NCNYUMC.ORG | Spiritual Discipline I

Writing on behalf of my own United Methodist Church, I list the issue of time as number one among the goals of spiritual discipline. Behind such a statement is the matter of how we know time.

Everyone has experienced the phenomenon of time seeming to pass too rapidly, as well as its opposite, of time dragging along slowly. As with other matters of life, it is true that time is susceptible to a kind of stewardship that permits the manager involved to set one's own paces.

The concept is buried in a conundrum: as Christians we live in three universes at the same time in a conscious way. These are: our sense of the past, our sense of the present, and our hoped for future. Spiritually and institutionally, we are alone in this trinity, which can make for much confusion if one is not thoughtful about the stewardship.

For example, one hazard is that one can get caught up in what is known as the "rat race." Schedules, appointments, meetings, things to do, places to go. As a junior pastor, I was early caught up in that race, firmly believing, as apparently did everyone else whom I could see, that to be busy was to be effective. Successful. The busier one is, the more successful one is. And vice-versa.

No one had anything to say about "success" being a gross idolatry, violating the first of the Ten Commandments. (I think, on a lifetime of reflection on the matter, that idolatry is the most common sin of all, putting the other nine commandments in the shadows).

My personal and professional lives were bound up in the little black appointment books our church provides for its clergy. Typical statements about this state of being include, "I can't, because I already have three other appointments then", or, "I won't be home for supper, honey, because..." The point being busi-ness. Busyness. Hustle.

My earlier experiences of time can be summed up in one word: "Blur." That is, time known as blur. No sooner had the morning coffee been swallowed than the Administrative Board meeting loomed, at 7 PM. The day disappeared in a blur.

Gradually, and through much travail of my spirit via tragedies, betrayals, and an ever growing sense of my own limits, I was "forced", "urged", even "nudged" toward the matters of my spiritual life.

Elsewhere, I have likened the expression of God's will for oneself as being like the "solar winds", that unending stream of photons from the Sun that regularly bombard the earth. No one photon, or combination of photons has very much force; it is rather the accumulation of billions of billions of such particles that never stop coming that eventually surface in one's awareness...the knowledge that one is gently being urged to look at another way of living. Having shared this thought with a dear friend and critic, he offered the following modification of the above:

He said "...we are God's mules, and God will beat us over the head with a 2x4 until we're dead, or God has our attention, whichever comes first."

That "other way" is a clearly defined discipline of the spirit. Nothing new is being said here; the Christian Church has long had such disciplines, summed up in one sense in the monastic and conventual practice of earmarking specific times of day for calling a halt to one's activities (even getting yanked out of bed at midnight) and engaging in prayer: compline, matins, and so on.

Still, while this approach certainly lends structure (even comfort, for all of that) to a day, it still doesn't get to the heart, or soul, of the matter. That is, a hands-on management of time that allows one not to get caught up in the hustle and bustle so generally associated with being successful, but lets one always see the passage of time in the light of the past, the present and the future.

This way of seeing certainly has its advantages. For example, it becomes very difficult to be sucked into applauding novelty for its own sake; arrogant, pushy and clearly power-ambitious peers become repugnant to one's soul; finally, a sense of clarity of awareness of the spiritual emptiness that attends such people emerges from one's disciplined stewardship of prayer, of time.

But most important, the engagement of past, present and future at the same time releases one from the empty claims and keyless locks of ambition; of the drives for power that consume so many, and lead to so many "burnt out" clergy; and for those who don't "succeed", a devastating sense of failure and worthlessness.

There is also a release from bewilderment by those who "succeed", an exercise of power absent any sense of the grace of God, which in turn, easily feeds the spirit-killing decisions not to change one's attitudes, because in spite of the emptiness and bewilderment, one is now comfortable materially.

If the above sounds true, it is only because it is. Symptoms of such access to power absent grace include a callous, even studied arrogance toward underlings, a startling matter on the face of it, since the issue of leadership always rests on a dichotomy: whether one imposes leadership (the most common approach) from the top down, or whether one leads from the bottom up.

Too, there is the matter of condescension toward underlings, as if they had no minds, no experience, no integrity, but needed to be patted on the pates from time to time: "There, there now..."

It is clear that such callous arrogance noted above is a direct outcome of an empty and/or non-existent life of the spirit. That is, one's life should issue exactly in what Jesus was as a person: gentle, above all; sensitive to those about Him; obvious in His caring because of the ways in which He chose His words; and ever-challenging others to enter the spiritual maturing process.

There are those who demean the above. Not surprisingly, they inadvertently open themselves to perceptive readers of their souls and clearly show their emptiness without even realizing they're doing that. I've even known them to snort in derision when the issue is raised in their presence, a rudeness one might expect from a hog rooting in the mud, but hardly from a peer in the ordained ministry of the United Methodist church.

