Toolless in Transit
(7/26/23)
[“. . . the Spirit joins in to help our weaknesses; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Herself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. . . .” (Rom 8:26).]
O Lover,
My resolve to keep a vow I made to You several decades ago—to be a praying person for the duration—has generally remained intact, mostly actually, occasionally only aspirationally. The opening of myself to Your reconfiguring of my life around awareness of Your Presence remains both paramount and a work in progress. Such a “Yes!” to You, similar to what Míguel de Molinos (1628-96) called “the single act” (basic intention) and Thomas Keating OCSO (1923-2018) dubbed “consent,” yoked with a desire which can safely be described as relentless, is generally a given in my consciousness.
That said, the plot thickens, what with myriad questions derivative of said pledge of which the following are but examples. What is my response to intermittent inundation by the perceived lightyears of distance between Your immensity and my minuteness, the stunning power of Incarnátio, the singularity of Your Grúnt and mine, and my experience of You, notwithstanding? How could something as shimmering, as encompassing, as wonderful, as your heílsgeschichte, Your cosmic Redítus Project (Eph 1:10), not be simply too good to be true? Are we having fun (progress) already? And most practically, if my guides (e.g., Juan de la Cruz & Meister Eckhart) teach that there is no blueprint, map or method for arriving at unítas Déi, how, concretely, do I proceed, how pray to You, not in general, but here, now?
And then amid this interrogative thicket You ambush me via Paul’s acknowledgement that “we do not know how to pray as we should,” that sometimes all we can generate is groaning (Rom 8:26). You know that I am no stranger to such groaning, O Lover. So often the attempt to bring the persistent desire for You to words or images or something, fails. So frequently I am both reclaiming my “Yes!” to You in general but being stymied in the particulars.
Christianity’s mystical minority report offers much solace at this impasse: the applicability of the Decalogue’s proscription of crafted likenesses of You (Deut 4:15-20) to formulae, images, and/or feelings of present-day prayer is self-evident; Augustine’s Si comprehéndus, non est Déus reminds me that any deity whom I could understand (verbalize, depict or imagine) could not possibly be You; the entire apophática (“without images”) tradition going back to Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500) focuses on prayer out beyond the human faculties of sense, cognition, imagination and affection; the flowering among Juan de la Cruz and his disciples of receptive/infused contemplation, in contrast to active devotions of popular piety, serves to open up to the groaner the horizon of You; being receptive to You, in the words of OCD poet Jessica Powers’ “lift[ing] up your emptiness!” of heart and hands (SPJP, 91; also mind, larynx, and affections), is a state to be celebrated more than lamented. Prayer, loosed from the restraints of human faculties, can and does blossom far beyond what can be depicted or reported. Even Teresa de Jesús’ petitioned “thousand tongues” cannot suffice. Yes, the tradition grants generous attention to my dilemma.
So why then this ambivalence regarding my groanings, this restlessness with the space which just might be precisely where I need to be? Why this fixation on the glass being half empty? Ah yes, O Lover, it is clear that in Your transformation of me, my Chrysalis, remains a work in progress.
But the glass is also more the half full, for, as attested to by all of the above trekkers, the groaning season is when we can experience You, O Lover, praying through us to You. Hitting the wall of our long-revered faculties can become the overture to the ever-widening vistas behind and beyond. The fact that I am aware that what I often experience as a limbo-land is actually Your principal playground does not shield me from worrying about effectiveness, measurability and “progress.” It seems that I still think, oxymoronically and illusorily, that there is a contemplative calipers in my toolkit.
And so, yet again, fíat volúntas túa (“do with me as You will”).
