Eucaview

Mantra as prayer

Our guest at Thirst the other night was Ruth Fowler, co-founder of the Australian Christian Meditation Community. She was teaching us about the story of 20th Century mystic John Main (pictured) and how he used mantras in prayer.

To pray using a mantra means to pray with just one word, gently repeating it in silent simplicity over and over from the beginning to the end of the prayer. The mantra we used was the Aramaic word Maranatha, which means 'Come Lord Jesus', but the cognitive meaning is not as important as the practice of using a repeated word to calm the mind and then the heart so we can be still in the presence of God.

To try and describe the experience I would say it is one of centering and moving to deeper levels within myself

John Main learnt to pray with Mantra from a Malaysian Hindu. It was only later in his life that he discovered similar contemplative prayers already within the Christian tradition.

One of Ruth's comments that stayed with me is what she had to say about it as particularly Christian form of prayer.

Do we or don't we know how to do this?

At my last church when the youth leaders and ministers were planning our evening services one of the most popular topics was “How to pray”. We would return to it again and again and always receive positive feedback when we did.

Why?

Was it becasue people like praying and connecting with God’s Spirit and want to talk about it?

Or was it becasue they don’t know how to engage God’s Spirit and they feel uncomfortable praying?

Or Both? And if its is both (which is my hunch) why is it that people can feel so strongly that connecting with God’s Spirit is important yet find it hard to know how to pray when it comes to church?

Easter 5: Gold and Dross

Readings from Psalms and 1 Peter this week both talk about living stones. There have been several times this week when I have felt more like dross than gold. Maybe that is why this quote from Bruce Prewer really resonated with me:

"Our best efforts are veined with impurities,

yet our worst days have flecks of glory that we might not notice."

Here's hoping you notice the flecks of gold.

The image of the nugget is from the US Geological Survey

An Easter Poem

My heart was an egg;

valued, protected,

held.

Then I was crushed;

my shell broken.

Embryonic fluid cried out the cracks.

I lost my boundaries;

my gold lay unprotected.

Still, I was treasured.

Love did what the horsemen could not.

God's gift is not magic - a perfect egg, cells intact.

The miracle is life can grow new from shells cracked.

Cracked Egg image sourced from Sister Monk Harem.

"In it only for the money"

I am concerned about the content of some of the Ads by Google on my weblog. Obviously I don't know which ads you can see at the time you are reading this, but one called "The 7 Great Prayers" promising an "abundant and blessed life" has been appearing regularly.

These ads are from a Paul McManus (pictured left with his family) who is interested in:

• Getting closer to God,
• Attracting financial blessings to himself,
• His family's health, wealth & happiness, and
• (to summarise a fair slab of his sales pitch) Recouping a reported investment of $200,000 in his books and what he likes to call "the most powerful prayer CDs ever created".

So just who is this God to whom McManus wants to be closer in the first dot point? Well a quick perusal of priorities 2 to 4 seems to give a pretty fair indication it is a God of financial wealth for self.

I am sensitive about it at the moment because this weekend I had to put up with people close to me complaining that all ministers were in the church only for the money. The irony was I was told this in a room where all the adults working full time would have been earning more than me.

Holy Thursday: Love

Like Peter wanting to wash Jesus' feet, rather than have his own washed by Jesus, George Herbert's poem "Love" describes Love as the host requiring us to surrender to love's hospitality when we feel unlovely.

Here is the poem (which I found from Peggy Rosenthal's Praying the Gospels through Poetry). We used in place of a 'prayer of thanksgiving' before our communion meal at church tonight:

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

from my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

if I lacked anything.

“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here.”

Love said, “You shall be he.”

“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on thee.”

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame

go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”

“My dear, them I will serve.”

“You must sit down,” says love, “and taste my meat.”

So I did sit and eat.

The image of Jesus as Host is from "The Last Supper" at the Eastcatholic Church in Hridky in Slovakia

Lent 5: Prayer

Jesus,

We pray that you would clear our eyes, so we could see that we see things rightly - yet you rub mud in our eyes.

We pray that you would clear our minds, so we could know that we know thing rightly - yet your fill our minds with confusing parables.

We pray that you would clear our hearts, so we would feel that we love you rightly - yet you send us to our neighbor and tell us to give our hearts away.

Gracious Jesus, may your gospel penetrate our hard-hearted, thick-headed, blind-sighted ungraciousness. Like the man born blind, bring us to the point where we can bow before you in worship and make you Lord of our lives. Amen.

Christ Healing the Blind by El Greco, c1570