The Praying Life: Seeking God in All Things - Softcover

Douglas, Deborah Smith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819219363 ISBN 13: 9780819219367

Verlag: Morehouse Publishing, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

An invitation to a more participatory relationship with God through the power of prayer.

Nothing is more remarkable―or more beautiful―than an ordinary life, quietly transformed by prayer. This is the life that Deborah Smith Douglas chronicles―and invites readers into―in her lovely collection of essays and poems. Drawing from events as simple as breakfast with her five-year-old daughter or waiting in line at the post office, Douglas shows how a loving relationship with God can be nurtured in small ways every day. “Without my ever really intending it,” she writes, “my own life―as a wife and mother, daughter and friend―has taught me to see God hidden in the ordinary, to watch for God under the surface of things as a fisherman watches for fish.”

Woven into each of these pieces, along with reflections on the author’s experiences, are guidelines for readers watching for God in their own unique―and ordinary―lives. Divided into four sections―Ways of Praying, Healing, Spiritual Companionship, and Fruitfulness―The Praying Life will help Christians move from awareness of God’s presence in their lives to a deep participation in God’s love.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Deborah Smith Douglas is a spiritual director, retreat leader, and author whose work has appeared in such publications as Commonweal, Spiritual Life, Weavings, and Christianity and the Arts, from which this collection has been drawn. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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THE PRAYING LIFE

SEEKING GOD IN ALL THINGS

By Deborah Smith Douglas

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2003 Deborah Smith Douglas
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8192-1936-7

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: Ways of Praying
1. Be of Few Words: Her Majesty's War on Verbosity
2. How I Pray Now: Sometimes, No Words at All
3. New Wine: Praying the Scriptures
4. To See with the Eyes of the Heart
5. Becoming Like Children
6. The Examen Reexamined
Part 2: Healing
7. Touched by God
8. Nursing Home Visit
9. Broken Pieces: In the Fractioning, We Are Made Whole
10. Do You Want to Be Healed?
11. Wounded and Healed
12. Grief on Ice
Part 3: Spiritual Companionship
13. No Greater Love: Reclaiming Christian Friendship
14. Between Friends
15. Angels
Part 4: Fruitfulness
16. Of Woodstoves, Burnout, and the Living Flame of Love
17. Sparks Among the Stubble: You Can Catch Fire
18. Vine and Branches: Abiding in Christ
19. Ash Wednesday
Notes
Source Notes

CHAPTER 1

Be of Few Words

Her Majesty's War on Verbosity

There I was, standing in line at the post office again, my arms full of lettersto send home to the United States from Scotland, when the handwritten noticecaught my eye. Substantially reduced postal rates would be available for theholidays, the Royal Mail announced, for unsealed greeting cards containing nomore than five words in addition to the printed message and the sender's name.

Five words? Five measly words? Heavens, why bother? I wondered to myself,rearranging the slippery stacks of thick (extra-postage-required) envelopes Iwas carrying. What on earth could one say that is worth saying in five words orless?

I beguiled my time in the queue by pondering this weighty question. "MerryChristmas—Happy New Year" would of course fit within the required brevity. Butunless the cards' printed message was more than usually beside the point, thiswould surely be redundant, as well as being rather obvious, and unimaginative inthe extreme. There was the urgently telegraphic and classically melodramatic"All discovered—flee at once," moderately unorthodox as Christmas greetings gobut unarguably five words. The awkwardly banal "All well here; how there?" alsobriefly occurred to me, but on the whole I felt the five-word limit reflected astinginess unbecoming the Royal Mail and dismissed the matter from my mind.

Then, unbidden, my memory produced the haunting final message of Etty Hillesum,scribbled on a scrip of paper and tossed from the window of a train bound forthe death camps: "Tell them we left singing."

Five words. Five measly words. Containing whole worlds of sorrow, love, andcourage.

So. Maybe it was possible to communicate meaningfully in five words or less.Christmas greetings aside, perhaps there were moments in human experience—andinstances in the English language—where the mot juste was just five.

I posted my letters (paying a shocking penalty for the privilege of verbosity)and walked back across town, muttering to myself and counting on my fingers,intrigued as by a crossword puzzle by Her Britannic Majesty's pentagrammicchallenge. I began rummaging in my rag-bag English-major mind for quotations,recalling Elizabeth Barrett Browning's parallel fives: "How do I love thee? Letme count the ways" (which would presumably have cost her double), and Emilia'sanguished "Who hath done this deed?" from Othello III:5, and Desdemona's dying(and even more condensed) reply: "Nobody: I myself. Farewell."

I was hooked. All the rest of that day and well into the following week, I foundmyself weighing the treasures of the English language in postal scales. Icounted (under my breath) the words of my favorite poems, of famous quotes, ofconversations heard in the street.

Then I turned my search to Scripture and was overwhelmed by fives. I wasastounded to discover, leafing though my Bible, how many of the passages I hadmarked over the years happened to consist of five words. Many of the mostpowerful promises in all of Holy Writ are wholly writ in fives. (In Englishtranslation at any rate; whether the original Hebrew and Greek are even moreausterely economical, I do not, alas, know.)

God's word to Moses by the light of the burning bush, "I will be with you";Jesus' triumphant "I have overcome the world"; and Mary Magdalene's ringingEaster witness "I have seen the Lord" all are cinquefoil, as it were.

So many of Jesus' words are familiar to us in clusters of five: "I am the goodshepherd," "Your faith has healed you," "Rise and have no fear," "My peace Ileave you." The Hebrew scriptures as well bloom with five-petaled flowers: "Iknow you by name," "I will send an angel," "Love is strong as death." Similarly,the vision of Saint John at Patmos—the insight that "death shall be no more"—managesto express one of our faith's essential convictions in five littlewords. And there is the divine economy of "light shines in the darkness" and"this Jesus God raised up." Perhaps my own personal favorite, one wonder ofbrevity set like a gem in another, is "Jesus said to her, Mary.'"

It is not only blessed assurance that comes in quinary, of course. Think of theserpent in Eden, beguiling Eve with "You will be like God." Or one of Abraham'sleast golden moments when, surrounded by lascivious Egyptians, he whispered toSarah, "Say you are my sister."

Admonitions seem naturally to lend themselves to pentamerous compression:Scripture positively brims with five-leaved proverbs and aphorisms: "Go and sinno more," "Serve the Lord with gladness." Similarly, some of the poignantprayers in the Bible consist of five words: "Lord, have mercy on me," "Makehaste to help me," "I believe; help my unbelief!" And Thomas, unforgettable,utterly unambiguous, "My Lord and my God."

Desolation as well seems to fit into quintupled phrases: the devastating "allthe disciples forsook him" could be a Holy Week meditation all by itself, as ofcourse could Jesus' cry from the cross, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" And for me,one of the most perfect visual brushstrokes in the Gospels is the detail fromthe story of the disciples on the Emmaus road: "They stood still, looking sad."

The more I browsed, the more I came up with handfuls of fives. Her Majesty'slimitation, which at first had seemed so arbitrary and unreasonable—soungenerous—began to appear almost recklessly extravagant. After all, so manypowerful sayings are compacted into four words—Mother Julian's visionary "Allshall be well," for instance. And how could Peter have borne another syllable inJesus' piercing "Do you love me?"

Come to think of it, some deeply significant affirmations, invitations,promises, dramas, and blessings consist of three words: "So Abram went," "He isrisen!" "Come and see," "Go in peace," "Jesus is Lord."

Or two! I recalled how moved I had been, on...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Morehouse Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0819219363
• ISBN 13: 9780819219367
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 116
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar