You have likely heard this saying, “Let go and let God.” Sayings like this kind of irritate me because they are spoken as if everyone knows what it means and how to do it. Perhaps you do know what this means and how to do it. Wonderful. I think for many of us, though, dictums like this may sound good but lack content.
The irritation arises in me because this is the kind of statement we throw around as Christians and none of us actually know how to do this! The sentiment is laudable, I suppose. There are things in our lives that we hang on to tightly, trying to figure out, trying to manage, all on our own. And getting stressed and depressed trying to do so. To invite God into these situations and trust that God can lead us through them – that is wisdom.
But, after I finished writing last week’s post, I felt that, perhaps, I was succumbing to a similar temptation, falling into the trap of cliché when I suggested that you “allow Jesus to be the host” in your prayer. That sounds nice, but what in the world does it mean? How do I do that?
The Image Itself
First of all, the image itself, of a host and a guest in prayer, has been helpful for me. It helps me to relax in prayer if I know that God is already here,
that it is not up to me to say the right words or have the right posture in order to have God present to my prayer. One thing I began doing several years ago is to simply say, “Father, you are already here. Thank you for inviting me to be with you.”
I also try to pray this whenever I speak somewhere. Rather than inviting God to come and be with us, I like to pray, to remind myself and everyone else there, that we are the ones invited. God is already here. It might seem like a small thing, but I know that I need to practice believing this. As much as I adhere to this theologically, my operative posture was, for many years, to deeply wonder if God was present at all, and if not, then what did I need to do to “invite” God to be with me? The “host” posture was alive and well in me.
Waiting and Breathing
Another way to practice being God’s guest in prayer is to pause and wait as I sit down to pray. For years I used to get right at it, pulling out my Bible and journal, reading and writing pages of words, not realizing that I was completely taking over the conversation. (I can still do this. Work in progress). One of the gifts of thinking about other relationships in my life and seeing them alongside my relationship with God is to notice the ways I tend to treat God in conversation in ways I would never think to act with other friends. Perhaps I could pause, and listen.
As I simply sit and wait, noticing my breathing, my body, my emotions, I give God time to initiate a conversation, to draw my mind toward God, to allow myself time to see God already looking at me.
I wrote recently about this dynamic we find in scripture – God’s face shining upon us as we seek God’s face in return. (you can find it here). Psalm 16:8 speaks to this: "I keep my eyes always on the the Lord." Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises invites us to do the same, taking time before we pray to “stand for the length of an Our Father, raising my mind above and considering how God our Lord is looking at me.” [SE 75]
By doing this, we train our minds to believe that God is actually present to us. We live in a time when this is by no means a natural or normal thing to believe. We speak this way in Christian circles all the time. Our theology declares it’s truth but our lived reality, mine at least, has trouble actually believing there is anyone listening to me apart from myself.
Swimming Against the Tide
Robert Walsh SJ, the Jesuit scholar and retreat leader, makes the point that this is not so much the result of a troubled or distracted mind but that we live in an age whose currents all flow in the opposite direction.
Our individualism teaches us to look not to others for truth and wisdom but to ourselves. When we look to ourselves, though, we find the "sophisticated" posture of our age – doubt and skepticism. The one who doubts is more likely the wise one than the one who believes. It is far more "intelligent" in our day to doubt God is present to me than to believe it. At least it is easier to doubt it.
Underneath all this is the skepticism about God’s action in the world. We tend to think that God must be somewhat distant and ambivalent about the world – how else can we live with all the horrors that continue raging. And finally, God is more likely to possess the place of a benevolent (or not) force in our lives rather than an actual person, with the requisite thoughts, feelings and desires. (I know we never admit this – but I find this operating in me often.)
All this cultural air we breathe makes it difficult to believe there is a real God who actually initiates connection with us in prayer. And so we fill up all the space with ourselves.
Marsh writes,
“I focus on my own needs and intentions, my own desires and insights, my own consolations and desolations. Most of my prayer consists of me thinking, or me feeling, me speaking, or me being silent. Some of the time I may pay lip service to my notional commitment to the belief that God enters my prayer as a person. I certainly spend quite a lot of inner time addressing something I call God. But in fact, this internal rehearsal of my experience tends to swing between two modes of speech: either I talk to myself or I talk to my idea of God.”[1]
It pains me to admit how often my experience aligns with this.
Alas, what are we to do? Pause, breathe, wait. Remind yourself that God is the One who has invited you as guest to sit and be loved. Speak it out loud. Wait for God's invitation. Pay attention to what comes.
Thanks for reading. Until next Thursday.
[1] Robert Walsh, SJ. https://www.jesuitinstitute.org/the-way/looking-at-god-looking-at-you.
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