" I am sick unto death of my own prayers" - Leslie Leyland Fields on "Finding God in the Verbs"

"Finding God in the Verbs came along just in time. I am sick unto death of my own prayers, and suspect God too is tired of rolling his eyes at my words. Why am I so careful in my writing and so careless in my prayers? Bill and Isbell are renewing not only my prayers but my heart."

—Leslie Leyland Fields, author of Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers

Read more: http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/review/code=3596#ixzz3SlPrAgQe

Order your copy today by clicking the book cover above!

"Writing out of the presence..."

Writing for God website

Finding the Words

For Brent Bill, director of the New Meetings Project at Friends General Conference in Philadelphia and author of Holy Silence, the first step into deep listening is to carefully set the stage before he begins to write.

“I think of writing as a form of worship,” says Brent, who is also a Quaker pastor. “So before I start, I begin to declutter my brain and soul by getting certain things out of the way. An email here, a calendar update there. That helps me banish all the busy monkeys in my mind...
To read the whole article, click here.

...a prayer utters itself...

Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy


Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer—
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

"Prayer" by Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time. © Anvil Press, 1993. (buy now)

Questions on Prayer

Hi Blog Reading Friends --

 

As you may know, I'm at it again.  Writing another book.  This one is on prayer.  So I have two questions for you (if you'd like to play along):

1) What is your favorite/usual prayer -- either a written/formal one or one you pray seemingly all the time from your heart/soul (mine is usually "HELP!!!!")

2) What is a book on prayer that you've found helpful?

You can answer here ... or send me an email at brentbil@brentbill.com

 Ready... set... GO!

Thanks!

Brent

Poems & Prayers: Summer Reading Recommendations, part 1

I am happy to be holding in my hands Eileen R. Kinch's poetry collection Gathering the Silence.  I've been an admirer of Eileen's poetry since I first heard some of it a few years back.  Eileen is a Conservative Friend of deep spirituality and poetic ability.  Her poetry's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in a number of periodicals.

Her poems are often gentle in spirit.  Kind.  Helpful.  Even their titles reveal this  -- "Where the Worlds Come Together" instead of "Where Worlds Collide," for example.

That is not to say they are not questing, passionate or -- even -- furious.  "Witness" is especially so.

Your eyes have seen,
your ears have heard

a Friend beat the cat...

Gathering the Silence is a truly fine assembly of first rate poetry.  And for me, poetry often is prayer.  I'll be holding it close for awhile -- at home and as I travel.  A tiny book of blessing and challenge.

(And, if you're in the Philadelphia area July 14, be sure to stop by Pendle Hill to hear Eileen read from Gathering the Silence).

Another book I've enjoyed greatly is Men Pray: Voices of Strength, Faith, Healing, Hope and Courage.  I've long known men pray -- I mean, I do!  And I grew up watching my father, grandfather and other men important in my life do so.  Still, I'm not a very good pray-er -- so any assistance is gratefully received.  And these prayers by other men of faith help me move outside my usual prayers and into new territory -- for that I'm grateful (and probably, too, are God's ears!).

One of my favorite prayers so far (since I'm in the midst of writing/editing) is Kent Ira Goff's "Grit Seasoning."

While I do this grit
work, season
the irksome pieces
with enough
Ahas! to remind
of the reason.


Amen.  And indeed!

I heartily commend both these books to you -- you'll be blessed by them.

-- Brent

...a great seething prayer..."

Birding at the Dairy  

by Sidney Wade

 

 

We're searching
for the single

yellow-headed
blackbird

we've heard
commingles

with thousands
of starlings

and brown-headed
cowbirds,

when the many-
headed body 

arises 
and undulates,

a sudden congress
of wings

in a maneuvering
wave that veers

and wheels, a fleet
and schooling swarm 

in synchronous alarm,
a bloom radiating 

in ribbons, in sheets,
in waterfall,

a murmuration
of birds

that turns
liquid in air,

that whooshes
like waves

on the shore,
or the breath

of a great
seething prayer.

 

Copyright © 2013 by Sidney Wade. 

Sidney Wade is the author of six books of poetry including Straits & Narrows (Persea Books, 2013). She is also a translator of Turkish literature. Wade lives in Gainesville, Florida, and teaches at the University of Florida. 