One other major characteristic of such people is the "White Rabbit" syndrome, illustrated so clearly in the adventures of Alice in Wonderland. "I'm late; I'm late", and away the rabbit speeds, leaving Alice agape at such strange behavior, her questions unanswered.

What I'm trying to suggest in the opening section of this essay is a matter that I've never seen written about, nor ever heard clergy folk talking about: that one's life of the Spirit, lived in a discipline of prayer, works an incredible change in the way one views time, which in turn, allows one to put one's own reservoirs of spiritual energies to work where needed in a serene way, undismayed by resistance, rejection, mockery, threat, overwork or exhaustion.

By so doing, one is alive in the Christian past, trolling, as it were, through the many peoples and situations of our history in a steady fashion, looking for comparisons, perils, and guidance for the present, and sure that one's labors, as with Jesus' image of sowing the seeds that one will most certainly never see ripen, being directly contributive to the future. A most comforting substance of living, of ministry.

In one of Garry Trudeau's marvelous comic strips, his "Doonesbury" world, his archetypical political right-winger, a football player and coach complete with the familiar football helmet; a reserve soldier, living unmarried with his girl friend, "Boopsie", is eating a piece of Christmas fruit cake sent by a friend, who unknown to the eater, had baked marijuana into the cake.

Out of the blue, the football coach says, suddenly looking intently at his thumb that was helping to grasp the piece of cake, "Say, have you ever looked at your thumb?" The marijuana had served to heighten his awareness, and the first example of that just happened to be his thumb. Right at hand, so to speak.

The example of the closely observed thumb is what I think I mean (absent marijuana) by "becoming vulnerable to that which is..." That is, a major goal of the disciplined life of the Spirit is precisely that vulnerability of the soul which issues in an every day, joyous celebration of all that is. The litany is familiar: birds, animals, trees, flowers, and above all, people of every stripe, shade, description and situation. And thumbs seen for the first time.

It's a kind of mutual re-enforcement experience. By practicing a disciplined sensitivity via prayer, one continually tweaks the nerve endings of the soul to receive unexpected insights, sudden glimpses of the inner persons with whom one is relating, including those jarring, uncomfortable moments when pure pain, pure suffering, is seen in the glint in another's eyes, or the bowing of a shoulder in grief. Hopelessness and despair become as clear as hope.

Another way of saying the above is that such a prayer practice is the continuing discovery of the major burdens of unreached grief, shattered dreams and hopes, achings of the soul that show no signs of relenting, which in turn leads me into a sense of humbleness as I steadily experience and appreciate the awesome strength it takes to live with such suffering, let alone try or dare to do anything with it.

I learned early and well that most people, most of the time, are well worth associating with if only because of their phenomenal control of such suffering. For most, just getting through a day is a major achievement, and well worth all the applause one can render.

Lest the reader be misled by the stress laid on suffering here, I hasten to note that the other side that coin is grace - the grace of God. The two experiences are joined at the hip, never to be severed.

Perhaps the most difficult task of the ordained ministry, to say nothing of the multiples of ministries practiced by Christians in general, is to grapple with the necessities of trying to teach how suffering issues in grace, and vice-versa. It is an endless task, one that calls out of me everything that I have experienced and learned over the years of my ministries, past and present.

What a daunting thing it is, for example, to look into the eyes of a much scorned ne'er-do-well who is far too familiar with the world of illegal drugs, lying and stealing, and all the rest, knowing that you're going to fail in the immediate moments' efforts to help that person grasp the soul firmly and begin to learn something of the costs of the grace of God, and following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, finding happiness.

You know you're going to fail at your task before you start, yet, empowered by the authority given at ordination, you summon strength, examining one's own experiences, and searching through one's continuing harvest of words and methods, you try.

It is the fact of the readiness to try in the face of the awareness that failure looms again and again, that is one of the major goals and fruits of the disciplined life of prayer. One cannot not try.

Long ago, a young man who fit the above descriptions was urged to see me. He was in his middle twenties, and already had accumulated a number of trophies: misdemeanor charges for minor theft; drug dealing and usage; jail sentences; living with no sense of wanting to control his mind and soul.

He was the younger brother of a university administrator, who, when she heard that I was working with him (there are few secrets in this work), tried to warn me off, that I might not be hurt. But I persisted, and the rewards were that I baptized the young man in a regular church service, he being warmly welcomed by the congregation; and he gave in again to some of his destructive peers, going off on a marijuana toot, arrested by a state trooper for driving a car while impaired; and being sentenced to 90 days in the county pokey after the judge chewed me out for trying to convince him that the young man was just now starting to try seriously to get his life in order.

