the Pitt 46: the Missional-orientation of Prayer

So after our sojourn together considering the missional-orientation of worship, we now turn to prayer.  To my thinking, I suppose the most missionally-oriented prayer practice is the practice of the Presence of God.  Our emerging Pittsburgh core have taken up re-reading some chapters from a Practicing His Presence book that has both Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach's journal entries on their own movement along these trajectories in how to start practicing and what to do when we encounter difficulty. You can actually check our the book complied in Lawrence's name here for free.

For myself, our endeavour in this conversation has helped me re-discovered one of my favorite habits.  I just have to shake my head sometimes that I get off track on what I consider the basics...but no condemnation, I change my mind and return back to it.  If you aren't familiar with them, Brother Lawrence was a 17th Century monk in France. He lived a very godly life by walking in what he called "The Practice of the Presence of God." Part of his walk was connection to Christ in the midst of all circumstances and activities.  Frank Laubach was a missionary in the Philippines in the 1930s and 40s and took up the same endeavour.  

Now, as I have sought to practice this myself, I have a few admissions. 

• Admission #1: I feel like a fail a lot in this. 
• Admission #2: It can be difficult! 
• Admission #3: I have done it and given up and taken it up several times, yet conviction remains that practicing the Presence is quite possibly the most foundational discipline a follower of Jesus can engage in. 
• Admission #4: My perspective is that God has changed me/shaped me and continues to form me and my life with His very Presence.  

Both Laubach and Brother Lawrence is very forthright that 'practicing His Presence' is hard, at times clumsy, yet so enriching.  Also, Lawrence was so humble and really it wasn't until he was 55 that he began practicing the Presence.  So, it's never too late to devote yourself to Him, to relate to our Living God with your whole being, your whole life, every detail.  I love how this connects a kind of mindful-prayerfulness and even if it is at-times difficult, it's actually pretty simple, targeting a refreshingly simple awareness and attentiveness outside of our self which can enable us to notice and act for others in the mundane, everyday way that's not flashy.

 

I've been reading a book this summer from the Jesuit priest William Barry called Seek My Face.  Barry makes the point that increasingly intimate conversation is only a manifestation of something else that underlies it - prayer as relationship; which moves toward something we've wrestled with recently: the relational-orientation of God.  So, obviously, I think this is worth exploring and embracing.

OK, some questions: How do you connect/relate with God? What do you do that makes you feel most connected to God?  If prayer is relating you God or the activity of a relationship with God, and conversation is only one manifestation or consequence of that, can we imagine what other manifestations of our relationship with God might be that would connect and be understood as "prayer?"    What does God being intimately present with us mean for us?  Can it mean that "mere conversations" that we have between 2 or more of us are infused with or manifestations of a greater prayer, i.e., can our conversations with each other be "prayerful/prayer-filled" without reverting to a now-we're-praying and now-we-aren't-praying queues?  Have you ever practiced Frank Laubach's "flash prayers"?  Brother Lawrence notes that he was more at home and at one with God in the every day things of life, than even when he was doing “religious things”. Have you ever felt that way?  If that is true, then what is the role of “religious things/times” in our lives?  What kind of hope comes from seeing God as always being present with us?

[to be continued...]