Folks Who Care: A West Newton Friends Meeting Video

On Being Attentive -- One Thing, Part 2

As I said in an earlier post, I often notice that I've driven the 22 miles (though according to Mapquest it's really only 20.59 miles) to work without being fully present to the sights and sites around me. And, in so doing, I miss living large chunks of my in the present -- the only place where I can truly live. Or experience God.

It's not that when I think of things past or solve problems future that I cannot encounter God in them. I can. But I don't really experience God in them. I remember God working in the past and pray for God to be with me in the future, but the only place I can really experience God's presence is in the present.

While I live in the country, I work in the heart of the city. I often find it easy to be attentive to the present and the possibility of God-surprises whilst walking in the prairie. But once I jump in the car and turn the ignition and make my way to the city, I lose track of attention. I slip into auto-driver mode. In doing so, I discount the possibility of an encounter with God in a place where I spend at least 1/3 of my life. So I need to learn to be attentive to both those places -- country and city -- for possible God-sightings.

Today I decided to practice attentiveness on my way to town. And, like my experiment yesterday of paying attention to single things, I decided that would do so on my way to work. I would not try to take in the civic panorama in its vastness. Instead, I would look for "ones".

It started easily enough. Traveling on the highway, glanced in my rear view mirror. A car was closing on me fast. I mean really fast. Blue and red lights flashed. It was a state policeman on a run. I prayed for him, that he would be safe in his hurry. Then I noticed a pillar of smoke in the westbound lanes. As I approached, I saw that it was a car on fire. One car. Blazing tires and engine and body; belching smoke. The state policeman had pulled a quick U-turn and was heading to the car. The fire department had just arrived and by the time I passed the scene, the car was not to be seen -- it was hidden amid the belching smoke and billowing steam from the water being poured on the car. And so I prayed God's blessing on the driver of that car -- a blessing for her or his safety and comfort.

As I rounded the bend in the highway that leads into the city, I beheld our midwestern skyline. Surely nothing nearly as spectacular as New York or Chicago's, but still with buildings reaching for the sky. The tallest one caught my attention. I can't tell you its current name. It's a bank building (at least I think it still is). And I remembered that yesterday was the tenth anniversary of 9/11 when terrorists decided to crash airplanes into tall buildings. I saw the building from the west, the south, the east, and the north as I made my way to my office. And I prayed for it and the people who would work in that singular structure. I prayed that they would experience life-giving moments inside that conglomeration of concrete, steel, and glass -- that their day there would be more than drudgery, but that it would have moments of joy.

Then, as I walked from the parking lot to my office, I passed a bench on the walkway that passes by my windows. One, stretched out, was an old pair of khaki pants. Forlorn. Tattered. Left by who? And why? And so I prayed for their owner, for whatever needs he had. For a sense of God's presence for him.

As I walked on, I thought of how often I would have passed those 45 minutes completely oblivious to the opportunity to pray and experience God. And I prayed, and continue to pray, for an attentive spirit.

Even as it comes one thing at time.

-- Brent

Quaker Wisdom for Today

"I read that I was supposed to make 'a place for inward retirement and waiting upon God' in my daily life, as the Queries in those days expressed it... At last I began to realise, first that I needed some kind of inner peace, or inward retirement, or whatever name it might be called by; and then that these apparently stuffy old Friends were really talking sense. If I studied what they were trying to tell me, I might possibly find that the 'place of inward retirement' was not a place I had to go to, it was there all the time. I could know the 'place of inward retirement' wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, and find the spiritual refreshment for which, knowingly or unknowingly, I was longing, and hear the voice of God in my heart. Thus I began to realise that prayer was not a formality, or an obligation, it was a place which was there all the time and always available."

--Elfrida Vipont Foulds

Quaker Wisdom for Today

“A feeling of real need is always a good enough reason to pray.”

-Hanna Whitall Smith

Quaker Wisdom for Today

"Seek on in patience and in hope. Be earnest in prayer. Do not fall back into selfish indifference, but do whatever thou canst truthfully do, for the help, socially and spiritually, of those around thee. Take comfort from the thought that others have passed through as great a strift, and have come forth into peace and happy trustfulness. If thy soul be walking but in twilight, look towards that quarter of the sky from which light seems to be dawning....Thou wilt yet hear His words as a personal message to thy soul, 'I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.'"

