Turning to Prayer
  RICHARD  HARRIES
MOWBRAY
LONDON & OXFORD
  Contents
Preface   page
1 Calling out  1
2 Marvellous are thy works  14
3  What is all this juice ad all this joy?  30
4 Know then thyself  44
5 Asking for things to happen  59
6  God as friend and God within    76
7 Prayer and the feelings  91
8 Attending with love  105
9  Politics, poetry and prayer  119
10 Waiting in silence  131
By the same author
  Prayers of Hope

  Preface
FOR many people prayer is a very odd activity.
Though they are reluctant to give up belief in God
altogether they find the idea of communing with
God or asking for his help so strange that they
cannot pray with any real degree of conviction.
This little book has two aims. It tries to answer
some of the questions which arise in the mind of
anyone who thinks about prayer and it offers some
practical suggestions on how to pray. The hope
is that for some anyway prayer will become a more
natural and real part of their lives.
  My debts to those who have helped me over the
years are too many to list but I would like to thank
in particular Peter Wheatley and Edna Capron for
reading the manuscript and William Purcell for
suggesting the book in the first place.
  I am grateful to R. S. Thomas for permission to
use his poem Kneeling and part of <1Tthe Priest>1 and to
the trustees of the estate of D. H. Lawrence for
permission to use the poems <1Stand Up, The Work>1
<1of Creation and Thought.>1
  <1Richard Harries>1
  Fulham, March 1978
                     <1For my parents>1
        <1who have given me much love and encouragement>1

TO CEASE TO PRAY WOULD BE TO CEASE TO BELIEVE.
(Peter Baelz, <1Prayer and Providence>1)

I OFTEN THINK ONE OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO PRAY, BEFORE
ONE WORKS - AND THEN LEAVE IT TO THE LORD. (D. H.
Lawrence, letter to Ernest Collings, 24th Feb. 1913 in <1The leters of>1
<1D. H. Lawrence,>1 ed. Aldous Huxley, Heinemann).

TO PRAY AND TO TEACH OTHERS TO PRAY, THIS IS ALL.
GIVEN THIS EVERYTHING ELSE FOLLOWS. (Bede Frost).

  Callinq out
IN a short story by Albert Camus a ship sinks and the cook
finds himself in the water. Later he described the incident
in these words
  'The night was dark, the waters are vast, and, besides,
  don't swim well; I was afraid. Just then I saw a light
  in the distance and recognized the church of the good
  Jesus in Iguape. So I told the good Jesus that at his
  procession I would carry a hundred-pound stone on
  my head if he saved me. You don't have to believe
  me, but the waters became calm and my heart too. I
  swam slowly, I was happy, and I reached the shore.
  Tomorrow I'll keep my promise.'1
The cook tells his story to an engineer on the eve of a
religious procession. Just before they separate the cook asks
the engineer, D'Arrast, a question.
  'And you, have you never called out, made a promise?'
  'Yes, once, I believe'
  'In a shipwreck?'
  'If you wish.' And D'Arrast pulled his hand away
  roughly 2
  Both the simple cook and the sophisticated engineer, a
non-believer, had called out. Calling out is the most basic of
all human prayers. It is tempting to say that everyone has
  1
at some time cried out in need to something beyond them-
selves. It is often said for example that in battle there are
no atheists, implying that if terrified enough we all resort to
prayer. But this is not quite true. There are some, however
few, whose atheism has such strength and consistency that
they refuse to allow themselves to pray even when despe-
rate. I once had a letter from a girl, taking exception to the
widely held view that fear makes all of us pray at one time
or another, which said 'A true atheist has no real recourse
in times of stress other than his own inner strength and
loved ones. I have been guided through my worst
experiences by the love of my friends.' This attitude has
great nobility and deserves our respect but it is very much
the exception. The fact is that most people have a vague
belief that 'there must be something there' and in times of
anguish or danger find themselves turning in desperation to
a source of help which, they half believe and half don't
believe, exists. The feeling behind such prayers can be
summed up in the words of one of the most widely sung of
all hymns <1'Abide with me'.>1
  When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
  Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
So although a self-sufficient atheism must certainly be
respected, there is a sense in which calling out is natural to
us. Whether our reasons are good or bad our instinctive
reaction is to ask for help.
  It may seem strange to begin with this most primitive
form of prayer. In recent years many people, including
Christians, have been rediscovering more  'advanced' types
of meditation and contemplation. Moreover, the anguished
cry to God that he will do something poses so many
questions of a theological and philosophical nature -- even
more than other types of prayer. These questions will have
to be discussed and other allegedly more sophisticated
forms of prayer will be considered. But the prayer born of
desperation reveals something so fundamental about our
  2
attempt to relate ourselves to the infinite that it is impor-
tant to consider it first.
  Because the tendency to call out to God in our distress is
so natural it is worth asking why some people try not to do
it at all and why the rest of us don't do it more often.
There seem to be four reasons why we block the inclination
to pray in this way. In considering these reasons it may be
possible to discover just why this kind of prayer is not only
instinctive but crucial.
  The first reason why people hesitate to pray even when
they need help is because of a false understanding of what
it means to be dependent on God. They feel it is childish.
They will probably have heard sermons emphasizing man's
dependence on God which did not make it clear in what
sense the word was being used. For growing up as a human
being means becoming independent. To be mature means
standing on one's own feet and taking responsibility for
one's life. In human relationships we judge that a man of
fifty who still does just what his mother wills for him has
failed to grow up. So it is no use urging people to be depen-
dent on God when they associate dependence with
immaturity. If there is a true sense in which we are
dependent on God this must be defined and distinguished
from infantile forms of dependence.
  God is the creative source of all that exists. Without him
there would be nothing; and what is here exists only
because he wills it to be so. He is,  in the words of the old
evening hymn, the 'strength and stay of all creation.' We
are dependent on God as we are dependent on the earth
and sun and air; on the blood that flows in our veins and
the electrical charges that pulse in our brain. Dependence,
in this sense, is not childishness but reality.
  For the atheist self-sufficiency is a moral ideal. In the
story of Camus already quoted the cook eventually
collapses under the weight of the stone and the engineer
picks it up and carries it for him. We are aware of the irony
of the non-believer helping the believer fulfil his religious
vow. But the engineer does not continue in the procession.
  3
Instead he takes the stone to the cook's hut, finding a
strange new happiness as he does so. Camus writes 'With
eyes closed he joyfully acclaimed his own strength; he
acclaimed, once again, a fresh beginning in life.'3 This
clearly expresses the moral ideal of the atheist for whom
the only proper and dignified thing to do is to carry the
burden of life oneself. But for the believer it is not quite so
simple as that. If one believes in God, in an all-supporting,
all-encompassing, all-pervading source of all that exists; if
one judges that source to be the fount of all that is good,
valuable and marvellous -- then one cannot say that self-
sufficiency, per se, is the highest moral ideal. The
appropriate response to life will involve both assuming
responsibility for one's actions and at the same time
allowing the source of one's being to flow in and through us.
  Dependence, for the Christian, is not childishness but
admission of reality. Believers and non-believers share many
values. But it has to be frankly acknowledged that they
work with a somewhat different understanding of what
constitutes human maturity. For the non-believer it means
standing on one's own two feet. For the believer it means
standing on one's own two feet before God and in the
strength which God provides. To pray is to try to be at
one with the fount from whom our being flows. Although
it is understandable that some people hesitate to ask God
for help because they feel that grown-ups ought to be
able to cope on their own, such qualms are misplaced.
Prayer, however primitive, is a recognition of the true state
of affairs -- the absolute dependence of all things on their
creative ground.
  People find it difficult to see the matter like this. The
unbeliever accuses the believer of immaturity; the believer
accuses the unbeliever of spiritual pride. But whatever the
truth of these accusations in individual cases (which of
course we are in no position to judge) the general truth is
that there are two competing moral ideals based on two
different views of reality. The balance is well struck in R. S.
Thomas's fine poem <1The 4 Priest,4>1 in which the priest picks
his way through the parish with people watching and
thinking.
  'Crippled soul', do you say? looking at him
  From the mind's height:  'limping through life
  On his prayers. There are other people
  In the world, sitting at table
  Contented, though the broken body
  And the shed blood are not on the menu'.
  'Let it be so', I say. 'Amen and amen'.
The priest is prepared to admit that there are people sitting
apparently contented at the table of life who have no need
of prayer or sacrament. In so far as their contentment and
strength is real he wants only to affirm it. 'Let it be so', I
say. 'Amen and amen'. 'As for himself he will continue to
pray, even though others regard it as limping through life.
He will continue to receive Holy Communion, although
others seem to get on all right without it. A faith able to take
this attitude, far from lacking in confidence, has real
strength. A faith that is unsure of itself expresses its in-
security in trying to undermine the apparent strengths of
those who don't share it. A faith that is truly rooted in God
can, just because of this, affirm what is authentic in the
unbeliever's life and respect it as such.
  People sometimes hold back from asking for help
because the church has not always been sensitive enough to
the effect of its unqualified use of the image of dependence
on people who desire to be mature and responsible. But
people also hesitate to pray for reasons which lie within
themselves. When the cook asked D'Arrest what it was that
made him call out, he said:
  'I can tell you, although it was unimportant. Some-
  one was about to die through my fault. It seems to
  me that I called out.
  'Did you promise?'
'No. I should5 have liked to promise.'
'Long ago?'
'Not long before coming here.'
The cook seized his beard with both hands. His eyes
were shining.
'You are a captain,' he said. 'My house is yours.
Besides, you are going to help me keep my promise,
and it's as if you had made it yourself. That will help
you too.'
D'Arrast smiled, saying: 'I don't think so.'
'You are proud, captain.'
'I used to be proud; now I'm alone...'5
The cook told D'Arrast that he was proud. It sounds too
simple to say that we hesitate to pray for help because we
are too proud but the fact is that most of us find it diffi-
cult either to ask for or to receive help. In a ward full of
dying soldiers there was one who was dying from an incur-
able kidney disease. The others, aware of this situation,
were extra solicitous of his welfare.  For example, every
time a packet of cigarettes came out, he was offered one.
But each time he reacted with the words 'I have my own.'
He wished to be self-sufficient, beholden to no one.
  The difficulty of asking for or receiving help is some-
times particularly acute in the case of a person who is
mentally sick. To admit that one's behaviour is not normal;
that one has failed to get the better of one's feelings simply
by trying harder and that one needs help, is very painful.
It means facing up to oneself as one really is and admitting
the presence of thoughts and feelings that one may be very
good at coping with in others but reluctant to own to
within oneself. It may mean  putting oneself into the hands
of other people and allowing them access to the more
intimate and painful aspects of one's inner life. To admit
one needs help is suddenly to become very vulnerable.
  All this applies in our relationships with other human
beings. In our relationship to God there is an additional
reason why we draw back on the brink of prayer. A person
  6
cannot discover the reality of God and remain neutral
about the fact. Therefore the prospect of finding out that
God is real is to many people, perhaps to all of us, some-
what threatening. It would mean that we are no longer the
final authority. There is another greater reality with whom
we have no reckon. Even a desperate person can sense this
and pull up short with a prayer half-formed in his mind.
For suppose that prayer did make contact? Suppose it left a
conviction of having encountered the divine mystery from
whom we come and to whom at the last we return? It
would make a difference and the difference it would make
might not be altogether welcome.
  There is at least one further reason why we are some-
times reluctant to pray for the help we need. We may not
want that help wholeheartedly. The most obvious example
of this is in the case of an estrangement. A daughter has
fallen out with her mother, a husband with his wife. In
most quarrels there is part of us which wishes to heal the
breach and a perverse part of us which is reluctant to say
sorry and make up and which may even enjoy continuing
to growl. To pray for a reconciliation means overcoming
such feelings within oneself; feelings of wanting to punish
the other or make them admit they were in the wrong.
Thus even people who pray quite regularly do not always
bring into their prayers some of the most important but
painful areas of their life. They want something to be
different but they don't want it with their whole being.
Part of them wants the situation to continue much as
before, or to change in a painless way and so they pray only
about what is relatively peripheral to their lives.
  There may therefore be reasons within oneself which
make one reluctant to express one's deepest feelings in
prayer. To pray for help involves a willingness to face one-
self, a capacity to be vulnerable, a special kind of humility.
There is a communion prayer by St Thomas Aquinas whose
beauty of language need not disguise from us the fact that
to pray it with any sincerity requires certain spiritual
qualities of a high order.
  7
Almighty and everlasting God, behold we approach
the sacrament of thy only-begotten Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ.
As sick, we come to the physician of life;
As unclean, to the fountain of mercy;
As blind, to the light of eternal splendour;
As needy, to the Lord of heaven and earth;
As naked, to the King of glory.
It was suggested that the inclination to call out to God
in our distress is a natural one and that if we hesitate to
bring our heartfelt needs to God it is likely to be for one or
more of four reasons. We may think, misguidedly, that it is
childish to ask for help or perhaps a certain pride prevents
us from doing so. To ask for help involves putting aside
false ideas of self-sufficiency to become vulnerable. In our
relationship with God it also means taking the risk of being
led where one did not plan to go. Finally we sometimes
hesitate to pray, or only pray with the top of our mind,
because we don't really want the changes we are praying
for. An exploration of these factors brings out both the
belief that is fundamental to all the Theistic religions -- the
absolute dependence of all things on their creative ground,
and the spiritual qualities which are necessary in order to
be able to pray at all.
When a person calls out to something beyond him-
self does it make any difference? The ship's cook found
that it did but millions have found otherwise. Every tomb-
stone, as C. S. Lewis once put it, is a monument to an
unanswered prayer. Here we encounter the hard questions
which rise in the mind of all who have prayed for
something to happen and been disappointed. This is con-
sidered further in chapter five but here it can be pointed
out that there are certainly two very important ways in
  which our prayer makes a difference. Prayer changes the
  attitude of the person who prays and it opens that person
  to a power beyond their own power.
