What
is prayer? The unbidden Presence.
My
first memory of “there!” is at about the age of 14. I am coming of age
physically, experiencing the torment of hormones. My body and mind are filled
with nameless longing and restlessness, a yearning for more, an urge to see and
taste and experience the world, feelings that in some sense never again left
me. These longings were the arrival of the Holy Spirit in a very real sense. At
14 years, I feel I am on the outside of the gate somehow, and that never left
either. And always, I sense You there, outside the gate.
(I
did not know then that Simon Weil refused to become Catholic because Catholics
taught that only Catholics can be saved, and she was convinced that Christ
would be outside the gate, with those who had failed to be saved. She wanted to
be there too, where she thought Christ would be. It is one of the most
beautiful thoughts I know of, and when I came to it in my early adulthood, I
resonated.)
It
was at this age that I first remember standing on the porch railing, in the early
spring, as the snow thawed, watching the sunset unfold over the still-bare
trees up on the hilltop next to the Dogtown bar and tap, across the street from
Mr and Mrs. Beecher’s gas station where I worked weekends trying to save money
for college. The sunset was rich in depth, velvety, green, blue, violet,
orange. The trees were silhouetted there, no leaves yet, just the faintest
outlines of the new buds, in the changing air. Then, there, I came into the
present moment. The trees. There. Thought stopped. I looked around me with no
thought. I sensed that there was something “there” there! There was Presence
here. There was Reality all around me. Here, around me now, was the Ultimate.
Always. Joy. Exhilaration. My heart was full, and I never wanted to leave this
place. Right here, I was transfixed by the Nameless Presence! I stood in awe
and joy, no words or way of knowing what this meant.
This
experience returned to me many times. It was often available to console, heal,
and transform. Near as my breath, always, the Divine Present. This was too
vivid to be imagined. It was, in fact, pre-imagination, more like a direct
apprehension of the Real here and now. Beyond words, these words so poor at
saying it.
I did not know what that meant. I had no one to guide me in this thing. Over time, it became faint sometimes, but then at other times I secretly found this Presence, and rested there, not fully recognizing it as connected to my religious faith. Most of the time I was obsessed with anxieties, fears, phobias, longings, revenge fantasies, nameless anger. I was unable to “be” in the Presence. But when I did, joy was there.
I did not know what that meant. I had no one to guide me in this thing. Over time, it became faint sometimes, but then at other times I secretly found this Presence, and rested there, not fully recognizing it as connected to my religious faith. Most of the time I was obsessed with anxieties, fears, phobias, longings, revenge fantasies, nameless anger. I was unable to “be” in the Presence. But when I did, joy was there.
Life
became too busy too early for me. I was a young workaholic I guess, or at least
an activity-acholic. Always doing. Too many years were spent busy, at things
that were always pressing, all spent “away from this home.” I never really
fully recovered. In some sense I missed out on the best of life by missing out
often on this ever-present Present.
Even
now, though, I sometimes return to (or am hurled into) the present. And all becomes real. All
falls away. The Zen writers describe moments like this as a beginning. The
mystics talk about it as a beginning too. A place to rest, at the edge of a
great journey. I am not sure I have done any of that journey. I have surely
wandered the desert, though. After 40 years of my own wandering, I now can
grasp a story of 40 years wandering, looking for a promised land.
