Have received some e-mails. One of them challenged me to go deeper and be more helpful. So I have prayed that I could do just that. Thanks, always, for the feedback whether on the blog (hard to negotiate) or to my e-mail.
The core of the complaint was a need for a "methodology" and so, here is my next attempt. It will probably stretch out over several days (or weeks?). I am afraid this is better suited for a book and my blog is not so well planned out as that...
My personal definition of prayer has been (for over thirty years) "communication seeking communion." I would still hold that to be my own understanding, with this caveat, communion is fleeting and will only truly happen on the other side.
So, methodology. There are two aspects to the spiritual life. The passive (what God does) and the active (what we do). The former is in the realm of grace and supernature. We have no control over it. God can do as God sees fit. So God can make things happen fast (e.g. Paul's conversion to Jesus) or slow (e.g. uncle Agnostic coming to faith at age 87). The active aspect is what we call discipleship. That has to do with our disciplines: prayer, work, study, community. It is all about human effort and it is all about our choices and behaviors.
This is quite Biblical. When the Lord delivers Israel in battle, the men still fight (kill and die). When the Lord builds the walls of Jerusalem, the men still carry bricks and build the walls. When God leads the people out of slavery, the people still have to walk (and walk and walk). You get the point.
So in prayer there is what God is doing and what we are doing. The life of prayer is one long process, but like human development there are stages. A stage is not isolated and complete. You do not wake up one day and say, "I am no longer an infant, I am a toddler!" Or, "Wow, I am glad childhood is over and I am a young adult." And just like the rest of life, things happen to us and our choices impact how quickly we progress. Some of it is under our control and lots of it isn't.
The spiritual life is seen to progress in three stages: the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive. The purgative is the initial process of purification. It has to do with God taking away our satisfaction with the life of the flesh (worldliness). We are no longer happy partying, or acquiring stuff, or playing. We find life less enjoyable and we want "more." God is about the work of releasing us from the purely material and temporary. But there is also another aspect, our work. [Just to introduce: the illuminative is a stage of wisdom, divine insight. This is the holy person who not only does good, but also understands deeply. The unitive is that oneness which transcends our understanding. It is sometimes called Dark Light. It is hard to understand, but don't worry, most of us will not deal with that advanced stage in this life!]
In reality, it is all one single process and there are certainly moments or aspects of all three going on. But, in general, the initial stage, purgative, is probably where the vast majority of us spend our entire life. (pause...) [My own ego led me to think (in my 20's) that I would be better than that. I was convinced that I could attain excellence because, well, I am me and I am not satisfied with second best. I have since come to see the error of that!]
[remember that God is at work, too] The purgative way is "purgatory" on earth. It is literally being purified from sin. It is the process of learning to turn from idols (false gods and the demonic/satanic are equated by Paul) to the living God. It includes turning from sin and immorality. It means no more doing evil, doing bad. For example, the basic moral issues found in the ten commandments or various lists of Jesus and Paul. But it continues up the ladder. It is learning to worship God and not myself, or my family, or my country, or my church, or my reputation, or my appetites, or my desires, etc., etc. Go back to the Garden. God lays it out for us, but there are limits. Eat this. Don't eat that. Once we eat that, we are in exile. The world of exile is where we all abide. So we are free to choose what we want. Which means we are enslaved to what we want and choose. In order to pray we have to break the bonds which keep us from God.
So prayer in this initial stage is going to be different than in later stages. There is discipline involved. We have to sit down and be quiet. It takes effort to say the words, to read the books, to try to think about God and not be distracted by our life pursuits. We have to be brutally honest in self assessment. You can't be sleeping around, or ripping people off, or drinking/drugging yourself half conscious and have a good prayer life. You can't be a liar, cheat or thief. You can't be violent, angry, destructive. You can't. You can't. You can't.... Which, of course, leads many to give up the enterprise. Too many rules. Too much negativity! But that is the nature of ground work. You can't fix up the house if it is cluttered and dirty. Gotta clean before you paint, right? Gotta pick up the debris before you put down a new floor.
So 'to begin' in prayer is to turn from blatant sins. Over time you will be free from most of them. Then you look to less obvious sins, the subtle things which you never thought of as being bad. And while you do this, you look "up" (figuratively) to the Father God Whom you seek. You acknowledge a need for Him. You admit your brokeness. You even admit you don't love Him all that much and sometimes you would prefer to do the bad things you are trying not to do. But always, the first and central goal, is to meet with HIM! The practices of morality will stir up a hunger for the Good, the Beautiful, the Holy.
For the early beginner, much of prayer is a foreign land. It is a place where one sometimes goes through the motions without a firm grasp of the reality. And it can be frustrating. I would also add that when we slide back into more grievous sins, we can also return to this state of spirit, mind and heart. So one part of the methodology is morality. Another is the knowledge that this is a discipline. It is something we must do every day. And it is a long process. Just like blogging on this is going to be a long process. Please be patient. Feedback is welcome. God bless
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