Yet, one cannot not try. If nothing emerged from this experience of failure and suffering, surprisingly, it was that I felt no sense of either. And if the experience said nothing else to me, it said that I am not God (by this time, I needed absolutely no persuasion about that), under any circumstances, and that the young man in question had every right to the conditions of his own pilgrimage. I was all too aware of my own early adventures, which were in some ways comparable with his in that I was equally blind and deaf in terms of taking totally seriously the warnings and worries expressed to me by the many in my circles of relationships.

In brief, I was re-enforced in my commitments by the sufferings, and apparent failures of the young man to harness his life.

This is not the anticipated outcome I had thought I was working toward, but in the end, I was taught yet again that failure is a continuing experience in matters of the heart and soul, learning that unless and until I knew such failures in a steady way in my ministries, I was not doing what I should be doing. I was not trying from the authentic Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth.

In other words, the young man in question is grappling with God, not me. I was somewhat effective in helping him put into words dimensions of his struggle that he had never been able to do before. The rest was on God's timetable with him...or maybe it's the other way around. My place in the scheme of things was to get myself out of the way as completely as possible so the Presence of God could be seen and experienced by him. Not surprisingly, I have also learned to view preaching in the same way: to try to get myself out of the way so the listeners may experience the Presence of God.

On the other side of the coin, or at the other hip, there is the story of another young man who was into the negative matters noted above, and surfaced on the grace side of things. He entered a small study group I had set up that consisted of a look at the immediate post-WWII theologians, the Tillichs, Barths, Niebuhrs, and others. And after I had left that scene, he had slowly found his way to a sense of grace, and once there, began his career as a high school teacher who eventually was asked also to take on the duties of a track coach for the school.

He carried into both careers the same sense of grace, the result being that he was much respected and loved as a teacher, and was a phenomenon as a track coach, breaking New York State track records left and right as to numbers of wins, but most important, imbuing in his students the same sense of vulnerability to the Presence that in turn led to the release of their determination to do the best they could under any and all circumstances.

To be more clear: the last thing on his mind and in his teachings of students was winning. Or breaking records. They happened as a consequence of his teachings, but they were always secondary to his efforts at helping these young men experience what he experienced - The Presence - a matter not to be accomplished except through the sensitive practice of a disciplined life of the Spirit.

My point in both of the above illustrations is that one can never know at the beginning of such efforts where things are going to go. This is not a war, where you roll up the armament, aim and shoot. It is rather a deliberate placing of one's own history, and the histories of others involved in what can only be called a most "different" stream of awareness and discipline of the Spirit, and then, willingly, be led to wherever the flow goes. I don't think that can be done without having as the major goal in one's life and ministries the disciplined life of the Spirit that leads one to being steadily vulnerable to that which is. Another way of saying this is that one deliberately places everything in the hands of God.

What I think I mean by the phrase, "The Presence", is an irregularly occurring experience of something "other" happening in and around me. Words are almost inadequate to describe this; one is quietened, grasped, enchanted, stunned, enlivened, brought to tears, overwhelmed, delighted, made profoundly solemn and completely aware that there is another entire range of the life of the Spirit going on all the time just beyond the borders of this life.

It's not even a question of belief; it is rather a question of perception - of experiencing The Presence of the "Other" that's always there.

I use the word "irregular" because The Presence seems to operate on what seems to be Its own timetable.

And I suspect the irregularity of the experience is a continuing source of frustration for those who are importunate, or demanding...trying too hard.

Still, it is my experience that one cannot know The Presence in a continuing way without being committed to a disciplined life of prayer. That is, unless one practices steadily, one cannot keep oneself sensitized to the necessary levels to sense The Presence whenever It decides to make itself known.

That "known-ness" is directly connected to one's state of being. That is, if I'm in hurt, and in need of healing, I've never not known the healing if I'm steady in my prayer discipline. Never.

By the same token, when the itch to celebrate, giving thanks and praise to the Mystery, is upon me, I've never not known the elation of my soul as consequence of the need and healing. In other words, The Presence seems to be operating on a timetable, and according to purposes that mostly escapes pilgrims like me, but which includes me.

The goal here is to "sense" The Presence, not understand it. I think this "sensing" is what Jesus was pointing to when He made that breathtaking statement, "You shall see God."

An analogy here might be helpful. I always "know" when I am in the presence of a person of depth, of rich qualities of the spirit and mind. Such things simply cannot be hidden. As Dr. Maturin, of the Captain Aubrey series of British Navy novels by Patrick O'Brian puts it, "Love, grief and money cannot be concealed." I'll take the first two for purposes of illustration. There is something of an aura about such people that is constant, and needs no speech to confirm. Many times, such people may not have a high IQ, but that doesn't matter, for the qualities of the Spirit that matter are there. Years ago, as a cub pastor, I entered a diner in Potsdam, New York at lunch time. A man who was the janitor for our church was sitting at the counter. He saw me enter, and beckoned me to sit with him.

When I did, he pointed to his plate, and there was a rainbow trout. We both looked at it quietly for a moment, appreciating the beauty of the fish, and in my case, also to be intensely aware of the qualities of this man's spirit that helped him appreciate the awesomeness of a rainbow trout.

So I was experiencing two matters of the soul at the same time: the trout, and the janitor. One of the janitor's accomplishments, as I later discovered, was his mastery of small engine maintenance. Once, when my lawn mower seized up because I forgot to check the oil, he had the thing running again in five minutes. I had the same sense of awe (as with the trout) of the man's spirit as he treated that engine with what I could only call respect. A respect born of awareness of what I call The Presence, and the janitor's obvious faithfulness in the practice of his prayers of awareness of that Presence.

That sense of awe is what I refer to when I speak of The Presence. I remember being in a woods years ago on a retreat with some college students in the beginning of Spring on the St. Lawrence River.

I sent the students out to look for indicators of the Presence, of "seeing" God. I expected that they would return with tree branches that had the next generation of leaves ready to burst forth, or maybe a skunk cabbage already in growth even with snowdrifts still about.

Most of the students did return with branches of ready-to-burst leaf buds, and that was fine. But to our corporate awe, one student showed up with a good-sized perch dangling from a fishing line. The fish had bitten on the worm in the fall past, yet managed to circle a submerged tree stump four or five times as its only defense about being taken. The fisherman then apparently snapped the line without further pursuit. Then winter descended, and the fish was frozen into the ice of the river until the spring melt began, releasing the fish.

To us, as we talked the matter through, this became a mute statement of the will to live, even in most difficult circumstances, that left us all in a state of awe and wonderment. Or, in other words, the fish spoke to our spirits...and connected. We were sensing The Presence.

Another student duplicated our awe and wonderment. She had found the jawbone of a cow, one side of the jaw marvelously clean, even polished by the weather. The source of our awe and wonderment, however, was not the jawbone as such, as compelling as that was.

There was one tooth missing from that jawbone, and from the empty socket grew one of the tiniest purple violets I ever saw, incredibly beautiful.

As the reader may be beginning to suspect, this writer leads a life that a dear friend described to me some time ago, speaking of poets in general. His suggestion is that most people appreciate the bizarre and take the ordinary for granted, while the poet appreciates the ordinary, and takes the bizarre for granted.

I also plead guilty to his charge that I'm trying to make poets of everyone...as did Jesus of Nazareth. Or, rather, I am trying to help people help themselves uncover that awareness of life that Jesus of Nazareth did, and know the same sense of awe, The Presence, as did He.

The illustrations above are but the merest trickles of awareness of The Presence. In the realm of music, I note the awestruck comment from the noted trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis. He was being interviewed on a PBS-TV program, and the interviewer, asking him about his attitude toward music, got this reply from Wynton: "Where does music come from?" Then there was a profound silence from both men - a sense of awe, a sense of the Holy.

As students in Boston, we were able to attend the rehearsals of the Boston Symphony, for twenty-five cents. Once, I was sitting in on Stravinsky's "Rites Of Spring." Charles Munch was the conductor, and he was not at all happy with the violins in one section of the piece.

So he kept insisting that they try again and again until they got it right. I was baffled, for to my tin ear, the music was stunning. I was rapt with wonder and awe, having difficulty with Munch's unhappiness with his violins. And then Munch got what he was searching for, and everyone knew it, even me. The violin section knew it too, and when the rehearsal was over, the first violin stood, and applauded the maestro on behalf of his cohorts by striking his bow on the strings of his instrument...as did all the violinists.

The impact of the finding on me was a sense of a deeper awe, even a detached awe that left me observing myself, a totally speechless sense of living awe; even a sense of being lifted off the seat as my spine turned to jelly, and vibrated.

I experienced The Presence, and the tears ran from my eyes as I smiled in gratitude.

As a pastor, I can easily recall the awe of a wife, whose husband lay on his deathbed in their home. He was in a coma, with not long to live, managing to take the next breath with great difficulty, and the next, and so on, shuddering with each breath, laboring.

The wife and I stood on either side of the bed, and then without preamble, she reached over to the plastic tube that fed oxygen through his nose, took hold of it, and then raised her head, and looked me straight in the eyes, mutely asking if I would endorse her action.

Again, that sense of awe and Presence emerged, and without hesitation, I quietly nodded. She removed the tube, and five minutes later, her husband was dead; at long last, at rest. We thanked God for his life, and their lives together.

We never spoke of the matter because it wasn't necessary.

This section of discourse revolves around two things: a sense of practice in one's prayer life, and a way of seeing life that emerges from that practice.

This section of looking at goals of a disciplined prayer life has a human touch and smell to it if only because I am certainly not the most consistent member of the human race in my practices of spiritual discipline.

That is, there are those times of day, and sometimes week, and on occasion, season, when I forget, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes on purpose, to call a halt within myself, and focus my being on the arts of prayer.

Here in Florida there lives a spider that weaves a most interesting web. Usually it is seen in grass that is two to three inches in height. I see it mostly in mornings, when the dew is on the grass. It is a web like all spider webs, with this exception: from the top to the bottom of the web, on the vertical diameter, there is a white band of more tightly woven web. It looks something like a delicately woven bandaid. It is roughly about one half inch wide.

As an aside, in terms of the strength of a spider web, steel of the same diameter is weaker than the filaments of the web. Scientists are still trying to develop steel of the same diameter as the threads that is as strong and as flexible as those threads.

The web is an eye-catcher, no question. I think its purpose is to make an emphatic statement to any flying insect critter that here is something desirable. There are many of these webs about, so I guess the webs are functional for the spiders.

So with my efforts at prayer. I'm constantly on the search (that's an automatic habit anymore) for support via reminders of all kinds and shapes about the discipline of prayer because I have a distinct tendency to get lost in what I'm doing, or to get lost in my mind; such reminders serve a very concrete purpose for me.

The decision to set oneself aside to pray is as apparently delicate as the spider web; the particular attraction of this spider web with its unusual vertical diameter of white woven delicacy represents to me the compelling results of prayer. The results are so powerful as to be all out of proportion to the efforts of time and concentration, that in spite of my reluctance to set myself aside for the act of prayer (busy, busy, busy, tired, lazy, stubborn, rebellious, hungry, thirsty, the itch to do other stuff that seems more appealing, like taking a nap, or going to a restaurant for a bite, or brooding in the bookstore or library, or visiting friends...the reader can name many more than these) I am at the same time delicately attracted to that apparently delicate web, to prayer.

It is in that delicacy that lies the power of prayer, for it requires the most careful handling of oneself. If I am like others, it is so easy to hasten the act of prayer, or to tromp without thought all over the scene, or to allow one's mind to wander, approaches that blur the integrity of the effort, and naturally, the results.

As a sample of the reverse of that carefulness, I once knew of a priest in Warrensburg, New York, now deceased, who thought he could make the whole village into pray-ers. The way he tried was to step out into the main stream of traffic of people and vehicles, in the driveway between the church and the parsonage that exited onto the main street, there to pace back and forth for an hour each afternoon, rain, sun or snow, around drive time, reading rather obviously from his breviary. What he received for his efforts was a kind of small town, small village sense of pity (the lowest form of human emotion), for they saw through him, as small town people have an accurate way of doing, and offered him the worst insult possible for his efforts: indifference.

The results of prayer? Many times nothing, save for knowing that I'm on the track where I ought to be; or of feeling healed of particular wounds of the soul; of feeling the inner peace that, for me, is always a result of prayer; of feeling re-energized in one's soul to carry on amidst the most difficult of situations - jail, persecution, rumor, scorn, thick-headed power, cleansed within the soul of the filth that always threatens - the varieties of refreshments are just that: various beyond the imagination.

One needs to know at all times that one's human-ness is everyone's lot; it's refreshing to say that, just as it is refreshing to try to continue to discipline oneself into a life of prayer.

Beyond such matters, another refreshment occurs. That is the sense of what we're supposed to be about as Christians - living the life of love as Jesus taught. When one is treating with God, one cannot but help look into oneself and examine what one does from day to day. For me, prayer clarifies my vision of myself, and leads me to a sense of objectivity about the realities of the world of which I am a part, and energizes me again and again to stay anchored to the decencies and sacrifices that go with the responsibility of living that life of love.

I know before I try that mostly I will be completely familiar with failure when I try to implement actions of that love, and being reminded of that again and again, I begin to laugh within my soul in a refreshing way that allows me to remain charged within myself with the refreshing energies to keep pursuing justice, healing, compassion, inspirations of all kinds.

Nurturing one's spiritual vulnerability (there is no armor plate, save ignorance) via a disciplined life of prayer clarifies yet another goal of such a life - the quiet savorings of the depths of mystical experiences. Here, I shall have to be even more personal than before.

