Category: dry, dark, distracted prayer

Light-through-darkness

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

We all go through periods of darkness. I hope what Dom Hubert vanZeller has to say in his book, The Inner Search, helps you as much as it has helped me.

Sunrise on the Mole, Nico Angleys

“Darkness is not only prayer going wrong; it is everything going wrong. And over and above this it is having to believe that everything is going right.”

“Darkness is failure . . . Darkness is fear, is regret, is doubt. Darkness is looking back an saying: ‘I have been deluded from the start; it has all been a mistake.’ Darkness is looking forward and saying: ‘I do not know what to do next; I have lost m way and it is too late now to find it.’ It is the endlessness of darkness that constitutes a peculiar pain.”

“Darkness is not only when our ideals are shown to be unattainable, but when they are shown to be not ideals at all. When they are seen to be selfish ambitions.
“Darkness is not only when our motives are misunderstood and condemned, but when they are seen by ourselves to have been worthy of condemnation–when we realize that we have ourselves misunderstood them all along.
“Darkness is not only when our zeal for souls is blocked at every turn, but when we discover that it never has been zeal for souls. Darkness is seeing what a zeal we have for self.
“Only when we know that we have nothing of our own to show for our service of God, that we have no offering to make but our failures, sins, helplessness and folly are we made empty enough to be restocked with new graces. It is light-through-darkness that brings us to this stage.”

“We have to be disillusioned.”

“The essential vocation, the primary call to which our response is of supreme moment, is not to this or that exercise but to love. This is the initial grace–love. To work out this grace on our own is beyond us. We need more grace. We need Love itself to do it for us.
“Love works in faith, and faith means the night . . . . Anyone can give a notional assent to the proposition: ‘I am a weak man’; what God want is a more absolute recognition than that.”

“Neither books nor directors nor penance nor systems of prayer can do service for the training which the Spirit Himself imparts. The soul must ‘be still and wait for the Lord.’ Always there will be that pendulum swing of darkness and light, knowing and unknowing, learning and unlearning, losing and finding again.”

It’s Lent, but I feel incapable of praying

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

In her usual beautiful prose, Sarah Clarkson writes about her struggle, her incapacity to pray.

THE NIGHT BURNS BRIGHT and dark in my memory, a contrast of moods and scenes like a Caravaggio painting. The cathedral; bright, honeyed stone and gold instruments glinting on the altar. The kindness of my friend and his saving of an excellent seat for me as I skidded in, breathless, the sweet furor of bedtime rituals with my four children still an echo in my brain, a slight wildness in my eye. And the music, a many-layered brightness of harmony and word, hued like a crimson sunset to my synesthetic mind as a small choir sang a selection of ancient Orthodox chants and prayers.

I let myself breathe deeply as the music surged forward, let my eyes rove the warm, dappled space of the medieval church that summer night. But the longer I looked, the more darkness I saw. The shadows like dirty flocks of ravens in the high corners, the vivid stained glass windows I loved so well in the daytime obscured by night, the pain at the back of so many prayers I heard chanted, pleas for God to put an end to despair and death. And the darkness of my own weary heart when the concert had ended and I sat outdoors at a nearby pub and confessed to my long-time mentor and friend, a priest, that I found myself almost unable to pray.

You can read the rest here.

Let God come to you first

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

I recently recommended a few of Joshua Elzner’s books. Today I would like to post an excerpt from another of his books. It speaks to me deeply–as I assume it will also to you–because he addresses the times when we feel like we just cannot pray the way that we desire. May it bring you hope, as it did for me this very day.

“I have no desire to forsake prayer, to live it behind and to busy myself instead with superficial things. But I cannot pray in the way that I am accustomed, in the way that I would desire. But how can I go beyond this dilemma: to pray when I am incapable of praying, to rest when I am incapable of resting, to gaze upon God when I am incapable of gazing? The only answer lies in letting God come to me first, in letting him draw near to meet me in the very place where I feel my poverty and incapacity so deeply. I will not find him in the flight from my weakness to the periphery, where I occupy myself with things to distract my attention from the pain, things with which I try to pass the time that I once spent in prayer and recollection and filial play in his presence. But neither will I find him in the forceful effort by which, with the vigorous activity of my will or my intellect, I try to break through my limitations and to achieve what he is not giving. Rather, I will find him only when I sink down into the very heart of my littleness and incapacity, when I let him approach me, touch me, and cradle me at the heart of my deepest weakness, poverty, and greed.

“And when this happens . . . ah, when this happens! Then the very pain and incapacity and weakness that hemmed me in before become a living sacrament of his presence! The very difficulty and suffering that I experience become a living space of his compassionate love, which sensitizes my heart both to his own goodness as well as to the suffering of my brothers and sisters, which, in him and with him, I tenderly take up into my heart and hold in his presence. My suffering, in other words, becomes a living space of yet deeper encounter and get more profound intimacy. Yes, my poverty becomes but the flip side of his abundant fullness; my incapacity becomes a living space of receptivity to the ceaseless activity of his love; my pain and restlessness in the suffering of my body and my spirit, touched by him and surrendered to him, becomes pervaded by a deeper peace and rest and serenity.

“The pain and incapacity do not disappear, as God does not somehow dissolve my limitations and make possible what, in my very suffering, is now impossible. Rather, he permeates the living space of my consciousness with his presence, such that he meets me in my very littleness and limitation, and makes this something radiant and expansive and beautiful. For, after all, what makes something truly great is not what it looks like on the outside, How much it sparkles in the eyes of the world, but simply how much God there is in it, and how totally and intimately it is held by him, permeated by his presence, and filled with the sweetness of his love and tenderness.”

(Joshua Elzner, The Prayer of the Heart)

Sitting in the darkness

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

And my final excerpt from Fr. Marc Foley’s book, The Context of Holiness:

Acts of faith are expressed in two ways.  The first is our willingness to jump into the darkness, that is, choosing to trust in God’s guidance as we venture into the unknown.  The second is our willingness to sit in the darkness, which is continuing to do God’s will when our emotional resources are depleted and life seems hollow, meaningless and absurd.  . . .

These are the worst times in our life of faith when viewed from a psychological and emotional perspective.  But from a spiritual vantage point, they are potentially the best of times.  For when we continue to do God’s will without emotional support, our love for God and neighbor grows and is purified.