  In William Golding's novel <1Free Fall>1 the central
  8
character Samuel Mountjoy, an artist, looks back on his life
and tries to work out where he went wrong and where, at
some stage, he got back on the right path again. He locates
the point where he emerged from moral and spiritual dark-
ness at the moment in a prisoner of war camp when he
cried out for help.
  My cry for help was the cry of the rat when the terrier
  shakes it, a hopeless sound, the raw signature of one
  savage act. My cry was no more, was instinctive, said
  here is flesh of which the nature is to suffer and do
  thus. I cried out not with hope of an ear but as accep-
  ting a shut door, darkness and a shut sky.
  But the very act of crying out changed the thing that
  cried. Does the rat expect help? When a man cries out
  instinctively he begins to search for a place where
  help may be found; and so the thing that cried out,
  struggling in the fetor, the sea of nightmare, with
  burning breath and racing heart, that thing as it was
  drowning looked with starting and not physical eyes
  on every place, against every wall, in every corner
  of the interior world.
  'Help me!'6
Samuel Mountjoy believed that calling out for help changed
the course of his life. The very act of crying out changed
the thing that cried'. It set him searching for help 'in every
corner of the interior world.'
  To pray changes the attitude of the person who prays.
It also opens that person to the strength and resources of
the whole personality. When the tight, proud, seIf-sufficient
ego admits its weakness and pleads to a power beyond its
own power, it allows hidden reserves from the rest of the
personality to come into play. Because of this it is natural
to ask if there is anything inherently religious about asking
for and receiving help. Is it just a tapping of the unconscious
and nothing to do with God at all?
  9
  These are not mutually exclusive alternatives. God
works through the whole of what we are, through the
unconscious as well as the conscious. To pray for help
is to allow him access to the whole of one's being. So often
we think of religion in terms of a struggle of the will; of
trying harder and harder. But the Christian religion is all
about grace. To pray for help unblocks the channels of
grace that flow to us from many quarters, including the
unconscious. As Christopher Bryant, SSJE has written
about praying for a particular kind of help, asking for
guidance.
  'The act by which a man admits the incapacity of
  conscious and deliberate reflection to solve his
  problems throws the conscious mind open to the
  wisdom and experience of the whole personality.
  Thus buried experience begins to become available to
  a man as in the act of trusting God he opens himself
  to the wisdom of the unconscious. Of course the
  deliverances of the unconscious are by no means
  infallible. They need to be scrutinized and tested as
  far as they can by the conscious ego that has to take
  the decisions. But God guides then through the whole
  of what they are, the unconscious as well as the con-
  scious; and it is in his guidance through the uncons-
  cious, with its unexpected suggestions and inspired
  guesses, that we most easily come to realize that it is
  God who is guiding us.'7
  To sum up, the cry of the afflicted is the most primitive,
basic and universal of all prayers. Though the thorough-
going atheist will check himself from calling out in this way
most human beings, however weak their belief, are likely to
do so at one time or another in their lives. This prayer,
though almost instinctive, does in fact reveal an essential
aspect of all true prayer. God is the creative source and
ground of all that exists. Whether we like it or not we
depend moment by moment for our very being on a power
  10
beyond ourselves. Prayers for help are an implicit admission
of this fact. Through them we place ourselves at the lip of
the spring from which our being wells up.
  Some people who would like to pour out their longing
to God hesitate to do so because they feel it would be
childish. But dependence on God is not the immature
failure of an adult to make his own decisions. The fact is
that our definition of personal maturity will differ
according to whether or not we believe God to be a reality.
If God doesn't exist for us maturity will be defined simply
in terms of taking responsibility for one's life. If he does it
will be taking responsibility for one's life before him, with
him and in the strength which he provides. Yet it is not just
a misunderstanding about the nature of maturity which
stops people from praying. There are also reasons that lie
within us; our natural reluctance to ask for or receive help
from anyone; the threat which many people feel that God
offers to their personality as human beings; the fact that
some prayers require a hard struggle within oneself before
they can be prayed at all. In short to pray for help requires
certain spiritual qualities.
  Prayers for help make a difference. In a proud, indepen-
dent, self-sufficient person 'the very act of crying out
changed the thing that cried.' More than this, they allow
God to work through the whole personality, releasing
reserves of wisdom and strength. A very familiar story is
that of a good person who has nursed a sick relative or
friend for many years. They will sometimes say that they
don't know how they kept going and then go on to describe
how at the end of their resources they prayed and found
enough strength to start again. Another pattern familiar to
us from spiritual biographies is that of the person whose life
has been succesful and prosperous suddenly falling on hard
times. At the end of their tether, conscious of their empti-
ness, of their moral and spiritual bankruptcy, they turn in a
direction that they have not faced for many years, if at all.
Such moments are often the beginning of a new life. They
establish contact with a presence that has been waiting with
11
infinite patience. They allow channels of help and healing,
blocked for many years, to flow. In one of the psalms the
writer says 'A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt
not despise.' It's not that God wants us to be broken. Just
the opposite. He desires and works unceasingly for our
welfare and well being. But too often it is only our broken-
ness which brings us up against reality; the reality that we
are receivers and that to live truly is not a matter of
asserting our independence and self-sufficiency but of being
at one with the fount from whom our being flows. Francis
Thompson, who certainly knew periods of degradation and
despair, wrote in <1The kingdom of God>1 about the spiritual
world about us all the time, if we could but be aware of it.
  The angels keep their ancient places;
  Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
  'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
  That miss the many-splendoured thing.
  But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
  Cry; -- and upon thy so sore loss
  Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
  Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.8
So often it is a cry out of our dereliction, and that alone,
which opens the heavens for us.
Almighty and everlasting God, the comfort of the sad, the
strength of them that suffer: Let the prayers of thy
children who cry out of any tribulation come unto thee;
and unto every soul that is distressed grant thou mercy,
grant relief,  grant  refreshment; through Jesus  Christ our
Lord.
<1(From a Gregorian collect and the Liturgy of St Mark>1
  12
O Holy Spirit,
Giver of light and life,
impart to us thoughts higher than our own thoughts,
prayers better than our own prayers,
powers beyond our own powers,
that we may spend and be spent
in the ways of love and goodness,
after the perfect image
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.9
  NOTES
1.Albert Camus, 'The Growing Stone' in <1Exile and the Kingdom,>1
Penguin, 1962, p.132.
2.Ibid p.134.
3.Ibid p.152.
4. R.S. Thomas,  <1Not  That he Brought Flowers,>1 Rupert Hart-
Davis, 1968, p.29.
<15.Exile and the Kingdom,>1 p.134.
6.William Golding, <1Free Fall,>1 Penguin, 1963, p.140.
  7.Christopher Bryant, <1Depth Psychology  and Religious Belief,>1
Mirfield Publications, 1972, p.44.
8. Francis Thompson, 'The Kingdom of God' in <1The Oxford Book>1
<1of English Mystical Verse,>1 chosen by D. Nicholson and A. Lee,
OUP 1917 and reprinted many times, p.425.
9. From <1Acts of Devotion,>1 gathered or prepared by George Appleton,
SPCK, 1973, p.6 (slightly altered).
  13
  Marvellous are thy works
IN MOST families children are taught to say thank you to
someone who gives them a present. It is entirely natural,
therefore, that in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which
hold life to be a gift, thanking God should have a prominent
place. A difficulty arises however with the undiscriminating
way in which thanks seems to be offered. If a friend gives
us a box of chocolates we thank them. If someone spits in
our face we wouldn't dream of doing so. Yet, in our relation-
ship with God, it sometimes appears that we are meant to
give thanks for everything in life. A woman in her forties
dies of cancer leaving two small children. As the coffin is
borne into church one of the sentences the priest is directed
to read out is 'We brought nothing into this world, and it is
certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the
Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' In
fact however the bereaved husband and children, to say
nothing of their friends, could not feel less like saying
'Blessed be the name of the Lord.'
  This tendency of the Christian faith to be indiscriminate
in its thanks was parodied by Voltaire in <1Candide.>1 Professor
Pangloss is hit by a series of disasters. He loses his home and
everything he has. After each new tragedy he braces himself
with the words 'All is for the best in this best of all possible
worlds.' The view which Voltaire attacked is not just an
aberration of the Christian faith which no modern believer
would dream of sharing. On the contrary many Christians
today, even in the midst of terrible misfortune, strive
  14
heroically to see disaster in a positive light. A family loses a
child in tragic circumstances. The mother says to the
minister, 'I suppose God must have wanted my darling child
in heaven.' In this poignant way parents try their hardest to
take what they suppose must be the Christian attitude to
their situation. Their view is not without its intellectual
defenders. In his interesting book <1The Concept of Prayer>1
D. Z. Phillips argues as follows. 'When the believer thanks
God for his creation, it seems to be a thanksgiving for his
life as a whole, for everything, meaning the good <1and>1 the
evil within his life, since despite such evil, thanking God is
still said to be possible.' Phillips then sets the example of
Job before us to whom everything possible disastrous
happened and who still managed to say 'Blessed be the
name of the Lord.' Phillips continues 'The believer cannot
expect one thing rather than another -- in the world of events
. . . the essence of the believer's belief in divine goodness
consists precisely in the fact that the meaning of life does
not depend on how it goes.'
  There is an element of truth in this view of Phillips
which will be considered later but as it stands it is seriously
misleading. The consequence of such an outlook is the
blurring of all distinctions between different kinds of
experience. Those that are favourable and those that are
unfavourable to personal growth and well-being are treated
equally as opportunities for thanking God. It is a view
which leads in the end to the calling of evil good. By all
that they hold most sacred a husband cannot thank God
that his wife has died young; his children cannot honestly
believe that it is a good thing their mother has been taken
from them in their most vulnerable years.2 This is an evil
and must be named as such. In order to pray aright one
must first think rightly about the relationship between God
and the world, and the starting point for any discussion must
be an assertion of the autonomy, the real independence,
which God has given the world over against himself. This is
inherent in the very idea of existence.
  15
And as to your suggestion that natural forces might
have been kept in divine leading strings, I can only
say that, so far as I know, running oneself one's own
way is the same thing as existing. If God had made
things to exist, but not to run their own way, he
would have made them to exist, and not to exist.3
The second point which needs to be made at the outset is
that the Christian faith includes certain definite assertions,
one of which is that the individual has, under God and in
God, a future beyond death; a future which, so we are told,
has good things in store for us beyond our imagining.
  On the basis of these two beliefs, the real independence
of the natural order and the hope of a glorious consumma-
tion to the whole creative process, it is possible to acknow-
ledge that much of our experience in life is destructive and
at the same time retain faith in a loving God. Many things
happen to us which God does not directly will and which
are utterly contrary to his heart of love. For God directly
wills only what contributes to our personal growth and
well-being. He works unceasingly for our physical, mental
and spiritual good. Yet it is amazing how even those who
talk freeIy of a God of love  in fact feel within themselves
that this God might at any moment clobber them  from
on high or pull the carpet from under their feet. Even more
undermining is the thought that he might be busy thinking
up scenarios to improve the character. 'Oh well, I suppose
these things are sent to try us' people remark, giving
popular expression to a view which some people hold
seriously. But if a human friend arranged all kinds of
unpleasant experiences in order to test or strengthen our
character we would not think much of him. Indeed if he
persisted in letting down our tyres when we had an urgent
appointment (to see how we would cope with an
emergency) or in greasing the floor (to test our reactions)
we would begin to doubt the truth of his protestations of
affection for us. Of course life throws all sorts of nasty
things in our face and misfortune can often reveal hidden
  16
strengths and depths. An accident which ruins a person's
career may indeed develop a facet of that person's character
in a way that nothing else could have done. But this is very
different from asserting that God designs such situations in
order to reveal or mature our character.
  Nevertheless, as the creator of it, God is responsible for
the kind of world in which we live. Even if we don't believe
he foresees every detail of the future he will have known the
probable consequences of creating a world of independent,
free-moving forces. Indeed from one point of view the
incarnation can be seen as an acceptance of responsibility
for the world. God entered into the stream of events and
experienced the consequences of creating a world such as
ours from within. But to say that God is responsible for
creating the world, that he knew in broad outline the kind
of life he was going to bring into being, and that he accepts
responsibility for what he has done, is very different from
saying that he causes every ill which besets us. On the con-
trary he directly wills only those experiences which
enhance our life, which contribute to our physical, mental
or spiritual development. This does not mean that
experiences  of misfortune, illness or old age are always
totally negative, a write-off as far as our personal growth is
concerned. On the contrary, God is present sharing our
situation with us, seeking to draw some unique good out of
permitted affliction.
  With some such view as this, though it still leaves many
questions unanswered, it should be possible to pray
honestly. Good experiences can be rejoiced in and given
thanks for. Those which diminish or destroy can be recog-
nized for what they are and overcome if possible or borne
with if not. There need be no pretending that all experiences
come from the hand of God and are equally beneficial, an
outlook which leads only to confusion, guilt and an under-
lying aggression against God as a sadist. We can give thanks
for what we genuinely feel grateful for, and no more.
  But why should we thank God at all? Unhappily in some
  17
pictures God is depicted as being rather over anxious to
have his benefactions recognized and appreciated. The
comedian Peter Cook once did a lovely sketch in the vein of
'And there was God sitting around in heaven for millions
and millions and millions of years waiting for someone to
come and adore him.' Such an outlook hardly conforms to
our understanding of what it is to be good. If a man gives a
party for old age pensioners and then lets drop one or two
broad hints that he is expecting a speech of thanks we
usually judge his behaviour less estimable than that of the
person who gives and remains as anonymous as possible.