I am a poet/mystic. That means, in part, that I experience emotionally what everyone else in the world is capable of experiencing, except that I do it in spades. That is, a poet/mystic simply cannot dip a finger in the ocean to get a feel for it; he or she has to dive in, without reservation. One learns rather quickly what spots to dive from, or not.

This argues for swoops of emotional activity, from depressions to manic highs with little or no warning. It also argues for unceasing awareness of subtleties in life, whether in the natural world, or in persons. Certainly, it means the slow and irregular development of a sensory apparatus that eventually seems to operate on its own.

One is seized by matters that lead to decisions and actions that are barely in control at the outset, but which also lead to incredible situations and experiences that defy words. I am inadequate in trying to describe what I have known.

Of especial dominance in such matters is the matter of emotional pain. An internal pain, one that seldom sees the light of day, but which is constant. The classical report of the poet/mystic over the centuries is that of melancholia - an emotional and intellectual draining state of being that poets traditionally have sought to ease and alleviate via personal indulgence, whether in sex, alcohol, rages, laughters, writing, artistries of the various gifts.

Seeking to alleviate such matters is also an inadequate phrase. I think rather that in the "seizures" that take place, one's soul is opened in such a way as to reveal in a most consequential way, words, ideas about painting, and music into which one is absorbed, sometimes in a frightening way, others times in exultations, but always in the most consequential manner of the dynamics of the moment and direction.

Thus, one finds over the centuries that artists cannot but paint; musical composers and musicians cannot but compose and play; poets and writers cannot but write. One is out of control and in control at the very same moment. To say that is exhausting would be the understatement of all creation.

For the authentic, disciplined pray-er, all the above holds, with the addition of the most ineffable experience possible for a human being: one encounters the Presence of God.

By itself, such an encounter would seem to be the acme of history - an experience that would be set up on a dais for everyone to see and celebrate. But no. For those who experience the Presence of God (or simply, what I call, in shorthand, The Presence), both the experience and attempts at reporting it are so "other" than the normal runs of life that just getting anyone's attention to the matter seems to occupy the largest portions of one's energies. And even then, reporting the matter becomes complicated by the listener: where is such a person within the self?

Jesus touched on this in a glancing way with His acid, even defeated, yet challenging remark about letting those who have ears to hear and eyes to see should use both. It was not a totally optimistic statement, since I think He was totally aware that most people most of the time are wrapped up in themselves, for whatever reasons - immaturity, selfishness, ignorance, stubbornness, fear - and that being the case, it is extraordinarily difficult to get them to move "out" of themselves in order to see and hear what is "there."

In brief, God's Presence...which is "there" all the time, and under all circumstances. One has but to hear and see. That's one of major frustrations and challenges of being a preacher; indeed, of being a committed Christian - of trying to portray a sense of that Presence via preaching or talk or actions.

Yet, alongside those frustrations at communicating there rests the undeniable matter of people watching you, and taking strength from you without you realizing it, or being puzzled at how you get through a day with such equanimity and balance within oneself, or marveling over some action or other statement of being for which they happened to be present.

Which brings me to a sense of perception that a small support group I belong to touched on in their statements about the sensing of what we all know as "aura", that phenomenon that surrounds one as direct consequence of one's efforts at disciplining one's spirit in prayer, otherwise known as the "halo effect" in contemporary jargon, but which is seen in different ways by members of the group.

Not to say that differing perceptions are fatal, if only because, from my limited experience, there is no way I am going to be able to assess the many facets of God's Soul, or Person. I can see only what I am capable of seeing, much as the fabled blind men who tried to figure out what an elephant looked like by touching various parts of the animal with their hands, and then reporting the strangest definitions of structure.

I am not capable of all that much. Still, there are moments. As a preacher, I had to learn that one must prepare, prepare, prepare. Every moment of preaching should have an hour of preparation behind it. What I had not expected, and no one told me to expect it, was that after all that preparation is done, and one steps up to the pulpit to deliver a sermon, there are those moments when all the preparation, all the things carefully crafted to be said, offered, go blank, and in their place emerges...what?

An halo effect: a sharply drawn and held breath by the congregation; a total focus of the congregation on what is to be said next; an eerie sense of Presence that cannot be put into any other kinds of words; the preacher being seized by someone or something, I don’t know , except to say that while opening my mouth in such a moment to speak I didn't know what was going to come out.

And it comes out. Smoothly, jerkily, quietly, loudly, but with an effectiveness in the eyes and hearts of the listeners that is very difficult for me to put on paper. One slips into the flow of such a presentation without really being aware of it, and it is not until one takes a breath in the silence following a statement, that one realizes the depth and incredible quality of the Silence in the congregation.

For me, that is one instance of the Presence present, and operative. And to be savored - in the moment, and afterwards.

