"Ora et labora": the ploughman ploughs and prays. Work, play, food, sleep and prayer interact and intertwine.
I always hesitate to write here of personal prayer habits,
as there are so many who are vastly more advanced in such matters than I: more
experienced, more assiduous, more structured, and certainly closer to God. In
Charles Morgan’s The Judge’s Story,
Vivian, the Judge’s young married ward, describes her conscience as “a swerving
beast” that has a tendency to shy at steep hills. For those whose prayer-life
is as swerving a beast as mine is, though, I will set out briefly what I do,
and what I pray it may be granted me to do beyond that: perhaps it can be of
use to someone.
I used to “say my prayers” at night, in bed, before going to
sleep, until I found that sleep usually overtook me in the middle of the Second
Collect., which meant that a large number of friends in trouble went
unprayed-for. So I changed it to the morning, after waking and before rising:
reality may still be a little fuzzy, but one is at least heading in the
direction of sustained wakefulness. At night, I still say the Lord’s Prayer and
the Second and Third Collect for Evensong before reposing in the arms of
Morpheus.
In the morning, then, I begin with the Lord’s Prayer and the
Second and Third Collects for Morning Prayer: the third especially makes a
wonderful stand-alone prayer for the beginning of the day. I then go on to pray
for the human race, that we may find a way to diminish our numbers on this
planet by about half, without catastrophe. (A long-term desire, obviously, but
nothing is beyond God’s power.) I then pray for the men and women in the jihadi
movements the world over, that they may come to know that God, the only true
God, is a God of love and understanding and not of vengeance and violence. I
pray for Valdimir Putin, that he may come to the knowledge and love of God, and
bring his country into the friendship of nations. Finally, I pray for all those
in governments (not excluding The D*nald), asking God to grant them “a
listening heart, discernment, and charity”. (A note on these prayers: I have written here before that I am
continually struck and dismayed by the fact that in no church I have been to
have our enemies and/or adversaries been prayed for.)
After these “public” prayers, I pray for my loved ones, and
for friends and acquaintances who (as the Prayer Book puts it) “in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity” – always in the same order, which acts as a
mnemonic, so that I forget no one. As intercessions are philosophically
difficult (I’ve written about this before: one worries about Huck Finn’s
fish-hooks), I pray that they may be brought to the knowledge and love of God,
and that if it be His will, He may “relieve their infirmities”. I pray for
children, stepchildren and grandchildren, and earnestly beseech the Father to
bring to His knowledge and love those who not only are in need but do not know
it.
Finally, I come to myself. What to pray for? After years of
practice, I’ve come to begin by asking for the courage and discernment to face
and confess my “manifold sins and wickedness”: as Fr Jean-Kamel puts it, all
good things begin with housecleaning.
After that beginning, I ask to be taught to pray – to pray
all the time, whether one is praying or not: what Carthusians calll “the prayer
of the heart”. To pray simply but all the time: a sort of cross between Brother
Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence
of God, Don Camillo, and a hermit of the Charterhouse. Obviously, to do
this in the midst of the world isn’t easy, but if you get into the habit of
frequent little reminders, in the gaps of activity, I’m beginning to sense that
eventually it may come. Especially if I remember to ask the Holy Spirit to open
the shutters, windows and doors of my soul so that He may enter at will.
There is a third item, after housecleaning and prayer. I beg
the Father to grant that I may also be “an instrument of His peace” – and it’s
with that wonderful prayer, often erroneously attributed to St Francis (in
reality it is by an anonymous early-20th-century Frenchman), that I
will end here as I do at getting up:
O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace:
Where there is hatred, let me bring love;
Where there is offence, let me bring forgiveness;
Where there is discord, let me bring unity;
Where there is error, let me bring truth;
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith;
Where there is despair, let me bring hope;
Where there is darkness, let me bring the Light;
Where there is sadness, let me bring Joy;
O Master, let me not seek so much
to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
in forgetting ourselves that we find,
in forgiving that we are forgiven,
in dying that we are resurrected to life eternal.
Amen.
P.S. During the day, the Angelus at noon and a crucifix over
my desk help me not to wander off too far……
Images: the ploughman is from the blog lavenderandlovage.com; the painting above is Jean-François Millet's "L'Angélus" (1859)
