Nothing is more remarkable—or more beautiful—than an ordinary life, quietly transformed by prayer. This is the life that Deborah Smith Douglas chronicles—and invites readers into—in her lovely collection of essays and poems. Drawing from events as simple as breakfast with her five-year-old daughter or waiting in line at the post office, Douglas shows how a loving relationship with God can be nurtured in small ways every day. “Without my ever really intending it,” she writes, “my own life—as a wife and mother, daughter and friend—has taught me to see God hidden in the ordinary, to watch for God under the surface of things as a fisherman watches for fish.”
Woven into each of these pieces, along with reflections on the author’s experiences, are guidelines for readers watching for God in their own unique—and ordinary—lives. Divided into four sections—Ways of Praying, Healing, Spiritual Companionship, and Fruitfulness—The Praying Life will help Christians move from awareness of God’s presence in their lives to a deep participation in God’s love.
Nothing is more remarkable—or more beautiful—than an ordinary life, quietly transformed by prayer. This is the life that Deborah Smith Douglas chronicles—and invites readers into—in her lovely collection of essays and poems. Drawing from events as simple as breakfast with her five-year-old daughter or waiting in line at the post office, Douglas shows how a loving relationship with God can be nurtured in small ways every day. “Without my ever really intending it,” she writes, “my own life—as a wife and mother, daughter and friend—has taught me to see God hidden in the ordinary, to watch for God under the surface of things as a fisherman watches for fish.”
Woven into each of these pieces, along with reflections on the author’s experiences, are guidelines for readers watching for God in their own unique—and ordinary—lives. Divided into four sections—Ways of Praying, Healing, Spiritual Companionship, and Fruitfulness—The Praying Life will help Christians move from awareness of God’s presence in their lives to a deep participation in God’s love.
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Overview
Nothing is more remarkable—or more beautiful—than an ordinary life, quietly transformed by prayer. This is the life that Deborah Smith Douglas chronicles—and invites readers into—in her lovely collection of essays and poems. Drawing from events as simple as breakfast with her five-year-old daughter or waiting in line at the post office, Douglas shows how a loving relationship with God can be nurtured in small ways every day. “Without my ever really intending it,” she writes, “my own life—as a wife and mother, daughter and friend—has taught me to see God hidden in the ordinary, to watch for God under the surface of things as a fisherman watches for fish.”
Woven into each of these pieces, along with reflections on the author’s experiences, are guidelines for readers watching for God in their own unique—and ordinary—lives. Divided into four sections—Ways of Praying, Healing, Spiritual Companionship, and Fruitfulness—The Praying Life will help Christians move from awareness of God’s presence in their lives to a deep participation in God’s love.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819219367 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2003 |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 116 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE PRAYING LIFE
SEEKING GOD IN ALL THINGS
By Deborah Smith Douglas
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2003 Deborah Smith DouglasAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-1936-7
CHAPTER 1
Be of Few Words
Her Majesty's War on Verbosity
There I was, standing in line at the post office again, my arms full of letters to send home to the United States from Scotland, when the handwritten notice caught my eye. Substantially reduced postal rates would be available for the holidays, the Royal Mail announced, for unsealed greeting cards containing no more than five words in addition to the printed message and the sender's name.
Five words? Five measly words? Heavens, why bother? I wondered to myself, rearranging the slippery stacks of thick (extra-postage-required) envelopes I was carrying. What on earth could one say that is worth saying in five words or less?
I beguiled my time in the queue by pondering this weighty question. "Merry Christmas—Happy New Year" would of course fit within the required brevity. But unless the cards' printed message was more than usually beside the point, this would surely be redundant, as well as being rather obvious, and unimaginative in the extreme. There was the urgently telegraphic and classically melodramatic "All discovered—flee at once," moderately unorthodox as Christmas greetings go but unarguably five words. The awkwardly banal "All well here; how there?" also briefly occurred to me, but on the whole I felt the five-word limit reflected a stinginess unbecoming the Royal Mail and dismissed the matter from my mind.
Then, unbidden, my memory produced the haunting final message of Etty Hillesum, scribbled on a scrip of paper and tossed from the window of a train bound for the death camps: "Tell them we left singing."
Five words. Five measly words. Containing whole worlds of sorrow, love, and courage.
So. Maybe it was possible to communicate meaningfully in five words or less. Christmas greetings aside, perhaps there were moments in human experience—and instances in the English language—where the mot juste was just five.
I posted my letters (paying a shocking penalty for the privilege of verbosity) and walked back across town, muttering to myself and counting on my fingers, intrigued as by a crossword puzzle by Her Britannic Majesty's pentagrammic challenge. I began rummaging in my rag-bag English-major mind for quotations, recalling Elizabeth Barrett Browning's parallel fives: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" (which would presumably have cost her double), and Emilia's anguished "Who hath done this deed?" from Othello III:5, and Desdemona's dying (and even more condensed) reply: "Nobody: I myself. Farewell."
I was hooked. All the rest of that day and well into the following week, I found myself weighing the treasures of the English language in postal scales. I counted (under my breath) the words of my favorite poems, of famous quotes, of conversations heard in the street.
Then I turned my search to Scripture and was overwhelmed by fives. I was astounded to discover, leafing though my Bible, how many of the passages I had marked over the years happened to consist of five words. Many of the most powerful promises in all of Holy Writ are wholly writ in fives. (In English translation at any rate; whether the original Hebrew and Greek are even more austerely economical, I do not, alas, know.)
God's word to Moses by the light of the burning bush, "I will be with you"; Jesus' triumphant "I have overcome the world"; and Mary Magdalene's ringing Easter witness "I have seen the Lord" all are cinquefoil, as it were.
So many of Jesus' words are familiar to us in clusters of five: "I am the good shepherd," "Your faith has healed you," "Rise and have no fear," "My peace I leave you." The Hebrew scriptures as well bloom with five-petaled flowers: "I know you by name," "I will send an angel," "Love is strong as death." Similarly, the vision of Saint John at Patmos—the insight that "death shall be no more"—manages to express one of our faith's essential convictions in five little words. And there is the divine economy of "light shines in the darkness" and "this Jesus God raised up." Perhaps my own personal favorite, one wonder of brevity set like a gem in another, is "Jesus said to her, Mary.'"
It is not only blessed assurance that comes in quinary, of course. Think of the serpent in Eden, beguiling Eve with "You will be like God." Or one of Abraham's least golden moments when, surrounded by lascivious Egyptians, he whispered to Sarah, "Say you are my sister."
Admonitions seem naturally to lend themselves to pentamerous compression: Scripture positively brims with five-leaved proverbs and aphorisms: "Go and sin no more," "Serve the Lord with gladness." Similarly, some of the poignant prayers in the Bible consist of five words: "Lord, have mercy on me," "Make haste to help me," "I believe; help my unbelief!" And Thomas, unforgettable, utterly unambiguous, "My Lord and my God."
Desolation as well seems to fit into quintupled phrases: the devastating "all the disciples forsook him" could be a Holy Week meditation all by itself, as of course could Jesus' cry from the cross, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" And for me, one of the most perfect visual brushstrokes in the Gospels is the detail from the story of the disciples on the Emmaus road: "They stood still, looking sad."
The more I browsed, the more I came up with handfuls of fives. Her Majesty's limitation, which at first had seemed so arbitrary and unreasonable—so ungenerous—began to appear almost recklessly extravagant. After all, so many powerful sayings are compacted into four words—Mother Julian's visionary "All shall be well," for instance. And how could Peter have borne another syllable in Jesus' piercing "Do you love me?"
Come to think of it, some deeply significant affirmations, invitations, promises, dramas, and blessings consist of three words: "So Abram went," "He is risen!" "Come and see," "Go in peace," "Jesus is Lord."
Or two! I recalled how moved I had been, on the remote Hebridean isle of Iona, by the inscription on the watchtower of the lonely abbey church: "Stand fast." What compressed sorrow lies in "Jesus wept," what immensities of self-offering are implied in "Yes, Lord."
For that matter, didn't one word often say what most needed to be said? Surely "Alleluia" and "Amen" are all we really need most of the time.
By the end of the week (much of which I had spent secretly counting the words of, and lamenting the excesses of, telephone conversations, newspaper headlines, and public service announcements on the radio), I was convinced that five words—or four, or three, or even two—can speak volumes. Just as a memorable meal can be prepared from a few simple ingredients, so can a feast of meaning be conveyed by an apparent dearth of words. There is a lesson for my loquacious spirit here, a deep learning about fasting and feasting, about self-discipline, about simplicity and silence.