On another level, my sense of The Presence is seen in my awareness of what seems to be a transparent film, the thickness (actually, it is a "thin-ness") of which is the dividing line between my ongoing sense of reality and the breathtaking sudden awareness that is just on the other side of that "film" is an "other" entire reality.

That sense of the "other" emerges from my quiet, patient efforts at the discipline of my prayer life. It is nothing that can be forced, or bought. If I push, it disappears; if I plead, it is unresponsive; if I hurry, it is not visible; if I get angry, I am empty; if I am impatient (trying to meet with The Presence on my terms), there is nothing.

But when such a meeting happens, there are few words to describe the tastes within my soul. And perhaps that's what I'm trying to portray here: a taste, a savoring of The Presence, like a fine wine, or an especially delicious meal, or a sip of water when I'm terribly thirsty, or an apple right off the tree, or a slice of ancient cheddar cheese from northern New York State, or the fading chords of a piece by a Beethoven, or a Bach, or the trusting smile of a love, or the incredible energies of the young on display in bounce and run, or laughters at the goodness of life, or tears at the sufferings of life, a profound sense of the irenic - an inner peace of the soul that also defies words.

As the reader may see, I think my efforts at prayer discipline affect every part of my being, my seeing and hearing, and every incident in my day, and by the time I get to rest at night, my soul is all but worn out from the joys and demands of that Presence. And even in the depths of sleep, I am savoring the consequences of experiencing that Presence.

I cannot write of such things without such an honesty, if only to honor the qualities of the struggles and the fruits of grace that were and are consequence of the struggles. Too, I would not want to mislead anyone reading this into thinking that the life of prayer is some kind of snap, needing only repetition of certain selected prayers from our past to produce desired or hoped for results.

What I think I'm trying to portray includes the dangers of pilgrimage to God, which in turn, includes wracking changes worked in one's being, exposure to death, to slurs by others who know not what they are doing, as well as powerful denials by those who prefer not be led into the Valley of Death, or any other Valley that carries the discomforts of uproar and change.

Ego, by definition, is a state of one's being that needs careful scrutiny under all circumstances. The prize of ego development, according to Erik Erikson, is either maturity on the plus side, or a final sense of despair in the last stage of life in his eight-stage developmental model.

I don't think that one's spirit can be that neatly defined. It is more of a shifting percentage between the two reference points. Sometimes, the matureness dominates; other times, the despair dominates. In fact, I think it is not until and unless one is assailed by the restless, ever changing varieties of storms of the spirit and flesh that exist in this life that one can gain an appreciation of the depths of the spirit, and the refreshing of perspectives not only in oneself, but also in the "ways of the world" that are alien to such gains of grace. But which intrude in their callous ways to wound, and in the wounding, force introspections that can open avenues of grace to the seeker.

Surely, the first step in such a journey of the spirit is to be found when one is crushed by forces not recognized up to that moment, and even if recognized beforehand, in one's inexperience and naivete, one is left at the mercy of those forces in a totally helpless way.

The helplessness of one's spirit in the face of such onslaughts is key to the experience of grace. There are not many who want to accept such a statement, although Marine Corps trainees experience the same on a steady basis.

In Marine Corps training, the recruit is subjected to all kinds of personal humiliations by drill sergeants in a deliberate way as the Corps seeks to replace, or in many cases, build for the first time in those recruits a system of obedience to orders that turns out to be a great comfort to the ego-shaky recruit in a world that is viewed as generally hostile, and in the end, evolves into a pride of having survived the training period, consciously and happily belonging to a new sense of "family." The recruiting slogan speaks of the "the few" in the Marine Corps, and over the years, that approach has cemented the souls of hundreds of thousands of "a few" young people to the Corps in a way that resonates throughout their lives.

It is rare thing to find a Marine veteran who does not carry the flags of the nation and the Corps in his or her soul with a profound pride. In its own way, the Pilgrimage to God is the same practice as that of the Marine Corps. One will be humbled in life - that is, without warning knocked off balance by life events such as diseases, betrayals, lies, wars, any and all intrusions on one's sense of "world" that leaves one totally confused, at sea, helpless, broken.

The Shepherd of Hermas includes "...having one's bones broken..." as a spiritual necessity or even inevitability in one's pilgrimage. It is my testimony that one never gets used to such things. Something is always lurking, ready to pounce. This is not a paranoid statement; it is rather a calm appraisal of a lifetime of experience. At this late stage of my life, working within my "aura" of inner peace and sense of God's grace in my person, instead of winding up cocky about the whole thing, I remain intensely aware that, for me, it is very easy to slip into an arrogance that is as ugly as it is destructive within myself, let alone to others with whom I relate.

