Prayer as longing

 

In “The Way of the Pilgrim” a mystical seeker sets out on journey to discover how to pray “ceaselessly”, to keep the presence of God that close.  It seems like an impossible task given the many distractions and struggles in life.  On their long pilgrimage, just when they are ready to give up, they meet a teacher who offers a key to ceaseless prayer.  Prayer grows out of our deepest longings. To pray ceaselessly one needs only to be tenderly aware of the longings.

The incompleteness through which our longings take form, all the ways we fail and strive and hope, yet despair, is also the way that God’s presence can become known to us.  When we experience the poverty of the material world to satisfy our endless needs for pleasure, security, immortality, a window into the divine opens. We are touched by the presence of something sustaining us that is more infinite and deeper than our own self-efforting and egoism.

There is an experience of power in the powerlessness to satisfy our longings. James Finley uses the image of a newborn to capture this.  The infant helpless and utterly dependent on the care of others for survival grips a finger with their tiny hand and commands love and care. Our longing is like that tiny hand reaching out for a finger to hold. What else can we do when all seems helpless but pray to the Divine to give us what we need in this moment to meet life’s demands? In our silence and sincerity, the grace of understanding and wisdom to discern right action can flow.

My heart aches with longing.  Longing to receive and give more love, longing for my mother to be well cared for in her old aging, longing for more ease in each day. At times I am exhausted by all that I long for, all that remains incomplete and undone in my life, all that I cannot control. When I can see my incompleteness, fear, overwhelm as a doorway into the divine, something shifts inside of me.  My longings my prayers opening up the door to a relationship with the divine, I find a little more clarity, courage, and strength to face what life is asking of me.