According to Jesus (and this is also a theme of the great 8th
century BC prophets) what offends God most is not our
failure to thank him properly but our unfair and unloving
relationships with one another. 'If, when you are bringing
your gift to the altar, you suddenly remember that your
brother has a grievance against you, leave your gift where it
is before the altar. First go and make peace with your
brother, and only then come back and offer your gift.'4
Our host seems less concerned that we thank him properly
than that we are in a right relationship with our fellow
guests at life's party.
  Unlike us God is not standing on tiptoe to see if anyone
is going to notice him; unlike us God is not greedy for
recognition. So why should we offer thanks? There is only
one answer: because we want to. Gratitude that has been
squeezed out of someone by threatening or coaxing is of no
value. Only when a person says thank you because this is
genuinely  what  they,  of  their own volition, want to do,
does it have any point. The interesting fact is that saying
'Thank you' is just what so many people do want to do.
When Katherine Mansfield saw a beautiful spot in the Alps
she, a non-believer, said 'If only one could make some
small grasshoppery sound of praise to someone, of thanks
to someone -- but to who?' Another agnostic, Sir Leslie
Stephen, wrote on the death of his first wife. 'I thank --
something -- that I loved her as heartily as I know how to
love.'5  The urge to offer thanks to someone or something is
  18
a natural movement of the heart which religious doubts can
check but not dam.
  God does not need our thanks. He is perfectly fulfilled
and complete in the mutual giving and receiving which
constitutes the life of the Blessed Trinity. Furthermore, as
he is one 'To whom all hearts are open, all desires known
and from whom no secrets are hid', he knows better than
we do ourselves whether or not we are thankful. We might
well wonder then whether the thanks we offer is of any
interest or importance at all. It is true that if we say
'Thank you' simply because we want to, we will say it
whether or not it makes any difference, yet the thought of
our gratitude being lost in the indifference of the stellar
spaces can dampen our desire to give thanks on subsequent
occasions. So is our thanks of any interest or importance?
Perhaps an approach to an answer can be made by the
analogy of a person who returns to his old school to thank
one of the masters for encouraging his art. The school-
master does not <1expect>1 such thanks for he has simply done
his job. He does not <1need>1 such thanks for his pride is in the
fact that his former pupil has put his schooling to such
good use. But the expression of thanks, no doubt in a
familiar gruff British understatement, leaves an impression
which the master never forgets. It creates a bond between
him and his former pupil which is never erased. So it is in
the situation of man and God. When we thank God we
create or deepen a relationship. This idea of a relationship
with the divine mystery in whom we live and move and
have our being is one we all find very difficult to conceive
and many find absolutely impossible to believe. The
difficulties will be discussed in chapter six. Here it must
simply be said that, however difficult to understand or
believe, prayer is always part of a relationship with God.
For much of the time it may seem anything but this and
some 'techniques of prayer' may lead one to think, rightly,
that our relationship with the divine is somewhat different
from our relationships with other human beings. Neverthe-
less, the concept of a relationship must, on the Christian
  19
view, be the controlling image or analogy. We thank God
because we want to do so. This creates, sustains or deepens
our relationship with him.
  It was suggested in the previous chapter that moment by
moment we depend for our existence on the creative source
from which all things spring forth. Our existence is not
something over which we had any say; it is a given. There-
fore thanking God not only creates or deepens a relation-
ship; it  orientates  one  correctly to reality. Gratitude for
exstence is of course only one of a number of attitudes it
is possible to take up to the universe. There is the meta-
physical rebellion of Ivan Karamazov or of Mersault in
Camus' <1The Outsider>1 who in the death cell rages against the
chaplain and finds a strange peace in doing so. There is the
Buddhist view of existence as something from which one is
seeking to detach oneself. There is the characteristic religion
of so many, an unsophisticated Stoicism, a sad, resigned
putting up with things as they are. In contrast to these and
other possible attitudes the monotheistic religions hold that
life is a wonderful gift and that the proper attitude is one
of thanks for being alive. This is the element of truth in the
philosophy of D. Z. Phillips already referred to.  Whilst it is
desperately important for destructive experiences to be
judged as such there can be an underlying gratitude for
existence which the ordinary blessings of everyday life can
kindle into awareness. Malcolm Muggeridge expressed this
attitude finely when he wrote:
  A sense of how extraordinarily happy I have been, of
  enormous gratitude to my creator, overwhelms me
  often. I believe with a passionate, unshakeable
  conviction that in all circumstances and at all times
  life is a blessed gift; that the spirit which animates it
  is one of love not hate or indifference, of light not
  darkness, of creativity not destruction, of order, not
  chaos.6
  It must be freely admitted that not everyone is able to
  20
feel as positively about life as does Malcolm Muggeridge. It
is no accident that world-denying religions like Buddhism
have influenced so many or that similar forms of Christianity
have taken hold. Many have felt with John Bunyan that we
walk through 'the wilderness of this world' and they have
been able to go on walking only because of the hope of a
glorious future which would outweigh the misery of this
life. There are those, religious and non-religious, who feel
the truth of Beckett's line that 'Life is a punishment for
having been born' either because of dire circumstances or
because they have suffered from a depressive illness. As
William Cowper wrote:
  This glassy stream, that spreading pine,
  Those alders quivering at the breeze,
  Might sooth a soul less hurt than mine,
  And please, if anything could please.
  But fixed unalterable care
  Foregoes not what she feels within,
  Shows the same sadness everywhere,
  And slights the season and the scene.7
  Not just those who have suffered from recurring depres-
sion, like William Cowper, but many others, have seen the
truth in Camus' view that the great problem in life is
whether or not to commit suicide. But there is a more
interesting and revealing question than this one. Why is it
that the vast majority of people do not commit suicide?
People live with such courage and resilience. This is not just
a matter of the animal will to survive. It's as though people
were conscious of a claim upon them to make something,
despite everything, of their lives, David Storey has said of
the characters in some of his works 'They have an appetite
for life, a refusal to be put down by anything, simply a
refusal. They survive despite the tragedy. It's like a flower
growing in a bed of concrete.'8 Then there is the other
strangely disregarded fact. People continue to have children.
  21
Of course this has much to do with the instinct for the
survival of the species, social pressures and personal con-
siderations such as economic or emotional support in old
age. But when all these factors have been listed is there not
something else? A witness to the worthwhileness of living?
Having children expresses an underlying conviction that it is
better to have lived than never to have lived at all. It is this
conviction which gives rise to the belief that thanksgiving
for life, rather than any other attitude, is the correct orien-
tation to reality.
  In John Mortimer's play <1Two Stars for Comfort>1 a girl
describes how as a child she was given a present which
delighted her. She went into a reverie of pleasure from
which she was awoken by the voice of her parents saying
'Say "thank you", say "thank you".' In recounting this
experience the girl tries to convey the fact that her pleasure
and gratitude were so much more than that usually expressed
in a polite formula. 'I couldn't speak. I liked it more than
anything else and I couldn't say anything.' The delight of her
whole being said thank you. She felt it belittled the
experience to reduce it to a conventional phrase. I suspect
that some people feel about the church what  that girl did
about her parents. They love life, sometimes want to cry
aloud with joy, but feel that it is trivializing to have to
convey their feelings in what they regard as a set required
formula, and routine prayers of thanks to God. Yet not all
prayers are lifeless and formal. As the statements of
Katherine Mansfield and Sir Leslie Stephen indicated there
is a natural movement of the soul to thank something
beyond us, which is present even in non-believers. At
certain moments we really want to give thanks; a sense of
gratitude for life springs up of itself. Someone once
described faith as 'Life lived on the evidence of its highest
moments'. The highest moments are those in which we
exult in the experience of living and wish to say thank you
to someone or something. This is the evidence upon which
life is to be lived. The question arises then about how we
are to live between those high moments. If they are the
  22
ones which give us a clue to the meaning of things does it
not mean cultivating a sense of gratitude? Does it not mean
training the soul to appreciate the world in which we live;
the wonders that are about us all the time if we were but
aware of them?
  Our highest moments reveal a desire to say thank you.
Between such peaks we take that desire as a clue to the
truth and encourage within ourselves our latent sense of
appreciation. Like all attitudes which we regard as important
this too can become unhealthy. It is well to face such a
distortion at the outset. In Samuel Beckett's play <1Happy>1
<1Days>1 the central character Winnie is shown in the middle
of the stage in a heap of sand. In the first act the sand
comes up to her waist. In the second act it comes up to her
neck. Behind her, in a trench, lies her man Willie, who is
almost totally non-communicative. Spread around her on
the sand Winnie has the familiar, comforting objects out of
her  handbag.  'Another heavenly  day'  says  Winnie,  as  the
curtain goes up, and she continues in the same bright voice,
in a style studded with phrases from  hymns, prayers, and
encouraging sayings of one kind and another. 'Ah well --
can't complain -- no no -- mustn't complain -- so much to
be thankful for -- no pain -- hardly any -- wonderful thing
that -- nothing like it -- slight headache sometimes --
occasional mild migraine -- it comes -- then it goes -- ah
yes -- many mercies -- great mercies -- prayers perhaps not
for naught.'10 Winnie is an unforgettable figure, terrifying
in the way she tries to keep advancing age, mortality and
despair at bay with little rituals to do with the objects in
her handbag and conventional phrases of an encouraging
type. It brings to mind a saying of Graham Greene. 'Our
baseless optimism that is so much more appalling than our
despair.'11 An encounter with Winnie's relentless 'looking on
the bright side of things' tends to  discourage the latent
sense of appreciation and thankfulness within us
But before it discourages us completely it is only fair
to encounter the opposite tendency, one which is in fact
more likely to be part of most of us.
  23
'As I thought,' he said. 'No better from <1this>1 side.
But nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's
what it is.'
There was a crackling noise in the bracken behind
him, and out came Pooh.
'Good morning, Eeyore,' said Pooh.
'Good morning, Pooh Bear,' said Eeyore gloomily.
'If it <1is>1 a good morning,' he said. 'Which I doubt,'
said he.
'Why, what's the matter?'
'Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some
of us don't. That's all there is to it.'
'Can't all <1what?'>1 said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
'Gaity. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mul-
berry bush.'
'Oh!' said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and
then asked, 'What mulberry bush is that?'
'Bon-hommy,' went on Eeyore goomily. 'French
word meaning bonhommy,' he explained, 'I'm not
complaining, but There It Is.'12
If we discover that we are a little  like Eeyore, then we
need to do something to counteract it. When feelings of
gratitude for life don't arise spontaneously we need to
cultivate the discipline of opening our eyes and appreciating
what is about us. Winnie comes across as such a disturbing
figure not because she is thankful but because she does not
face the negative features of her existence. She dare not
notice the encroaching sand, the silence of her 'companion',
the bleak horror of her existence. Her ceaseless chirpiness is
a desperate cover-up for her despair. The negative, depressing
aspects of our life have to be taken out into the open and
looked at; then we are to go on and live. D. H. Lawrence
wrote to a friend of his, Dorothy Brett, in 1926. 'Mean-
while, don't you mope and lie around, <1it's infra dig>1. The
greatest  virtue  in life  is  real  courage,  that  knows how  to
face facts and live beyond them. Don't be ------ish pitying
yourself and caving in. It's despicable. I should have
  24
thought, after a dose of that fellow, you'd have had too
much desire to be different from him, to follow his sloppy
self-indulgent  melancholics,  absolutely  despicable.  Rouse
up and make a decent thing of your days, no matter what's
happened.'13 In order to avoid becoming an Eeyore we
need not only to face the facts but to live beyond them.
In practical terms this means living by a disciplined aware-
ness. What is involved emerges from these two passages.
The first is part of a letter by William Wordsworth:
  Theologians may puzzle their heads about dogmas as
  they will, the religion of gratitude cannot mislead us.
  Of that we are sure, and gratitude is the handmaid to
  hope, and hope the harbinger of faith. I look abroad
  upon nature, I think of the best part of our species, I
  lean upon my friends, and I meditate upon the
  scriptures, especially the Gospel of St John, and my
  creed rises up of itself, with the ease of an exhalation,
  yet a fabric of adamant.
What allows his creed to rise of itself is looking abroad,
thinking of good people he has met or read about and
meditating upon the Bible. In other words he encourages
his mind to focus upon the more positive and hope making
aspects of his experience. He is not of course unaware of
illness, senility, death and all the other ills which afflict our
human nature. But he chooses to dwell upon what
encourages him. It might be argued that in doing this he
was simply kidding himself; indulging in self-indoctrination
based upon wishful thinking. But this isn't so. First, as has
already been maintained, most people have an underlying
gratitude for existence which on occasions comes to the
surface with spontaneous expressions of thanks to some-
one or something. Such moments are the evidence upon
which we live the rest of our life. Deliberately to select and
dwell upon what gives us courage and hope, upon what
intensifies our feeling of gladness to be alive, is not self-
deception. It is simply living by a disciplined faith.
  25
The second passage is from Thomas Traherne.
  Is not Sight a Jewel? Is not Hearing a Treasure? Is not
  Speech a Glory! O my Lord pardon my ingratitude,
  and pity my dullness, who am not sensible of these
  gifts. The freedom of Thy bounty hath deceived me.
  These things were too near to be considered. Thou
  presentedst me with thy blessings, and I was not
  aware. - But  now  I  give  thanks  and  adore  and  praise
  thee for these inestimable favours.15
The passage hardly needs much comment. There is too
much that we take for granted. Many wonders to which we
are oblivious. If a person believes that gratitude is the true
attitude to reality he will normally want to become more
aware and appreciative of what is about him all the time,
if he did but notice it.