Perhaps Emily Dickinson summed it up when she observed that "the banquet of abstemiousness effaces that of wine" (even if it did take her eight words to say it).
CHAPTER 2
How I Pray I now
Sometimes, No Words at All
"How do you pray now?" I like the question. It implies change; it implies that prayer—like any other profound, committed, intimate relationship—is dynamic. It will change, will grow and develop in response to changing circumstances. Like the Santa Fe River near where I live, our prayer sometimes overflows its banks, sometimes diminishes to the merest life-sustaining trickle, sometimes cuts a whole new course in the landscape.
The question "How do I pray now?" has been for me an invitation to get, as it were, an aerial view of the river—a chance to look back and see the riparian loops and bends, the shallow places and the rapids, the floodplains and the dams. It is all the same river—I can see that clearly from this airborne vantage point. The continuity, so often hidden in the small view of daily life, is revealed. And my river, while sometimes dallying in near-stagnation, sometimes choked by debris, sometimes even appearing to flow backward, continues stubbornly to seek the sea.
This continuity in my prayer life is perhaps most apparent in its external forms. Most mornings for over a decade, I have risen early for a quiet time before the crowded day begins; I participate in the community prayer of the Eucharist at least once a week; I am grateful for annual retreats; volunteer service to the larger community keeps me balanced and connected to the world; regular conversations with my spiritual director provide invaluable clarity and support.
All of these spiritual disciplines are important to me; none is optional. It is in the totality of them, woven together, that my life in God is sustained. Interior prayer without corporate worship tends toward self-preoccupation, and without guidance tends toward self-delusion; service without a faith context becomes "dead works." Nevertheless, daily private prayer is what I would like to look at now—partly because it is the anchor for so much else, and perhaps also because it is the part that has undergone the most change, and changed the most significantly, over the course of the years.
Thirty years ago I was in law school, where I systematically (painfully) trained my somewhat dreamy English-major mind to jump through hoops of adversarial argument and method. It has taken me a long time to recognize—much less to undo—the damage this hard-won way of thinking did to my praying. For many years I (unconsciously, of course) treated prayers as legal briefs, or at least as business letters. ("Holy and Ever Living God, Dear Sir:") Sometimes I prayed as though I were an attorney presenting a case before the divine judge, seeking by my eloquence, my logic, my sure grasp of the issues and keen sense of justice, to persuade the Heavenly Court to a certain course of action. Sometimes I prayed as though I were the firm's efficient executive secretary, bringing urgent lists and messages to the attention of the overworked senior partner who, without my help, could hardly be expected to establish priorities or even to recognize crises.
These days, by the grace of God, my prayer has changed. I pray these days with much less conviction of my own importance in (ever so tactfully) setting an agenda for Gods busy day, and much more of an awestruck sense of the great privilege of simply participating in God's eternal love, letting it shine through my life as unobstructed as possible, like sunlight through clear glass. In other words, I seek now not so much to be the Supreme Court's star turn as—in the words of George Herbert—"to be a window, though God's grace."
Consequently, my prayers of intercession are much more trusting and quiet, much less insistently partisan and vocal than they once were. When I remember before God the pain of the world, I am less concerned with verbal eloquence than I used to be, much less implicitly sure that my job in prayer is somehow to change God's mind. In fact—except for the Collect for Purity at the beginning of my prayer time and the Lord's Prayer at the end—sometimes my prayers for others have no words at all, merely a sense of lifting those I love or ache for into God's infinitely compassionate hands.
It is not only the shape of my intercessory prayer that has changed with time, but also the way I pray with Scripture. As a Protestant born and bred, I have always been deeply aware of the importance of the biblical revelation of God's purpose for human life. Bible study and Bible school were part of my life from the time I could read. By the time I was eight I could recite all the books of the Bible in order, from Genesis to Revelation; I had memorized several psalms in their entirety and could quote chapter and verse for most of the more memorable promises in Scripture. On my wedding day I carried a white leather-bound Bible, a gift from my mother, along with my bridal bouquet. When I began the practice of daily prayer, I brought not only the Bible into the morning quiet but also Strongs Exhaustive Concordance and Peake's Commentary—a well-intentioned but unwieldy lapful that pretty effectively ensured that my praying-with-Scripture would stay firmly in my head, far more intellectual and cognitive than meditative or receptive. I learned a great deal during this time in my life, but it was much ado about critical method and hermeneutics and had precious little to do with listening for the word of God in my own experience.
It has taken our patient God years to open my heart and quiet my endless earnest picking apart of Holy Writ. More than any other single factor in this transforming of my scriptural prayer, a graced experience of Ignatian spirituality helped me to glimpse the possibilities of praying with the imagination and heart as well as with the intellect.
Several years ago, I made an individually guided eight-day retreat at a Jesuit retreat house, where for the first time I encountered the distinctively Ignatian way of praying with Scripture. The retreat began with an initial conference with my assigned director, who gave me a biblical text, and suggestions for a way of praying with it that involved my imagination and memory as well as my mind. Each day thereafter, I met with my director for an hour, to confide the content and quality of my prayer, and to receive another passage for meditation. Aside from these meetings and daily Mass in the chapel, the rest of each day was spent alone and in silence. That was a week of special blessing; the depth and power of the meditations took my breath away. As a Christ-centered, biblically grounded Protestant, with years of the gentle discipline of lectio divina behind me, I thought I knew—thought I had always known—what it means to "pray with Scripture," but I was wrong. Unconsciously but inevitably, I was limiting the operation of divine grace to the Calvinist dictum of sola scriptura, clinging stubbornly to the written word in a way that kept the Living Word from entering my heart. Under the wise guidance of my Jesuit director, in the blessed quiet of the place, by the grace of God, I was led that week to a whole new understanding of "real presence" in scriptural prayer—a radically sacramental sense of actual encounter with Christ, who is "in, with, and under" the narrative.
Needless to say, that retreat has profoundly influenced "how I pray now." When I compose myself to reflect, in the presence of God, on a passage in Scripture, I am no longer seeking the definitive scholarly interpretation of the text. Instead, I am offering my whole self—imagination, memory, intellect, desire—to the whispered Word of God. I am open to divine surprises; I let the river go where it will.
These, then, are two specific ways in which the way I pray now has deeply changed from the way I used to pray: When I intercede for others, I am more offering myself to be an instrument of God's peace than I am lobbying for a particular result; when I pray with Scripture I am offering myself to the Living Word rather than clinging to the written word. "Offer" seems to be the operative verb here—more and more, my prayer is more listening than talking, more giving than asking.
Consequently—back to the river again—the way I pray is increasingly "without ceasing," as silent, steady, and active as a river flowing through the land.
The African-American poet Langston Hughes spoke of this transforming dynamic at the very heart of who we are:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I would like to think that my soul has—once and for all—"grown deep like the rivers," that my prayer, my whole life in God, has reached a place of permanent quiet depth and power beyond change. I know it is not so: It is not in the nature of rivers not to change, and I am sure God is not finished with me yet. But I do hope that God will give me the grace not to struggle against the changes too much, not to rush in—self-willed as the Army Corps of Engineers—to build dams or embark on diversion schemes. I hope I can stay open to the Spirit of God in my listening and always trust in the limitless and everlasting sea toward which, however slowly, I still wind my way.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE PRAYING LIFE by Deborah Smith Douglas. Copyright © 2003 Deborah Smith Douglas. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: Ways of Praying
1. Be of Few Words: Her Majesty's War on Verbosity
2. How I Pray Now: Sometimes, No Words at All
3. New Wine: Praying the Scriptures
4. To See with the Eyes of the Heart
5. Becoming Like Children
6. The Examen Reexamined
Part 2: Healing
7. Touched by God
8. Nursing Home Visit
9. Broken Pieces: In the Fractioning, We Are Made Whole
10. Do You Want to Be Healed?
11. Wounded and Healed
12. Grief on Ice
Part 3: Spiritual Companionship
13. No Greater Love: Reclaiming Christian Friendship
14. Between Friends
15. Angels
Part 4: Fruitfulness
16. Of Woodstoves, Burnout, and the Living Flame of Love
17. Sparks Among the Stubble: You Can Catch Fire
18. Vine and Branches: Abiding in Christ
19. Ash Wednesday
Notes
Source Notes