—London Yearly Meeting, 1893

Quaker Wisdom for Today

I ask for daily bread, but not for wealth, lest I forget the poor.
I ask for strength, but not for power, lest I despise the meek.
I ask for wisdom, but not for learning, lest I scorn the simple.
I ask for a clean name, but not for fame, lest I contemn the lowly.
I ask for peace of mind, but not for idle hours, lest I fail to hearken to the call of duty.

--Inazo Nitobe, 1909

Sweet Hour of Prayer -- Not! A Bad Christian's Thoughts on Faith

One reason that I am a bad Christian is that I am a bad pray-er. I know that St. Paul says that I should "Pray without ceasing" but I'm more likely to cease without praying. The idea of spending an hour on my knees sends a shiver down my soul -- and probably Jesus's, too. He must know that he'd hear the same thing over and over again. Either, "Thanks, thanks, thanks" or "Please, please, please" or "snore, snore, snore."

I've tried praying the hours. That works so long as I am in a community that is praying the hours and is expecting me to be there. I've tried getting up early (like Luther) or staying up late(like my wife), but neither much works for me. It's not that I don't care for prayer -- it's just that the usual proscribed forms don't work for me.

I known I have much to learn about prayer. Sometimes I feel that my prayers are hitting the ceiling above me and bouncing back down. At other times, I feel that my prayers bring me close to God and feel enfolded in his ever-loving, everliving arms.

What, I wonder, makes the difference? Why is it so easy to connect one time and the next it seems as if all the lines are down? Why can’t prayer be easier? At least for me.

Perhaps it has something to do with how sporadic my prayer life often is. Perhaps it’s because I pray when I feel like it or need something. Perhaps I need to become more intentional in drawing close to the heart of God.

I know that an active prayer life feeds and nourishes my interior life. An active prayer life helps keep my “on the straight and narrow.” As Brother Lawrence wrote 400 hundred years ago, “when we are faithful in keeping ourselves in His holy presence, keeping Him always before us, this … prevents our offending him or doing something displeasing in his sight (at least willfully).”
But an active prayer life does more than keep me from going astray (which I have to admit, I have a tendency to do). For Brother Lawrence continues his thought, saying “[prayer] also brings to us a holy freedom, and if I may say so, a familiarity with God wherein we may ask and receive the graces we are so desperately in need of.”

You see, prayer opens me to the hiddenness within where I become aware of who God is and who I am. Prayer gives me time to focus our thoughts on the important things of life and faith and helps me connect with God.

When I think of that way, I see prayer as a glorious invitation -- an invitation from God to meet with Him. This meeting is not scheduled to take place in a high temple or on a holy hill. Rather it is an invitation to meet God close to his heart.

This is an invitation I often take too lightly. I disregard it because of the busy-ness of my life (and mine is full, to be sure). And there is grave danger in that. As Henri Nouwen said, “it is clear that we are surrounded by so much outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us. We have often become deaf, unable to know when God calls us…”

Communicating is more than keeping the lines open. I may have a phone line that has a telephone answering machine, a fax machine and a modem all in working order. Yet, if I do not use it to call people or send them e-mail to them, I shouldn’t wonder why, when I come home at night, there are no messages waiting for me. I have to reach out and touch someone.
Richard Foster, in his book Prayer, tells his readers that is not the case. Foster says “God has graciously allowed me to catch a glimpse into his heart ... Today the heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence.”

I would do well to remember this as I think about prayer as an invitation. It is first and foremost an invitation to God’s heart. I am called, by faith, not to a life of rules and regulations, but to a relationship with the lover of my soul. A relationship with One who wants me to share with him and who wants to share with me the joyousness of life in the Spirit. Why is it easy to neglect the key to this relationship when I see the obvious peril of doing so in our other relationships?

I have a choice. I can spend time with God in prayer or not. If I do not, I do not just deprive myself of the joy of the life of the Spirit, I also deprive God of joy from spending time with me.

Perhaps that hour of prayer is sweet after all.

-- Brent

A Good Friday

Silence, especially in life’s busyness, leads us through the whitewater of life to gentle pools of stillness and calm. 400 years of Quaker silence have pointed us back to the center within. Silence moves us from difficult self-examination to healing to relaxing in God’s presence. Interior silence takes us to a place where we are living St. Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing, even when we are not consciously aware that we are doing so. That happened to me on a recent Good Friday. Here's a reading on that subject from Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality.

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Enjoy--
Brent