  It may be felt by some that this chapter has been trying
to have its cake and eat it. For it has been maintained that
we must honestly recognize negative, life-diminishing,
destructive experiences for what they are. We must not
pretend that they have been sent by a good god for some
purpose best known to him, to punish, test or strengthen
us. The world has a genuine autonomy and many things
happen in it as a result of accidents in the natural order and
wrong choices by us, which are clean contrary to his will of
love. Nevertheless, although we all experience very mixed
fortune, in answer to the question whether or not we are
glad to exist the vast majority of people say, yes. This
underlying gratitude for life is central to the Christian view
of life. Although it is by no means the only possible
attitude to take up to reality there are moments in many
lives when feelings of thankfulness come naturally into the
mind. Such moments can be the basis of faith, and nourish-
ment for prayer. The great monotheistic religions hold that
life is a gift. We live truly when we see ourselves as receivers
and offer thanks. There is no reason for doing this other
than the fact that we want to. But if we do so, the creative
  26
process flowers. The creatures whom God has brought into
being freely offer him thanks and praise. Such thanks is not
twisted out of us by a god who needs such satisfaction. But
although God does not need our thanks it is of crucial
importance. By it we create or deepen a relationship with
him. Although there are moments when feelings of grati-
tude arise spontaneously, there are long stretches in our
lives when this does not happen. During such periods the
person who lives by faith will seek to become more aware
and appreciative of neglected marvels and blessings. This
does not mean taking up an unthinking, blinkered optimism.
It includes facing the bleak aspects of one's life and coming
to terms with them. But it does lead a person to focus and
dwell on what nourishes and encourages in the conviction
that if we could but see and appreciate the world correctly,
life would be very different.
  Your enjoyment of the World is never right, till every
  Morning you awake in Heaven: see your self in your
  father's Palace: and look upon the Skies and the Earth
  and the Air, as Celestial Joys: having such a Reverend
  Esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The
  Bride of a Monarch, in her Husband's Chamber, hath
  no such Causes of Delight as you.
  You never Enjoy the World aright, till the Sea it self
  floweth in your Veins, till you are Clothed with the
  Heavens, and Crowned with the Stars: and Perceive
  your self to be the Sole Heir of the whole World: and
  more then so, because Men are in it who are every
  one Sole Heirs, as well as you. Till you can Sing, and
  Rejoice and Delight in GOD, as Misers do in Gold,
  and Kings in Scepters, you never Enjoy the World.16
  27
I will give thanks unto thee, for I am fearfully and wonder-
fully made: marvellous are thy works, and that my soul
knoweth right well.
<1Psalm 139, verse 13.>1
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
IT IS RIGHT TO GIVE HIM THANKS AND PRAISE.
It is not only right, it is our duty and our joy, at all times
and in all places, to give you thanks and praise, holy Father,
heavenly King, almighty and eternal God, through Jesus
Christ, your only Son, our Lord.
<1(From the ASBRiteA  Eucharistic prayer).>1
  NOTES
  I.D. Z. Phillips, <1The Concept of Prayer,>1 Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1965, p.97.
2.It is not disputed that some people have said prayers of thanks
to God after a tragedy. It is reported that Kierkegaard's father said
the quotation from Job after the death of each of his five children.
But such prayers, though heroic, would not for most people be
either possible or honest.
3. Austin Farrer, <1Saving Belief,>1 Hodder and Stoughton, 1964 p.52.
4.Mat. 5, 23.
5.This and the previous quotation cited by John Baillie in <1The>1
<1Sense of the Presence of God,>1 OUP, 1962, p.249/50.
6.Malcolm Muggeridge, 'Credo' in <1Jesus Rediscovered,>1 Fontana
1969, p.58.
7.'The Shrubbery, Written in a Time of Affliction', in <1The New>1
<1Oxford Book of English Verse,>1 edited by Helen Gardner, 1972,
p.443.
  3.Quoted in <1The Observer>1 Colour Supplement 1O October 1976,
p.16.
9.John Mortimer <1Two  Stars for Comfort,>1 Samuel Friend, 1962
p.65.
10. Samuel Beckett, <1Happy Days,>1 Faber and Faber, 1966, p.11.
  28
11.Graham Greene, 'Across the  Bridge' in  <1Twenty-One Stories,>1
Penguin,  1970, p.75.
1 2. A. A. Milne, <1Winnie-the-Pooh,>1 Methuen, 1965, p.70.
13. <1The  Letters of>1 D. H.  <1Lawrence,>1 edited by Aldous Huxley,
Heinemann, 1932, p.652.
14.Letter to Sir George Beaumont, 28 May 1825.
15.Thomas Traherne, <1Centuries, Poems and Thanksgivings,>1 ed. H.
M. Margoliouth, OUP, 1972, Vol. 1 Century 66 p.34.
16.Ibid. Centuries 28 and 29 p.I4/25.
29
  What is all this juice and all this joy?1
AS DEAN of St Paul's the famous Dean Inge had to attend
long musical services. He could not have enjoyed them
much for he was once reported as saying: 'I've come across
many strange conceptions of deity in my time but never
one before who enjoys being serenaded all day.' If this is
how a clergyman felt it is easy to understand how alienated
from religious worship non-believers can feel. A person at a
party, sitting by himself when everyone else seems to be
drinking, talking and laughing together can feel very much
outside. A person watching the worship of a group whose
beliefs he cannot share feels the same way, perhaps even
more strongly. The sight of a congregation chanting and
singing words of praise to some invisible god heightens his
sense of being a detached observer who does not belong.
  There are two reasons for this alienation from the activity
of praise. First, and most obviously, he finds it difficult to
believe that the invisible god whom the others are hymning
really exists; their worship seems a form of delusion.
Second, the activity of worship itself seems strange. The on-
looker cannot enter emotionally into what is happening.
Perhaps nothing that is said can help such detached out-
siders understand the experience of worship. It may be
necessary, first, to come to believe what the worshippers
believe. When people do that they will worship and when
they worship, and only then, will they discover what it is
to worship. Perhaps praising can only be comprehended
from within the experience of praising itself. But this is too
pessimistic.
  30
  The idea of praising an invisible deity, even if we don't
believe in its existence, is not so incomprehensible or alien
as we sometimes allow. There are many activities which, as
they say 'take us out of ourselves'. There need be nothing
religious about such experiences. We can be taken out of our-
selves in dancing or by listening to music, whether it is at a
prom or a pop concert; by being part of a cheering crowd at
a football match or a political rally. Marghanita Laski
regards all these experiences of what she calls 'self-loss' as
strictly comparable. She suggests that the only difference
between the believer and the unbeliever is that the former
gives a transcendent meaning to such experiences, such as
release from sin, insight into ultimate truth etc. which the
unbeliever is not able to accept. For her the experiences are
the same and the meaning put on them different.2 But the
experiences are not all of the same kind. A crucial distinc-
tion can be made amongst them. There are those which are
induced by physical means and there are those which are, in
essence, a response to perceived value. Some experiences
are obviously induced, such as those brought about by the
use of drugs and those which occur when a person, perhaps
after a few drinks, is caught up in the heavy beat of music
in an atmosphere conducive to mass ecstasy. In other
experiences the emotional content may be minimal but the
response to value pronounced. If a person is absorbed in a
piece of carpentry or in puzzling out some problem, in
drawing a leaf or practising the recorder, the emotional
pleasure at the time may or may not be intense. But the
mind is attending to something outside itself that it regards
as worthwhile. This is what's crucial.
  In practice there cannot of course be a hard and fast
distinction between the two kinds of experience. A person
listening to music may not only be conscious of a pleasing
physical sensation; there may be intense mental and
spiritual concentration on the music. A person reflecting on
some difficult problem of mathematics may have a spasm
of delight as he glimpses the way to a solution. Nor is it to
be denied that much religious activity falls into the first
  31
category. Singing hymns, which  so  many  still  enjoy, may
for some be a highly pleasurable activity without having
much religious meaning. The enjoyment may be great and
the element of concentration on value, the focussing on
God, non-existent. So a congregation singing lustily in
church might have similarities with a crowd at the end of a
party joining hands and singing Auld Lang Syne. Both may
arouse feelings of warm togetherness. But this superficial
resemblance hides a fundamental difference. Religion is in
essence a response to perceived value. It stands or falls on
whether the values it perceives are true and on whether it
helps others to see and respond appropriately to them. The
element of sensual excitation can be minimal or non-
existent. Singing hymns, for example, though this gives
legitimate pleasure to many, could be dropped without
affecting the heart of the matter.
  Religion is not concerned with feelings of release but
with helping people attend with love to what lies outside
their mind. Such attention enables people to recognize and
respond to what is of value. It may lead to admiration,
praise or even worship. The capacity to admire belongs to
the essence of what it is to be a human being. It appears to
be natural in children who look for heroes with whom to
identify. Children admire easily and genuinely. As we grow
older we rightly become more critical. We develop a more
sceptical frame of mind. But if this tendency turns to
complete cynicism about anything and everything some-
thing essential to our humanity becomes lost. In the mean,
begrudging spirit which is incapable of offering admiration
or praise something has died. Praise is closely related to
giving thanks from which it follows naturally. If someone
gives us a present we say thank you. We might then go on
to remark 'you <1are>1 good.' The focus shifts from the gift to
the giver. So praise is a higher activity than thanks. In giving
thanks there is at least an implicit reference to the benefits
received. In praise the attention is wholly on the giver and
their qualities. An analysis of the word worship brings out
the same point. It is composed of two parts, worth and
  32
ship. The person who worships is a person who has recog-
nized worth or value in someone and who wishes to
acknowledge this.
  The capacity to worship is rooted in a person's capacity
to admire. This is a capacity shared by believer and non-
believer alike. It belongs to our very humanity and all
except the psychopath and most hardened cynic display it
on occasions. What distinguishes the believer from a person
without any religious faith is that he has come to admire
something or someone without reserve. He has made a total
response to that which he conceives to be of supreme
worth. When a person is ordained priest in the Roman
Catholic Church he lies prostrate before the altar. It is an
eloquent sign of the complete offering of all that he is. This
same sign, which is also made in the Liturgy of the Lord's
Passion on Good Friday, and in Orthodox worship more
frequently, when even very old ladies will lie face down on
the stone flags for long periods, brings out well the element
of total response which the believer feels he wants to make.
In other traditions the response is made in other ways. For
example when a black Pentecostalist group worship they
sometimes get carried away into ecstasies of 'Alleluia Lord,
Alleluia Lord, Alleluia.' The outward emotion here is much
more obvious but the meaning is the same. The ecstasy, like
the gesture of prostration before the altar, indicates the
presence of something absolute; the touch of something
which draws forth our total allegiance.
  A person may be capable of recognizing and responding
to values and yet find it impossible to go beyond this, to
make a total response to anything, to engage in worship.
This is the familiar position of the morally sensitive
agnostic. Is there any experience shared by both agnostic
and believer which will help the former make sense of the
believer's faith? Three experiences can be pointed to.
  First, there is the sense of moral truth making an
absolute claim upon us. One of the most moving documents
to emerge from the Second World War was a letter from a 16
year old farm boy to his parents.
  33
Dear parents: I must give you bad news -- I have been
condemned to death, I and Gustave G. We did not
sign up for the SS, and so they condemned us to
death. You wrote me, indeed, that I should not join
the SS; my comrade, Gustave G. did not sign up
either. Both of us would rather die than stain our
consciences with such deeds of horror. I know what
the SS has to do.3
The very simplicity of this letter speaks for itself and for
the millions of people with no great education who have
felt a moral claim upon them to do what is right; a claim
which they have known to be more important than the very
natural desire to go on living.
  Second, and closely linked with this point, is the claim
of intellectual truth. A professional scientist feels an
obligation to be truthful in his work even when research
indicates that a theory with which he has become identified
is going to be called into question. There is, rightly, a sense
of horror in the scientific community when, as sometimes
happens, someone is caught out fudging the results of
experiments to make them conform to some preconceived
theory. What happens in the scientific community holds
good elsewhere. The obligation to pursue truth wherever it
may lead is felt to override all other considerations. 'If God
were able to backslide from truth I would fain cling to
truth and let God go' wrote Meister Eckhart. Simone Weil
made the same point 'Christ likes us to prefer truth to him,
because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside
from him to go towards the truth, one will not go far
before falling into his arms.'
  Third, there is the pull which beauty exerts on us.
Beauty may not be the right word if this implies mere
surface prettiness. True beauty is a strong quality closely
related to the struggle to see and express what is true. It
does not come from trying to produce something that is
attractive. It is the result of artistic integrity. So beauty not
only draws us, it makes a claim on the artist similar to that
  34
made on the scientific worker by truth.
  Sophisticated people have sometimes felt the claim of
truth, beauty or goodness so strongly that they have wanted
to treat these abstract nouns as real 'things'; to regard
them as having the same kind of spiritual reality that
believers attribute to God. Iris Murdoch in <1The Sovereignty>1
<1of Good>1 argues that the non-believer needs something
equivalent to God and to prayer to provide a vision which
will influence us to do what is right and purify the will.
She writes that 'The image of the Good as a transcendent
magnetic centre seems to me the least corruptible and most
realistic picture for us to use in our reflections upon the
moral life.' Again 'true morality is a sort of unesoteric
mysticism, having its source in an austere and unconsoled
love of the good.'5
  The points just made are not arguments in favour of the
existence of God. All such arguments are inconclusive.
They neither prove nor disprove God's reality but leave the
issue open. Nor can these experiences be called pointers to
God. If strict argument fails there can be no such pointers.
The situation is rather that both believer and agnostic share
a common experience of absolute claim. The believer inter-
prets this in terms of God's will for him. The agnostic will
simply talk of duty. But the believer can point to these
experiences in order to give the person without faith some
idea of what it means to take the step from recognition of
particular values to a total response to what is of absolute
worth. It is not an argument. It is an attempt at communi-
cation.
