do something practical, helpful, or useful, and where we feel compelled to make a contribution that can give us a sense of worth, contemplative prayer is a form of radical criticism. It is not useful or practical. It is simply to waste time for and with God. It cuts a hole in our busyness and reminds us and others that it is God and not we who creates and sustains the world.
That time when I sit still and try to pray – it’s not just that it’s useless. Contemplative prayer always seems tied in with a crisis, because crisis is what happens in my life day after day, or at least I call it that, even if Nouwen calls them “silly.”
Why should I spend an hour in prayer when I do nothing during that time but think about people I am angry with, people who are angry with me, books I should read, and books I should write, and thousands of other silly things that happen to grab my mind for a moment?
I could make a shopping list of things to pray about and pray for and pray against, and usually I do have a short list of requests for God. But being still in God’s presence is different. Because God is different from me, and I want to enter his house on his terms, as best I can. Nouwen doesn’t understand this, but he knows it’s true.
Because God is greater than my mind and my heart and what is really happening in the house of prayer is not measurable in terms of human success and failure.
And I observe that the crises keep coming, no matter how often I pray my shopping lists. What I want instead of solutions to the problems is a new view of them, one that removes their insistent warnings in favor of what Richard Rohr calls God’s “relentless generosity.” His generosity ignores what I think I need in favor of what he knows I need. God’s relentless way of seeing me as his child rather than an ego out in the world bent on making itself great – that is what I need. Gradually I see myself and the world this way, and that is the best gift of all.
I, John, looked and there was a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud one who looked like a son of man, with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.
I know for sure that God demands all my heart, and all my soul, and all my mind. So, as Nouwen admits,
I should at least be able to spend one hour a day with nobody else but God. The question as to whether it is helpful, useful, practical, or fruitful is completely irrelevant, since the only reason to love is love itself. Everything else is secondary.
And if nothing happens that I can perceive with my ordinary senses, so be it. But as John the author of Revelation knew, things were happening far beyond his ordinary senses, things that occasionally at least our spiritual senses perceive. And Nouwen goes further than that:
The remarkable thing, however, is that sitting in the presence of God for one hour each morning—day after day, week after week, month after month—in total confusion and with myriad distractions radically changes my life. God, who loves me so much that he sent his only son not to condemn me but to save me, does not leave me waiting in the dark too long. I might think that each hour is useless, but after thirty or sixty or ninety such useless hours, I gradually realize that I was not as alone as I thought; a very small, gentle voice has been speaking to me far beyond my noisy place.
Nothing useless here. But try telling that to my ego. It’s bored.
So what? God’s in charge.
The Lord comes to judge the earth. Say among the nations: The LORD is king. He has made the world firm, not to be moved.
(Revelation 14, Psalm 96, Revelation 2, Luke 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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