For some reason or other, it seems appropriate that I should try and explain the basis and practice of what I understand myself to be doing at this time of the morning. It is 3.30 am, silence surrounds me, and I am about to start a “brand new day”, a day filled with “potential” and “loaded” with the past. The words on the page are simply a reminder and record of the event.
The phrase that best describes it for me is “contemplative journalling “. Others call it “prayer” but that word has become so distorted and misunderstood that it is well nigh useless. Its unfortunate connotation today is that of “asking a guy in the sky to grant a request” – a concept that for me is both incomprehensible. Far more pertinent is Simone Weil’s understanding of prayer as “Attention taken to its highest degree”.
There are for me three aspects to prayer, three kinds of prayer.
The first is “expressive”. We express by word, either spoken or written, the experience of “life in all its fullness”
The second is when we still the tongue and the pen and think about “life in all its fullness”. This is known as “meditative” prayer.
The third form of prayer is “contemplative” prayer. Prayer is not what you think! It has little to do with thinking. It is being present to the presence of God – and I hope most of us have ceased thinking of God as a “being” who resides in heaven. God is not a being. God is the ground of our being. God is the essence of life, the “Spirit of Life”, the energy that is in everything that lives. Think God, think life!
Consider yourself looking at a painting. You can talk about it, You can write about it, you can think about it, or you can simply let it impact upon you.
And the greatest of these? My vote goes for the “contemplative”, letting it impact upon you, with the best time for me being the freshness of a brand new day. Any wonder then that when walking out to get the paper, I find myself sometimes saying “Good morning, God”. The fact that it is “non rational” (as distinct from “irrational”) doesn’t over concern me. It reminds me of my friend Albert who maintained that “science can only describe what is, not what should be”. What a genius he was! His problem, as stated in a recently discovered letter, was “What really makes me angry is that there are people who say there is no God and quote me for the support of such views”. He had of, course, no time for “theistic” religion but then neither do I. Bishop Robinson maintained that it would take about a century for current theistic views to collapse. He wrote in 1963 which means that I am not going to be here when it does. I am, however, very grateful that I was around when Robinson, Tillich and others were around – along, of course, with friend Albert. His letter to his friend Besso’s wife was up for auction recently. This was the one that said that “the difference between past, present and future is an illusion.”
Now that is really something to “contemplate” as the clock ticks on!