  Religion is not concerned with feelings of release from
the burden of being human but with recognition and
response to value. It leads us to acknowledge what is of
absolute value, what draws our unconditional allegiance or
worship, God himself, in whom all values are grounded 6
This worship will be the central passion in a person's life.
  Abstract language like 'response to value', necessary as it is
to show what religion is essentially about, need not blind us
to the strength and depth of feeling of a person who wor-
  35
ships. ln Peter Shaffer's remarkable play <1Equus>1 a young
boy, Alan Strang, has a strange tormented relationship with
horses. For some unknown reason he blinds six of them and
is sent to a psychiatrist to be cured. At one point in the
play the doctor, Dysart, is talking to the magistrate Hesther
about the boy.
  <1Dysart:>1 Can you think of anything worse one can do
  to anybody than take away their worship?
  <1Hesther:>1 Worship;
  <1Dysart:>1 Yes, that word again!
  <1Hesther:>1 Aren't you being a little extreme?
  <1Dysart:>1 Extremity's the point.
  <1Hesther :>1 Worship isn't destructive, Martin. 1 know that.
  <1Dysart:>1 I don't. 1 only know it's the core of his life.
Hesther argues that the boy is in pain and that Dysart's
duty is to take the pain away.
  <1Dysart:>1 . . . Look . . . to go through life and call it
  yours -- <1your life>1 -- you have first to get your own
  pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip
  into the common bin and say  "That's enough!" . . .
  He's done that. All right, he's sick. He's full of misery
  and fear. He was dangerous and could be again,
  though I doubt it. But that boy has known a passion
  more ferocious that 1 have felt in any second of my
  life. And let me tell you something: I envy it.
  <1Hesther:>1 you can't.
  <1Dysart:>1 . . . I go on about my wife. That smug woman
  by the fire. Have you thought of the fellow on the
  other side of it? The finicky, critical husband looking
  through his art books on mythical Greece. What
  worship has <1he>1 ever known? Real worship! Without
  worship you shrink it's as brutal as that . . . I shrank
  my <1own>1 life. . . 7
However distorted and horrible it has become, the boy has
  36
a passion which the psychiatrist envies. The boy worships
and the doctor recognizes that his own life has become im-
poverished because he has no equivalent. He recognizes
within himself a need that has not been fulfilled.
  The believer is aware of the pull and claim upon him of
the true, the beautiful and the good. He traces the thread
back from these experiences to their source in God and
yields his allegiance to the absolute which haunts him. For
some Christians it is the person of Jesus, rather than the
values of truth, beauty and goodness which convinces them
of the reality of God. Christ is central to all forms of
Christian faith. But whereas some Christians, if they came
to think that Jesus was just an ordinary man, would
continue to believe in God, others would cease to believe
altogether. It is Jesus and he alone who mediates to them
the reality and knowledge of God. But even if the latter
view is taken Jesus mediates God only because we discern
in him something of such value that we are drawn to offer
him our total loyalty. So whatever our emphasis, whether it
is on Jesus alone or on him as a focus of all that we value,
religious belief is essentially a matter of moral and spiritual
recognition. This recognition and our response to it could
in principle have no emotional content at all. Yet we are
beings with feelings and it would be surprising if our
reaction to what we conceived to be of supreme impor-
tance to our lives was cold. In fact we respond with the
whole of our personality, and the object of our worship
becomes the central passion in life. Such passions can
become horribly distorted. The history of religions shows
many terrible things of which Alan Strang's worship of
Equus is by no means the most distorted. But even when
distorted it can cause those with no faith to raise a question
mark against their own lives. Our response to the object of
our worship takes two principle forms, awe and ecstasy. A
good example of the former can be found in <1The Wind in>1
<1the Willows,>1 when rat and mole rowing down the river hear
the sound of some strange music. They follow the music to
a place of solemn stillness. Suddenly
  37
Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that
turned his muscles to water, bowed his head and
rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror
-- indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy --
but it was an awe that smote and held him, and,
without seeing, he knew it could only mean that
some august Presence was very very near. He raised
his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of
the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with full-
ness and incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath
for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the
Friend and Helper . . . Rat! he found breath to
whisper, shaking. Are you afraid? "Afraid?"
murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable
love. "Afraid! of <1Him>1 O, never never! And yet and
yet -- O Mole, I am afraid!" Then the two animals,
crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did
worship.8
Awe is an essential constituent of man's approach to the
divine mystery.9 It appears to be an emotion that modern
urban people do not feel very easily. Moreover it has
slipped somewhat into the background with the present
emphasis upon celebration before God. But if celebration
is not to be poster paint jollity and back slapping, some
sense of the numinous must be present. Awe, a sense of the
holy, is an essential element in our apprehension of God. So
is praise. If sometimes the soul wishes to kneel in obeisance,
at other times it wishes to go out in exultation. A good
example of the latter comes in a letter Dame Sybil Thorn-
dike wrote to her parents when as a young girl she saw the
Niagara Falls for the first time. 'I've seen it', she wrote,
'The trouble is I've run out of adjectives. I've used up all
the wonderfuls and marvellouses. So take all the wonder-
fuls and marvellouses, multiply them one hundred times,
sing them to Handel's Alleluia Chorus, King of Kings, Lord
of Lords, and you'll know something of what I am feeling.'
Sybil Thorndike wanted to convey extreme elation border-
  38
ing on ecstasy, joy and praise. She wanted to sing, but not
just a catchy tune. What comes to her mind is a piece of
music that almost more than any other expresses ecstatic
worship of God.
  Nearly everyone will have experienced something of
what Sybil Thorndike felt, most likely as she did, in
response to some aspect of nature. Why don't we go into
such ecstasy more often? What stops our everyday life
being an unceasing act of praise? First we cannot ignore the
influence of our personal chemistry, over which we have no
say. Some, like Sybil Thorndike, are naturally enthusiastic,
and easily get taken up into raptures. For others the gloom
rarely seems to lift and again there are some who appear to
have no strong feelings about anything. But although praise
involves the emotions, for we are creatures with feelings, it
is not in essence a matter of the emotions. It involves our
moral and spiritual capacity to admire without reserve what
we regard as intrinsically worthy of such a response. But,
second, it may be that undue cynicism has killed our
capacity to respond to value. We can become so mean-
spirited that we not only begrudge praise but become in-
capable of offering it. Then, third, there is a rather different
kind of reason. We may find it difficult to 'let go' in the
way that praise or worship entails because of an awareness
of the amount of suffering in the world. You are about to
sit down to a beautifully cooked and prepared meal. You
feel happy, full of expectation, a grace rises naturally to the
mind. Then someone reminds you that one third of the
world is suffering from malnutrition. A shadow is cast and
the grace does not come with the same joy. On another
occasion you are walking in the mountains conscious of the
glory of the world and the glory of God, when you see a
face of the mountain where only the week before three
climbers were killed. Accident and tragedy, remembered or
potential, makes its entrance to the mind to mar a surging
joy.
  The fact of others suffering casts a blight on ourjoy. As
the Christian faith should make us more sensitive to the
  39
suffering of others there is a sense in which the more
Christian we are, that is, the more loving, the less will we be
able to rejoice. But if the Christian faith has this effect on
us, it also has another. First, God himself shares in human
suffering. When a soldier in hospital asked the famous First
World War Padre Studdert Kennedy what God was like he
pointed to a crucifix. The cross reveals God bearing our
situation with us. This was not just a once for all act. It is
the revelation of an eternal fact. It is the nature of love to
enter into and share the suffering of others. The word
sympathy comes from two Greek words meaning to suffer
with. God knows our suffering from the inside. But he is
not just the fellow-sufferer who understands, as the
philosopher Whitehead conceived him. In Christ's death
and resurrection he has overcome sin and death in some
definitive and final way. The world is grounded in, founded
upon, stands by, the death and resurrection of Christ. It is
<1the>1 decisive event of all times. This is the second point. The
third follows naturally from it. There is a future, beyond
space and time, when God will be all in all. The resurrec-
tion is a promise of the final triumph of God's purposes of
love.  Depression,  suffering  and  tragedy  are part of the
experience of the Christian as of everyone else. But for him
they cannot have the last word. God has entered into our
situation and achieved some decisive victory which one day
will come to its appointed and glorious climax. So our joy,
our desire to praise and rejoice, has a firm theological
foundation. It is grounded in the acclamation of the Eucha-
rist:
  Christ has died
  Christ is risen
  Christ will come again.
  'Joy and woe are woven fine' said William Blake. For the
Christian they will be woven finer and finer. As a person
becomes more loving they will become more sensitive to
the unhappiness of others and more willing to bear within
  40
themselves something of their suffering.  As that person
comes to a deeper, more convinced, faith he will become
more sure that in the end 'all shall be well and all manner of
thing shall be well';10  more certain that rejoicing rather than
resigned melancholy is the true response to reality.
Anthony Bloom once said that 'If you are really aware of
things, of how tragic life is, then there is restraint in your
enjoyment. Joy is another thing. One can possess a great
sense of inner joy and elation.11
  Joyful praise to God is in essence a response to what we
regard as having worth but for most of us it arises out of
our sensory experiences. The Psalms are superb examples of
an affirmation of life reaching out and beyond itself to
rejoice in the one from whom all good things come. Poets
in every age too have, time and again, fused rejoicing in life
with rejoicing in God. Here is a very small part of
Christopher Smart's <1A Song to David>1 in which he runs
through a great number of the beauties of the natural world
with a sense that each in its different way is offering adora-
tion and glory to God.
  The wealthy crops of whitening dice,
  'Mongst thyine woods and groves of spice,
  For <1Adoration>1 grow;
  And, marshalled in the fenced land,
  The peaches and pomegranates stand,
  Where wild carnations blow.
  The laurels with the winter strive;
  The crocus burnishes alive
  Upon the snow-clad earth;
  For <1Adoration>1 myrtles stay
  To keep the garden from dismay,
  And bless the sight from dearth.
  The pheasant shows his pompous neck;
  and ermine, jealous of a speck,
  With fear eludes offence:
  41
The sable, with his glossy pride,
For <1Adoration>1 is descried,
Where frosts the wave condense 12
The actual practice of praise will be considered later, in
chapters seven and eight. But for most of us, most of
the time, if we are able to offer any praise that is genuine,
it will be because something excites our senses. A scene or
a sound, a scent, a taste or a texture makes one feel good,
glad to be alive, wanting to delight and rhapsodize.
There are some, however, whose praise is not so depen-
dent on what comes into the soul through the senses. They
seem so aware of God that they can rejoice and exult in
him in himself without the senses first being aroused. St
John of the Cross once asked a visitor what her prayer
consisted of, and she replied 'In considering the beauty of
God and rejoicing that he has such beauty.' It is a reply that
catches the spirit of true worship. Another example of the
same spirit is revealed in the reply of St Francis of Assisi to
his friend Leo. Leo was feeling down in the dumps and
eventually plucked up courage to ask Francis for advice.
Francis simply wrote on a piece of parchment (which
is still in existence) all the things he knew about God.
'Thou art the Lord God, Triune and One; all good. Thou
art good, all good, highest good, Lord God living and
true. '13
  Praise above all -- for praise prevails;
  Heap up the measure, load the scales,
  And good to goodness add:
  The generous soul her Saviour aids,
  But peevish obloquy degrades;
  The Lord is great and glad.
  (From Christopher Smart's  <1A Song to David)>1
  42
Praise the Lord, O my soul: and all this is written we
praise his holy name.
<1Psalm 103, verse 1.>1
  NOTES
  1. From 'Spring', <1The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,>1 edited
by W. H. Gardner and N. H MacKenzie, Oxford Paperbacks, 1970,
p.67.
2. Article  in  <1The  Radio  Times>1  for  17-23  September  1977,  p.72,
3.<1Dying we Live,>1 Fontana, 1958, p.13.
4.Iris Murdoch, <1The Sovereignty of Good,>1 Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1970, p.75.
5.Ibid.p.92.
6. See e.g. St Augustine's address to God in <1The Confessions.>1
'Thou Beauty most ancient and with all so fresh'.
7.Peter Shaffer, <1Equus,>1 Andre Deutsch,  1973, p.78/9.
8.Kenneth Graham, <1The Wind in the Willows,>1 Methuen, 1966.
p.165/7.
9.See Rudolph Otto's classic book <1The idea of the Holy,>1 Penguin,
1959.
1O.The lines of Julian of Norwich incorporated in <1The Four Quartets>1
by T. S. Eliot.
11.Anthony Bloom with Marghanita Laski, <1God and Man,>1 Darton,
Longman and Todd,  1971, p.16.
12. <1'A Song to David'>1 in <1The New Oxford Book of English Verse>1
edited by Helen Gardner, OUP, 1972, p.455.
l3.Quoted in <1Richest of Poor Men,>1 by John Moorman, Darton,
Longman and Todd, 1977, p.24.
  43
  Know then thyself 1
A STUDENT once went into the chapel of his theological
college where he saw a strange sight. The Principal was
kneeling on the floor beating his chest and murmuring 'O
Lord, I am a dustbin- O Lord, I am a dustbin.' It is diffi-
cult not to smile at this scene. But it also conveys an
attitude of mind about which many modern people are
uneasy, and one which Christianity appears to encourage.
The Christian faith seems bent on getting people to feel
that they are sinful. A university chaplain once asked a
group of students what they thought the job of a Christian
in a university should be. One man replied 'To convince
people of their vileness in the eyes of God.' What are the
grounds of our unease with such an attitude? There seem to
be four main reasons.
  First, for an action to be judged sinful we must have
been free to do something different from what in fact we
did. An act is wrong if, knowing it to be wrong, and with
alternatives open to us, we persisted in doing it. But we
now know that much of our behaviour is determined by
factors over which we have no control. Recently the results
of an interesting study were published. 12,500 sets of twins
born between 1917 and 1927 were studied in relation to
their earnings in 1973. It was found that the earnings of
identical twins were 54% more likely to be similar than if
they hadn't been twins. In the case of non-identical twins
the earnings were 30% more likely to be similar. The study
concluded that the genetic component in our makeup was
in the order of 48%.2 The evidence has of course been
  44
interpreted differently by others. But there is no disputing
the fact that much of what we are, from the shape of our
nose to the quickness of our brain, has been given us and is
the result of hereditary factors. Similarly, although there is
always a dispute about the extent to which our early up-
bringing is responsible for the way we act as adults no one
doubts that the experiences of early childhood help shape
the way we behave later. A person whose mother dies when
he is 18 months old and who then moves from one
home to another without making any satisfactory or lasting
relationship is bound to be badly affected. This is not the
place to consider the age old debate between determinism
and free will. The position taken here is that in some crucial
sense we remain free but that our freedom of manoeuvre is
severely circumscribed. The number of times when we
really had the option of doing other than what we did may
have been very few. Moreover it may be impossible for us
or other human beings to judge when those occasions were.
The bearing of this on the kind of attitude that we want
people to take to themselves is clear. A 12 year old boy of
previous good conduct, who knows that stealing is wrong,
is caught on a shop lifting spree. In the course of investi-
gation it is discovered that the boy's mother has been in
and out of hospital for most of the previous two years. We
now all take it for granted that the two facts, the boy's
stealing and the mother's illness, are related in some way.
Or take a comparable situation. A seven year old is a per-
sistent bedwetter. No mother with loving insight is going
to try and make the girl more ashamed of what she has
done by continually berating her on the subject. On the
contrary, she will try to play it down and reassure the girl.
She feels ashamed enough anyway. Here, as in the case of
the boy and as in so many situations of wrong doing, little
is gained by trying to increase a person's sense of guilt.
Helping means trying to find the underlying cause. We
<1are>1  free, within restricted limits; we <1can>1 distinguish right
from wrong; sometimes we do what we know to be wrong
and in such a case we are morally culpable. But, having said
  45
that, so much of our behaviour originates in causes outside
our control. Trying to convince men of their vileness in the
eyes of God is thoroughly damaging. So often what we
need is more help in understanding why we behave the way
we do because understanding, though not a miracle cure-
all, can bring a degree of liberation; it gives us greater
freedom to choose and act differently.
  Second, even if we are able to distinguish those actions
in which we acted freely, is the yardstick by which we
judge them to be good or bad a true standard? Whilst the
debate about God was going on in the 1960's there was
another rather less publicized issue being considered which
is in fact more threatening to many people's interpretation
of the Christian faith. The most perspicacious challenge
came in a remarkable series of serm ons and articles from
H. A. Williams who placed a large question mark against the
traditional evaluation of much of our behaviour.3 He was
not the first to do this, and in fact William Blake in the late
18th century had done much the same. In <1The Everlasting>1
<1Gospel>1 Blake asked whether Jesus was really humble.
  Was Jesus humble? or did he
  Give any proofs of Humility?
  When but a child he ran away
  And left his parents in dismay
  When they had wonder'd three days long
  These were the words upon his Tongue:
  "No earthly Parents I confess:
  1 am doing my Father's business."
He then continues:
  But he acts with triumphant, honest pride
  And this is the reason Jesus died.
  If he had been Antichrist, creeping Jesus,
  He'd have done anything to please us.4
People in Blake's time, as now, had been brought up to
  46
esteem humility and to think of Jesus as the prime exem-
plar of that virtue. Blake suggested that Jesus acted not
with humility but with triumphant, honest pride. He left us
in no doubt that he approved of this Jesus. The challenge to
traditional understanding of moral virtue may be summed
up in two assertions. We value self-affirmation. We value
emotional honesty.
  First, self-affirmation. One of the more heartening
experiences is to see someone, normally timid and cowed,
assert themselves. This assertion may take many forms.
It may involve leaving home and getting far away from
the oppressive influence of domineering parents. It may
involve standing up to colleagues at work to stop them
exploiting one's willingness to be of use. It may mean,
in the political field, standing up for one's rights and
going against a lifetime's habit of subservience to authority.
D. H. Lawrence puts the point well in his poem, <1Stand>1
<1Up!>1
  Stand up, but not for Jesus!
  It's a little late for that.
  Stand up for justice and a jolly life.
  I'll hold your hat.
  Stand up, stand up for justice,
  ye swindled little blokes!
  Stand up and do some punching,
  give 'em a few hard pokes.
  Stand up for jolly justice
  you haven't got much to lose:
  a job you don't like and a scanty chance
  for a dreary little booze.
  Stand up for something different
  and have a little fun
  fighting for something worth fighting for
  before you've done.
  47
Stand up for a new arrangement
for a chance of life all round
for freedom, and the fun of living
bust in, and hold the ground!5
Second, emotional honesty. Self-control is a traditional
Christian virtue and control of the tongue, in particular, has
been regarded, in theory anyway, as important. Against this
must be set the strange fact that many people who speak
what they feel without regard to the effect of what they are
saying have had a liberating effect on those around them.
On the one hand they often appear to be uncharitable. On
the other hand part of one's nature, not necessarily the
lower part, finds their outspokenness releasing and stimula-
ting. It's as though those who speak their mind in an
uninhibited manner have the courage to live out thoughts
and feelings common to us all. Others, through their desire
for approval and fear of rejection, carefully check what
they say. They often appear very boring. There are of
course times when it is both charitable and prudent to bite
back remarks one is tempted to make. Some thoughtless
and malicious statements can do damage which is never
made good. But there seems to be a principle that the
better one knows a person the more natural it is to let all
one's thoughts and feelings out. The more we know them
the more accepting they can be of the negative side of one's
nature. It is a well known fact that a marriage where there
is a fair amount of quarrelling, some of it with great dis-
plays of emotion, may be far stronger and healthier than
one where suppressed resentment leads to coldness. Once
again Blake gave us a line.
  1 was angry with my friend
  I told my wrath, my wrath did end
  I was angry with my foe
  I told my wrath, my wrath did grow.6
  A girl in her twenties is living with a suffocating mother
  48
who despite protestations that she wants her daughter to
live a life of her own in fact acts in such a way that the
daughter finds this impossible. Eventually the sheer will to
live drives the daughter to leave home and set up house on
her own. It is not to be imagined that this is achieved with-
out some strain, rows and hard feelings on both sides. The
daughter did not want to hurt her mother and she feels
guilty about what has happened. In her mind are uneasy
feelings centred round such concepts as obedience to
parents, gratitude for what they have done, the wrongness
of being rude and so on. But she did the right thing. God,
who would not have created us if he didn't want us to
become persons in our own right, thoroughly approves. The
duty of a fellow human being in relation to the daughter is
clear; to encourage them in their attempt to live a life of
their own, to reassure them they are doing right, to assuage
rather than incite feelings of guilt.
  This leads onto the third reason for qualms about the
traditional stress on our sinfulness. So often feelings of guilt
are what we are trying to deliver a person from. In theory
we can and must make a distinction between moral guilt
and psychological feelings of guilt. A person who makes a
hurtful remark knowing the effect it is going to have and
knowing that hurting someone is wrong feels guilty after-
wards and they are right to feel guilty. But we feel guilty
about so many things that may not be related to objective
wrong doing at all. And some people, alas, are daily clawed
into the slough of despond by such feelings. The trouble
with emphasizing our sin is that those who are really
morally guilty usually manage to continue to deceive them-
selves whilst those who are tormented with feelings of guilt
have their self-hatred reinforced. The poet William Cowper
was a depressive and during his life he had a number of
incapacitating breakdowns. What was even more terrible is
that being a deeply religious man his depression had a
religious twist. He believed he had been rejected by God
and was eternally damned.7 Despite the fact that he was a
convinced Evangelical who believed strongly in the saving
  49
efficacy of Christ's death he himself could never really
believe deep within himself. Although he could for a few
moments lose himself in gardening or playing with animals
he never lost his underlying sense of rejection. No doubt
this sense of doom had something to do with the death of
his mother, to whom he was blissfully attached, when he
was only six years old. Certainly his life was never the same
after. The unhappy fact is that his religion, although it gave
him some comfort, reinforced his feeling of guilt and
rejection. So it does for many others. Due to various
  factors outside our control, perhaps breast feeding diffi-
  culties as a baby for example, as has been suggested, we
  grow up with feelings of guilt. In some people these are
  utterly unrelated to objective wrong doing and they cripple
  their life. What is needed, before any talk of sin, is an
  attempt to see what one feels and why one feels it.
    The fourth reason for unease about the Church's stress
  on sin has to do with the nature of love. Love tries to build
  people up rather than denigrate them. A young man once
  came to a service. It was the first time he had been in a
  church for many years. In many ways he was typical of
  people today in their twenties -- relatively well-off;
  relaxed, fairly thoughtful, quite honest, certainly as far as
  religious matters were concerned. He said he went to
  church with a sense of interest and expectancy but found
  the experience a negative one. There was something about
  the service and the atmosphere, he felt, which was dimin-
  ishing rather than enlarging. He came away feeling smaller
  and nastier rather than encouraged in a love of life and
  other people. It is undeniable that much of our worship and
  devotional literature has had this effect on people. Some-
  one once asked me what I was trying to achieve through my
  broadcasts. I gave some reply, to which they said 'I think
  you should be aiming to give people a sense of their own
  worth.' I agree. Christianity, if it is of any use at all, must
  be about helping people realize their true value. With a
  sense of their own worth people are able to go on and
  affirm the worth of others and of life itself. There is a strain
  50
in Christianity, as we have it at the moment, which is not
conducive to this.
  The Church has always taught that in addition to thanks-
giving and praise, prayer should contain an expression of
sorrow for our sins preceded by a period of self-examination.
The foregoing points show how difficult some people today
find this idea. They all point to the importance of trying to
know oneself better rather than trying to find things to
blame in oneself. But before this is considered further,
some points in favour of the traditional emphasis need to
be considered. First, it is undeniable that in the ministry of
Jesus there was an emphasis on repentance. 'The time has
come; the kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe
the Gospel.'8 But what is it to repent? Scholars tell us that
the Greek word indicates a radical change of mind and
heart. Jesus wanted people to cease being self-sufficient and
self-righteous and to live trustingly on the grace of God. He
set before us the most astringent and searching standard of
goodness, very much concerned with the inward disposi-
tion, in order to show us to ourselves. But the point of this
was to sweep away the self-deception of those who
considered themselves righteous, not to get us grovelling.
After all, the 'righteous' already did a fair amount of
castigating themselves as 'sinners': but they didn't know
themselves.
  Second, we resist the implication that we are sinners
because it threatens our self-esteem. We like to have a good
opinion of ourselves and resent this challenge to our self
image. But though this is obviously true, the way the
Church has often gone about the business of getting us to
see ourselves as we really are does not seem to have worked
very well. So often still it is sexual misdemeanours that
people think of when they hear the word sin. We remain
oblivious of the workings of our own psyche.
  The third argument in favour of the rightness of the
traditional emphasis on our sinfulness, a very powerful one,
is the fact that the great saints have felt themselves to be
great sinners. So, it has often been taught, the closer a
  51
person comes to God the more conscious they are of their
own sinfulness. To take just one example, it is said that
Brother Masseo once tested St Francis by asking him why it
was that the whole world went after him. Francis replied:
  This happens to me because the eyes of the most high
  God, which behold in all places both the evil and the
  good, even those most holy eyes have not seen
  amongst sinners one more vile, nor more insufficient,
  nor a greater sinner than I, and therefore to do that
  wonderful work which he intends to do he has not
  found on earth a viler creater than I; and for this
  cause he has elected me to confound the nobility and
  the grandeur and the strength and beauty and wisdom
  of the world.9
What are we to make of this phenomenon? Is modern man
defective in a sense of sin just because he is so far spiritually
from God? Perhaps. But if so, emphasizing our sinfulness
will not remedy the situation. It's when we meet a
genuinely good person that we are sometimes humbled and
made sharply aware of our own selfishness. So it is that
people who have come close to God have become acutely
aware of the contrast with their own personality. The job
of the Church is not to castigate but to give people a vision
of God and an ideal of goodness which is lived out. This
and this alone is capable of breaking through the protective
wall our fear and pride build around the heart's knowledge
of itself.
  Fourth, it we accept only low standards we can always
see ourselves in a good enough light to remain morally
complacent. It may be that we have no sense of sin because
we do not allow ourselves to be tested or searched by any
very penetrating light. Anthony Bloom said once
  When I was a professional man, we made a decision
  with my mother never to live beyond the minimum
  which we need for shelter and food because we
  52
thought and I still think, that whatever you spend
above that, it is stolen from someone else who needs
it while you don't need it. That doesn't make you
sinister, it gives you a sense of joy in sharing, and in
giving and receiving. But I do feel that as long as there
is one person who is hungry, excess of happiness --
exccss of amenities -- is a theft . . .10
If we set ourselves such a high standard as that we would
easily find ourselves falling short of it. But again, the job of
the Christian teacher is not to bang on about how much we
are falling short but to give a vision, in theory and practice,
of such an ideal. If people can see such an ideal lived out in
an authentic manner they will be attracted to it; being
attracted to it they will already be half way to adopting
such a standard as their own.
  These four points in favour of the Church's traditional
attempt to point up man's sinfulness seem to lead, on
reflection, to a rather different conclusion. The importance
of a vision of God and the importance of knowing oneself.