It is one thing to know that one is gifted in some ways; it is quite another to let such an arrogance develop as to think of oneself as "better" than others, or "above" others. And since I have been fighting those broken bones all my adult spiritual life, I slowly and painfully came to the conclusion years ago that were it not for my being humbled - stopped in my tracks, and left feeling helpless and even desperately alone at times - I would be insufferable to myself and anyone I cherish or otherwise try to be useful for in life.

It's an absorbing contradiction to know that as learned and gifted as one can be, such matters are but tools to be used in one's ministries, and not to be used as mirrors for vain gratifications or to beat drums on one's own behalf.

One consequence of this kind of awareness surfaced early in my ministerial career: I found that my pilgrimage as person and pastor, as well as being intimately involved in the pilgrimages of others, in or out of the church (out-of-the-church people occupying a very large portion of my time over the years with their needs), there was no way to report what I was really doing, or trying to do in such situations.

There was no "place" on the quarterly or annual report sheets for such work of the Spirit.

Confidentiality was the big restraint in this, of course, as was respect for the struggles the people I tried to address were experiencing.

At first, this absence of reporting what I was really doing most of the time was because I thought that all the pastors knew this; so much so that it couldn't be reported. It was a slowly developing awareness that far too many of them didn't have a clue about such matters. And if there were awarenesses, there were no ways in which such matters were to be shared, to help me gain a perspective that otherwise was elusive.

So again, one is humbled, and in that experience, taught yet again that one ought to be.

Jesus speaks, in the record of Matthew 5, about "happiness" (I like the phrase "spiritual joy" better as a translation) being a product of meekness.

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." It is not until I focus on the altogether true awareness that I am but one amongst billions, a mere, with a very short life span, and not very influential at all, that I can be comfortable with myself as "meek", which in turn allows me to inherit the earth - the sum of the spiritual wisdom Jesus holds before us - and quietly revel in the joys of such wisdom, inner strength and peace. The geography and metaphysics of the planet as Image of wisdom and grace, to be inherited.

Too, meekness has other characteristics. One is that of a good student. That is, the stance of the good student is that he or she is open to new knowledge, is easy to teach, and eager to learn. Teachers I have known over years are in the profession in the first place in order to come across such a student. Such a student becomes the reason for teaching.

As for the rest of the student population, in their immaturities and preoccupations, they are to be endured, if not to occupy a place in a teacher's heart and mind that leads them to cynicisms about their profession, even life in general.

If one needs any more information as to the desirability of being meek within the precincts of the Kingdom of God, I urge one to travel in this world, and come to grips with the real condition of the over six billions of people on the Earth, who present frightening possibilities of great leaps in population growth, as one example, that will stun the casual observer. Statistically, what happens is that when six billions procreate, exponentially one has twelve billion; and when they procreate, exponentially, one has twenty four billion, and so on.

What this means in terms of more war, starvations, epidemics, political upheavals should be fairly clear to a careful observer.

To me, this pushes the issue of one's own pilgrimage and prayer life into a perspective that forbids navel gazing, or other inner preoccupations with self at the expense of efforts at evangelization to that world. In order to be humbled properly, all one has to do is muse over the fact that with the six billions plus of people on the earth, we are armed to the teeth, and ever on the edge of and into starvations, nuclear disasters, government corruptions of all kinds, religious indifference and/or imposition, epidemics of diseases, wars.

There's no time or place to get lost in one's own spiritual navel; one must contribute whatever one has to the energies of cleansing the spiritual mucks of such stables as the world permits to exist. They're all over the place, and they're filthy with smelly, tragic, and non-productive manures.

For me, the disciplines of prayer keep me aware of my place in the scheme of things, and as modest as that has to be, it is a enormous comfort to know that I am part of the efforts to change the helpless nature of being human into a sense of being that is personified in Jesus of Nazareth.

I've used the above term, "The Tombstone Effect." The reason is that in the failings of our disciplines in prayer life, tombstones or their equivalents come to dominate our lives, even the life of this planet itself, leaving a continuing sense of haplessness, and hopelessness. Individual dignity, and the maturings of that dignity - major products of the ministries of Jesus Christ and that small band of followers around Him - arise in history because of these people, their lives of prayer, and their understandings of the will of God for mankind.

And as I'm sure the reader knows, there are forces out there that are spending their billions and trillions of dollars or kopeks or whatever coinage to destroy that dignity. They are the tombstone people. Death is their trade. The Tombstone Effect. Our trade is life.

Frank A. Halse, Jr.
15 Kimberly Drive
Apt. # A2D
Mexico, New York 13114
315-963-8401
fhalse@twcny.rr.com
February 2003
March 2003
November 2004