When we quiet ourselves in prayer, we inevitably sense an inner wilderness at times. “As soon as we are alone, without people to talk with, books to read, TV to watch, or phone calls to make, an inner chaos opens up in us.” Prayer is the crucible where we confront the motions of our inner life—the fears that haunt, the desires that drive, the sorrows that ache, the dreams that long, the shame that sickens. Thomas Merton speaks of what he calls the “paschal rhythm of prayer.” By that he means our prayer experience corresponds to Jesus’ death and resurrection. “Sometimes prayer, meditation, and contemplation are ‘death’—a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance.”
This assertion reveals why we resist quietness and prayer. We cannot stand the thought of facing our emptiness. On a fall prayer retreat, I wrote the following words in my journal to express poetically the barrenness I felt:
The wetlands are cold with November wind.
Bright yellows have faded to ochre dull,
Vibrant crimsons to nondescript rust.
The birds have fled all the degeneration.
Only I remain to feel the wasteland.
While love, joy, and peace may fill us at times, we certainly do not have such experiences continuously or even close to it. I had a dramatic conversion in which the nearness of God was so exciting that I slept only a few hours a night and almost forgot to eat for a week. A couple of years later, however, I was telling a group of people about the peace and joy they would have if they accepted Jesus. Afterward, I felt hypocritical because I knew my experience did not line up with what I promised others. I had accepted a hyped-up message that gave me unreal expectations. When this happens, we interpret any emptiness as our own shortcoming instead of understanding that God calls us to walk by faith. Being unfulfilled has no place in our paradigm. While it is true that our choices can lead to an impoverished inner world, if we confess our wrongdoing and turn from it, we may be sure God will forgive. Nevertheless, even after we have done so, we will sometimes experience the inner wasteland.
We must first descend into this “death” in order to come to the end of ourselves. Paul says he and his companions had a trial so severe they “received the sentence of death” in themselves. Its purpose was to cause them to rely “on God who raises the dead” rather than themselves (2 Cor. 1:8-9). Similarly, God brings us to the inner wasteland so that all human confidence will vanish and all self-effort cease. He desires to release our grip from the false hopes to which we cling so that we may rest in him alone.
excerpted from WHISPERS THAT DELIGHT:Building A Listening-Centered Prayer Life
Copyright © 2008 Andrew T. Hawkins
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