Written on the temple of Delphi were the famous words
'Know thyself'. Although this saying is often quoted, more
often than not it is simply as a cultural tag. Within
Christian circles it has been left on one side, either deliber-
ately or unconsciously, as being Greek and therefore of no
great concern to Christian discipleship. But Jesus's teaching
implies self-knowledge.
  'Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your
  brother's eye, with never a though for the great plank
  in your own? How can you say to your brother, "My
  dear brother, let me take the speck out of your eye",
  when you are blind to the plank in your own? You
  hypocrite! first take the plank out of your own eye,
  and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of
  your brother's.'11
We tend to be blind to the plank in our own eye, unaware
  53
of our real drives and true motives, of the hidden agenda
behind our actions.
  The crucial importance of self-knowledge is further
underlined by the fact that conscious wrongdoing is res-
ponsible for less harm in the world than destructive actions
which the agent believes to be good. The number of times
in life when a person deliberately does what they know to
be evil is probably small. The number of times when we
deceive ourselves about what we are doing is great. Even
those whom history judges to be great criminals dressed up
what they were doing in a cloak of morality. This self-
deception may not have been deliberate. They justified
what they were doing in moral terms, first to themselves
and then to others. Both Stalin and Hitler believed that
what they were doing was for the good of mankind. As
Machieavelli pointed out in <1The Prince,>1 the world as a whole
expects rulers to justify what they are doing in moral
terms; so from this point of view alone a succesful ruler
will need a veneer of morality. Yet even before he goes
about explaining his policies to others the ruler will have
explained them to himself in moral terms. For we are moral
beings and usually self-deceived ones.
  The trouble, of course, is that it is very difficult to know
oneself. 'The folly of that impossible precept, "Know
thyself"; till it be translated into this partially possible one,
"Know what thou cans't work at!"12 said Thomas Carlyle,
with obvious exasperation. It is difficult to know oneself
for a number of reasons, but one of them is the inner resist-
ance we have to such knowledge. As Conrad wrote in <1Lord>1
<1Jim>1 'it is my belief no man ever understands his own artful
dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.'13
The novel itself unrolls this truth for us in the life of Jim,
who cherishes the idea of himself as a brave man. He goes
through life with the thought that in some decisive test of
courage he will be able to prove himself once and for all.
But in the end although he acts with what might appear to
others to be bravery, he in fact makes the wrong decision.
We get up to various artful dodges to ward off self-
  54
knowledge because such truth might destroy the carefully
preserved image we have of ourselves. Perhaps we pride
ourselves on being good, upright, fundamentally decent
men? We will resist to the death any fact about ourselves
which challenges the very citadel of our personality. Some-
times, if we are forced to face some aspect of our
personality that we have shut away for most of our life, the
effect can be very disturbing. It is common for those who
begin a course of psychotherapy to go through periods
when they appear to get worse rather than better. A person
may have built up defences, little daily rituals and habits, to
keep feelings of guilt and anxiety at bay. When these
contortions are recognized for what they are, the person
may have to live with the guilt and anxiety so revealed. This
can be painful and disturbing. It's not just intellectual
knowledge 'Ah yes, those are feelings of anxiety I have
now'. The person <1feels>1 the anxiety. So we tend to resist
self-knowledge.
  Christians have always been urged to examine them-
selves, but few do so. In a busy world the past quickly
drops away and it is difficult enough to concentrate on the
present and prepare for the future. We begrudge spending
precious time on looking at a past which has gone. Then,
the little list of sins people have been given to help them
have not always been very useful. But, as we have argued,
self-knowledge is vital. Unless we look at how we have
acted in the past we will make the same mistakes in the
future. And if previous aids to self-knowledge have been
trite or irrelevant this does not preclude finding a better
way of knowing oneself. We can look at our behaviour in a
dispassionate way and ask such questions as: 'If someone
criticizes us, how do we react?' 'If we act defensively what
are we trying to conceal?' 'What kinds of situation make us
feel anxious?' 'When we go into a day-dream, what does it
tell us about ourselves?' 'If it is an escapist fantasy what are
we trying to escape from and why?' 'If it is a revenge
fantasy, what is there within ourselves that we have not yet
faced?' This is not a comprehensive list but they are the
  55
kind of questions which could usefully be asked about all
of us. Together with such questions there must be an
increase in what the Buddhists call 'mindfulness', awareness
of what one is doing as one is doing it. This greater aware-
ness makes possible some useful self-monitoring both at the
time and in recollection. The point of this exercise is not to
find evidence with which to condemn oneself. It is not to
be conducted in an accusatory spirit. The point is to try to
understand.
  Sometimes the picture of ourselves that we discover
when we have scraped away the dirt and varnish will not
please us. In William Golding's novel <1Pincher Martin>1 a ship
is wrecked and a sailor is swept onto an isolated rock in the
Atlantic. In a desperate struggle he manages to heave him-
self to safety and stay alive. It is a good novel and the
reader is with Pincher Martin in his courageous will to
survive. When Pincher Martin is on the rock a condition of
near delirium brings a series of flashbacks into his past
life. He comes to see how he has behaved to his friends. He
begins to realize the  significance of his nickname Pincher,
which they gave him. He is in essence a pair of claws. In a
typical Golding twist at the end we are suddenly forced to
see the whole struggle in a new light. Pincher never reached
a rock. He drowned. What we entered into is not just a
desperate struggle to live but his attempt to keep insight
into his character at bay.
  'There was nothing but the centre and the claws.
  They were huge and strong and inflamed to red. They
-  closed on each other. They contracted. They were
  outlined like a night sign against the absolute nothing-
  ness and they gripped their whole strength into each
  other. The serrations of the claws broke. They were
  lambent and real and locked. The lightning crept in.
  The centre was unaware of anything but the claws
  and the threat. It focussed its awareness on the
  crumbling serrations and the blazing red. The light-
  ning came forward. Some of the lines pointed to the
  56
centre, waiting for the moment when they could
pierce it. Others lay against the claws, playing over
them, prying for a weakness, wearing them away in a
compassion that was timeless and without mercy.  '14
Has Golding, in this and other novels, too grim a view of
human nature? If we are a pair of claws grabbing what we
can get, we are also a centre that desires to give and receive
affection. Behind much of our aggression and bitterness is a
self that wants to love and be loved. Getting to know one-
self better means getting to know this centre, as well as the
claws that surround it. Getting to know oneself is a job to
be done with gentleness.
                     * * *
Lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt
make me to understand wisdom secretly.
Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit
within me.
<1(From Psalm 51)>1
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires
known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the
thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy
Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily
magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord.
<1(Collect for Purity>1 -- <1ASBRiteA 3)>1
  57
  NOTES
1.Alexander Pope, <1An Essay on Man,>1 Ep. 11, L.l.
2.The study is recorded in <1Kinometrics, the Determinants of>1
<1Socio-economic Success within and between families,>1 North Holland,
Amsterdam, 1977.
3.'Theology and Self-awareness' in <1Soundings>1 ed. A. E. Vidler,
CUP, 1963. 'Psychological Objections' in <1Objections to Christian>1
<1Belief,>1 Constable, 1963, <1The God I want,>1 ed.J. Mitchell, Constable,
1967, p.161. <1The True Wilderness,>1 Constable, 1965.
4.'The Everlasting Gospel' in <1William Blake>1 ed. J. Bronowski,
Penguin 1964, p.77.
5.D. H. Lawrence, <1The Complete Poems,>1 Heinemann, 1972, Vol. 1,
p.560.
6.'A Poison Tree' in <1William Blake,>1 p.54.
7.David Cecil, <1The Striken Deer or the life of Cowper,>1 Constable,
1929.
8.Mark 1, 15.
<19.The Little Flowers of St Francis.>1
10.Anthony Bloom, <1God and Man,>1 Darton, Longman and Todd,
1971,p.16.
11.Luke 6,41.
12.Thomas Carlyle, <1Sartor Resartus,>1 book 2, chapter 7.
13.Lord <1tim,>1 Penguin Classics, 1961, p.65.
14.William Golding, <1Pincher Martin,>1  Penguin, 1962, p.184.
  58
  Asking for things to happen
IF A friend is ill we pray that he or she might get better.
This is perfectly natural. Millions of people every day offer
such prayers. What is surprising, however, is the apparent
emphasis in the New Testament on prayers of asking. Many
spiritual guides have led us to think that contemplation,
simply being with God quietly and lovingly, is the highest
form of prayer and the one to which we should be aspiring.
So it's something of a shock to come across statements like
that  in  Matthew  21 ,  22.  'Whatever you pray  for  in  faith
you will receive.' What this might mean will be considered
at the end of the chapter. But whatever it means it clearly
implies that asking God for things is important.
  This stress on asking seems somewhat odd to us. For,
having given the world a real independence over against
himself, God presumably wants us to carve out our own
destinies. This, indeed, is what it means to exist as a person.
So why should there be a stress on coming to him for help?
Has he not given us strength to stand on our own feet?
Then there is another even more testing question. If God
really does want to help us why doesn't he simply get on
and do so? Why does he wait to be asked? The difficulty
becomes even more acute when we begin to reflect on the
nature of God as perfect love. In the case of an earthly
parent it is possible that they are not doing all they can for
their child or it may be that their understanding of what is
in the child's best interest is mistaken. No such considera-
tions apply in the case of God. He knows whatis good for
us far more clearly than we do ourselves and as perfect
  59
love he is doing everything he possibly can on our behalf.
So why do we need to ask for his help at all?
  Some light can be shed on these questions by reflecting
on the fact that our relationship to God has some of the
characteristics of a human friendship. A father gives his son
an engine to strip down. He says to his son that he is
available to give any help if it is needed. Meanwhile he
potters about on other jobs without interfering. In order to
learn how to strip the engine the son needs to carry out the
operation himself. If the father keeps giving advice (a usual
tendency) it not only irritates the son but hinders the
learning process. Yet the son, just because he is learning, is
more than likely to need help and it gives him confidence
to know that help is available when he needs it. The father,
unobtrusively in the background, is willing to give advice if
and when he is asked; but not before. The simple principle
that emerges from this picture is that love waits to be
asked. Friends don't force their help on us nor on the other
hand are they indifferent to our plight. They let it be
known that they are available. So although it is true that
God is doing everything he possibly can for our welfare and
wellbeing there is one important qualification. What he
does, does not contradict his fundamental respect for our
freedom and dignity as independent persons. There may
well be other things he could do for us and through us -- if
only we asked him.
  Despite this consideration there will be some who will
want, quite legitimately, to press the question further. God
respects our freedom, yes, but let's imagine a disaster situa-
tion. A slag heap is about to fall on a school full of
children. Are we really to imagine God hovering in the
background waiting to be called in? In human life we recog-
nize situations where emergency action has to be taken. A
child is about to run across the road in front of a car, so we
grab him. In order to save his life we override all considera-
tions of respect for his freedom and dignity. We use force.
Granted God's basic respect for our existence as indepen-
dent persons would not he, like a human father, act to save
  60
life and limb in a crisis situation without waiting to be
asked?
  At this point another consideration comes to the fore.
Suppose God did intervene every time an accident seemed
likely. What kind of world would we then be living in? It
would be utterly unpredictable. We are driving along when
a child suddenly runs out into the road. Normally the car
would come to a halt in about thirty yards, having hit the
child. But God intervenes and the car stops dead, without
skidding, just short of the child. What is the effect of this
on the cars behind who have allowed a normal safe distance
between vehicles but who now suddenly find that the car in
front has pulled up in two yards with no warning? The
result is not just one accident but a series of accidents --
unless God intervenes again. But once he intervenes with
this line of cars will he be able to stop here?
  If God continually intervened to stop events taking their
natural course the result would be an unpredictable world.
You are going down some steps. An old lady who puts her
foot down at the same time as yourself stumbles and is
about to fall down. In order to save her, divine power
reverses the normal pull of gravity. The old lady does not
fall. But neither will your foot go down onto the step
either; it too is effected by the reversal of the usual gravita-
tional effect. After a few minutes, hilarity this kind of world
would become a nightmare. It would be impossible to rely
on anything, impossible to predict anything. More than this
human personality as we know it would not evolve or, if it
had evolved, would not survive for long. In order to learn to
think we need stability and continuity in our experience. If
on the first day at school a child is told that the letter a is
pronounced like the a in apple and the next day he is told
that the same sign signifies the sound m as in mummy and
on the third day he is told that it signifies the sound z as in
zebra, the child would not begin to learn his alphabet or
to read. In order to learn there must be continuity. This
is so whether the context is school or life as a whole. Mind
has been able to evolve and develop because of the regularity
  61
and predictability of experience. If God continually
disrupted the world to avert accidents it would defeat his
whole purpose of creating rational beings.
  Two important principles have emerged. First, because
God respects our dignity and freedom as personal beings he
does not normally help until asked to do so and when he
does the help that is given will not override the wills of
those who pray or those who are prayed for. Second,
because a stable natural order is essential for the existence
of thinking beings there are very severe limits on what God
can do in the way of intervention without going against his
prime purpose in creation. In addition to these there is an
equally important third principle, which can be seen in the
dialogue between the ship's cook and D'Arrast, already
referred to. After saying that he used to be proud but now
he is alone, the engineer continues.
  'Has your good Jesus always answered you?'
  'Always . . . No, Captain!'
  'Well, then?'
  The cook burst out with a gay, child like laugh.
  'Well,' he said, 'he's free, isn't he?'1
God is free. He is not bound by anything outside himself.
It's tempting to say that if God has once acted to save
someone from drowning he Should always answer cries for
help in this way. But God is free. He is not bound by
precedent. It's tempting to say that if God interrupted the
natural course of events the whole pattern of nature would
be put out and that therefore God could never so act. But
God is free. He is not bound by the regularities of nature
which he has designed and which he sustains in being.
  The word intervention has been used. From one point
of view this is a bad word. It implies a world going its own
way until a God who is absent from it, steps in. But God is
never absent from the world. He is the source and ground
of its existence. Moment by moment he holds it in being,
sustaining the natural processes in their own distinctive
  62
movement. The question however is whether, in addition
to this, there is another level of divine action. Are we to
think of an eye surveying some general view and then
focussing on one detail? Of a person who always acts with
great kindness but who for some particular purpose acts with
almost overwhelming generosity? All these analogies are
inadequate, as is the idea of intervention. But the question
remains. God works in and through the endless series of
causes and effects which constitute our life and history but
does he do more than this? He does: but this second level
of divine action, as it were, is primarily in relation to
people. To revert to the analogy of the son stripping down
an engine. Suppose the son did ask for help, at which point
the father stepped in and finished off the job himself. We
would probably feel that the father had frustrated his
original purpose of giving the job to the son to do in the
first place. If asked to Stet, a sensitive father will give the
help that is needed and no more. He will show his son how
to do the piece that he is stuck over and once again leave
the son to finish the job off himself. So it is between God
and us. He does not step in and do everything for us. He
works in dialogue with us; in and through his relationship
with us. Here as elsewhere Christ is the revealing clue to
God's mind. God did not redeem the world from on high,
pulling strings like a divine puppeteer or pulling and push-
ing the chips across the board like a divine croupier. He
became part of the stream of events, working from within,
like yeast in bread. Christ was aware that there were ways
of bringing about the redemption of the world other than
the way he chose. To Peter who took up a sword he said
'Do you suppose that I cannot appeal to my Father, who
would at once send to my aid more than twelve legions
of angels?'2  But he rejected this way. Our salvation was
brought about from within the course of human events by
one who sustained an unbroken relationship with the
Father.
  God does 'intervene' in his world but he does so
primarily through people, through those who freely enter
  63
into a relationship of love with himself. God acts in and
through those who open themselves to him; through those
who make themselves available for the work of love.
  If God works in the world through his relationships with
human persons then what we pray for -- or don't pray for
-- is of the greatest significance. J. R. Lucas has suggested
that what we desire and pray for is precious to God just
because it is an expression of what we want.3 If a child has
a favourite toy that toy is valuable to the father also just be-
cause it is precious to his child. The father takes the child's
feelings about the toy into account. He is careful not to tread
on it. He doesn't throw it away just because it looks worn. He
takes it on holiday. His behaviour is modified by the fact
that a toy, of no value in itself, is precious to his child. So it
is that our wants are precious to God and he takes them
into account. He not only gives us freedom to behave in
one way rather than another but freedom to say that some
things are valuable and others are not. His purposes take
into account not only the choices we actually make but the
wishes we express in prayer, however immature they might
be.
  God's main way of working in the world is through
people who are channels of his love. But what about
nature? God sustains every atom, molecule, cell and
organism in being, each with its own distinctive life, but is
there a divine action over and above this? It cannot be ruled
out. Teilhard de Chardin believed that there is something
corresponding to our mental life in all creatures, however
lowly. He pointed out that when a scientist meets an odd
fact, he doesn't just accept it as such but looks for the
pattern into which it might fit. Man is a conscious being.
From a scientific point of view we should look for and
expect to find some precursor of our consciousness in the
forms from which we have evolved. He believed there are
such antecedents. 'Co-extensive with their without, there is
a within of things'.4 There has not only been an evolution
of physical forms but there has been, parallel to this, an
evolution of mental life. Sir Alistair Hardy has made a
  64
similar point.5 He believes that evolution is not simply the
result of natural selection and random mutation but that
the curiosity, initiative, and self-adaptation of animals have
all been important. Internal behavioural selection, due to
the psychic life of the animal is, according to him, a power-
ful creative element in evolution.
  The insights of people like Teilhard de Chardin and Sir
Alistair Hardy are not certainties. But they ensure that we
do not shut our mind to the possibility that God acts not
only in relation to human wills, but in relation to the
rudimentary precursors of our mental life to be found at
every level in nature, drawing the whole creative process
into his purposes.
  Four principles have been stated. First, God does not
override human wills but works with our co-operation.
Second, God respects the observed regularities of nature
(what are sometimes called 'the laws of nature').6 We can
see that, if these were continually disrupted, human
personality could not exist. Nevertheless, and this is the
third principle, God is free, bound by nothing exterior to
himself. Fourth, God's power is the power of love working
in and through his relationships with human persons. In
the working out of his purposes he takes into account not
only our actions but our desires and prayers. Furthermore,
it may be that in addition to this God has a second level of
action in selection to the psychic life of all natural
organisms. Having stated these principles however there is
a perfectly proper question to be asked and answered. Does
prayer actually make any difference not just to the person
who prays, which all admit, but to the people and
situations which are prayed for?
  Francis Galton investigated the efficacy of prayer in
what set out to be a scientific manner and published the
result in 1872, in a study that has since become famous.
He took a group of people who are prayed for regularly, the
Royal family, and tested the hypothesis that as a result of
prayer they should live longer. He found that, on the con-
trary, they did not live so long as the average person in
  65
England at the time. Then in order to meet the doubt that
prayer for the Royal family might not be heartfelt he com-
pared the number of still births to recorded births in two
papers, <1The Record,>1 a predominantly clerical paper, and <1The>1
<1Times,>1 on the assumption that there should be fewer still
births per thousand of population amongst the devout. In
fact he found that the figures in the two papers were about
the same. It is possible to raise questions about the presup-
positions of this investigation. For example it is not fair to
assume that in 1872 readers of a mainly clerical paper were
significantly more devout than readers of <1The Times.>1 Even
if readers of <1The Record>1 were more closely connected with
ecclesiastical concerns this does not mean that they
necessarily prayed more ardently for their forthcoming off-
spring or that if they did so their prayer was more sincere
than the prayers of less clerical families. Other studies,
more sympathetic to the claims of religion have been under-
taken, but to the more sensitive religious mind there is
something alien about this whole attempt to quantify God's
action in the world. For it is based on the assumption that
a certain amount of prayer will of itself bring about a
particular result. It is true that religious people sometimes
slip into this way of thinking. They talk about 'the power
of prayer' or speak of 'a great wave of prayer' as though it
was some impersonal force that, once unleashed, would do
its stuff. Some organizations do in fact believe just this. One
(non-Christian) group advertises a box with the claim that it
is equivalent to several thousand hours of prayer. They
believe the box can heal and do other things because it is
a kind of battery of prayer power.
  Some credence is given to this view of prayer by modern
studies of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). It is now certain,
after a large number of scientific studies, that phenomena
like telepathy, precognition and so on, actually occur. But
there is nothing inherently religious about ESP. If it is
possible for one mind to be in direct communication with
another mind without any intervening physical means being
used, then this can and should be investigated like any
  66
other phenomenon. But it is no more -- or less -- religious
than, say, the pull of gravity or the electrical field set up by
a magnet. It is possible that God in his providence makes
use of forces of which we are not yet fully aware. In which
case it would be one more means, along with touching,
talking, gesticulating, writing and so on, for focussing and
communicating the Divine in human terms. The basic
principle is that God's work in the world is done through
those who make themselves willing channels of his loving
purposes. When they do this the whole of what they are,
and the whole range of natural phenomena, come into
play. But prayer is not magic. Magic works on the assump-
tion that the repetition of a certain formula or the perfor-
mance of a particular ritual will of itself bring about a
desired effect. Prayer that allows this assumption to slip in
is no longer prayer. For prayer is in essence a relationship
to the living God. In prayer we ask for things both for
ourselves and others, but not on the assumption that
because we have prayed the object of our desires will auto-
matically come to pass. We assume nothing; but simply
bring our needs to one who is both utterly other than us
and utterly to be trusted. Nor in fact do we have to bring
telepathy in to understand how we can be close to those for
whom we pray. Prayer is first of all trying to be close to
God. As God is closer to each one of us than we are to our-
selves, to be close to him is at the same time to be close to
every other being, both living and departed.
  Scientific studies on whether prayer does or does not
work are alien to the religious mind. Yet, surely, one
thinks, if we bring our heartfelt longings to the living God
who desires our wellbeing with all the intensity of perfect
love, this will make some difference? Those who pray
affirm that it does. A person prays for a severely depressed
friend over many months. The friend is receiving medical
treatment and is supported by the love of others. Even-
tually, after a number of setbacks, the patient really and
truly emerges out of the gloom. The person who has been
praying believes that God has heard their prayer and said
  67
'Yes'. It is obvious that in this case and in almost every
other a natural explanation of what has happened lies
readily to hand. We can say that the person would have
got better anyway. The drugs, the love of friends, the
disease following its natural cycle and so on, are the causes
of the person getting better. But the believer persists in his
conviction. When his friend was ill he knew in his bones
it was very important to pray for him. Now he is better he
knows that prayer made a difference. There is nothing out
of the way about this conviction. It is the normal faith of
millions who pray. But how can he prove it to be true?
How can he show that his faith is not just a mixture of
love and wishful thinking? He can't. What he can do how-
ever, is show something of how he views life and how, on
this view, prayer for others is a vital necessity.
  Richard Wilhelm once told a story from his time in
China. He was staying in a village suffering from extreme
drought. Every remedy had been tried and eventually as a
last resort the villagers sent for a rainmaker from another
district. The rainmaker arrived, sniffed the air in a dis-
approving manner and asked for a cottage on the outskirts
of the village where he could be entirely alone. Here he
remained for three days. At the end of that period it rained
buckets. Indeed it even snowed. Wilhelm, amazed, sought
out the old man and asked if he could really make rain.
'That wasn't rain' he replied 'it was something quite
different. I come from a province where everything is in
order, where the people are in Tao. It rains when it should
and the crops are sown and reaped at the right season. But
here the people are not in Tao. I felt it as soon as I arrived.
I was also infected by it. It took me three days to find the
Tao again. Then naturally it rained.'7
  This story is arresting because it questions our usual
Western assumption that what goes on in the mind is one
thing and what goes on in the world of events is another,
there being little connection between the two. In fact, there
are links. We all know days when everything seems to go
wrong. You cut yourself shaving, smash a cup in the
  68
kitchen, miss the bus to work and then have a row with
someone when you arrive. Getting up out of sorts makes
something go wrong and this sets off a chain reaction.
Because things have gone wrong you arrive in the office
bristling with irritation, which others sense, react against,
and a quarrel quickly flares up. Thank goodness not all days
are like that. There are others where everything goes
swimmingly. You get a good night's sleep and wake
refreshed. The sun is shining on the way to work and when
you meet a friend he feels your glow of well-being from ten
yards away. Instinctively he responds to this aura with
friendliness and you in your turn, sensing his warmth,
respond in like manner. If we feel out of joint with our-
selves and the world, it sets things going wrong and the fact
that they go wrong reinforces the feeling of being out of
step. If we feel at one with ourselves this helps everything
go smoothly and because things go well our feeling of well-
being is reinforced.
  Words like being out of joint or out of step, being in
harmony or being at one are as perhaps as near as we can
come to understanding what it is to be in or out of Tao.
The story suggest that the most fundamental, crucial
factor of all is to be in Tao, to be in harmony with oneself,
one's conscience, with nature and with the ground of all
being. If we are at one with the fount from whom our
being flows what a difference it makes! Irene de Castil-
lejo, commenting on the Chinese rainmaker tradition has
written:
  'If only we could be rainmakers! I am of course not
  thinking literally of rain. I am thinking of those
  people (and I have met one or two) who go about
  their ordinary business with no fuss, not ostensibly
  helping others, not giving advice, not continually
  and self-consciously praying for guidance or striving
  for mystical union with God, not even being
  especially noticeable, yet around whom things
  happen.
  69
Others seem to live more fully for their presence:
possibilities of work appear unexpectedly or people
offer their services unsought, houses fall vacant for
the homeless, lovers meet. Life blossoms all around
them without lifting a finger and, as likely as not,
without anyone attributing to them any credit for the
happenings, least of all themselves . . . Indeed, these
rare people around whom life blossoms cannot be
said to cause the blossoming . . . The Rainmaker does
not cause, he allows the rain to fall '8
Then, reflecting on the secret of such people around whom
life blossoms, she writes 'We have forgotten how to allow.
The essence of the Rainmaker is that he knows how to
allow.'
  The Christian believes that what matters more than
anything else is to be at one with our maker, in harmony
with the source of our being, and to allow his life to flow in
and through us. If our actions do not spring from a being
that is at peace with God there is likely to be a fatal flaw in
what we do. 'Except the Lord build the house: their labour
is but lost that build it' (Psalm 127, I). But if we are at one
with that supreme reality in whom we live and move and
have our being our prayers and our actions have rever-
berations beyond human measurement. An ancient myth
suggested that there was an intimate connection between
man and nature -- that everything had gone disastrously
wrong in nature because man had sinned. We find this very
difficult to believe.  But such a myth may, like the story
by Wilhelm, be important in keeping certain questions
open.
  D. H. Lawrence began one of his poems with the words.
  'All that matters is to be at one with the living God,
  to be a creature in the house of the God of Life . . .'9
When he prays the Christian seeks to be at one with the
living God not just for himself but for those in need. He
  70
holds them in the presence of the Lord, allowing the love
of God to work through him for them.
  So strong is this sense that 'All that matters is to be at
one with the living God' that some people spend not just
moments but most of their lifetime seeking to be at one
with God both for themselves and the world as a whole. A
group of students once asked the Mother Superior of a
contemplative order, that is, a community whose whole
reason for existence was prayer, how it was that she came
to lead such a strange life. She replied that formerly she
had been a member of an active order engaged in nursing.
One night during the war, when Cardiff was experiencing its
worst blitz, she became convinced that the real battle was
not the one up in the sky where Allied and German planes
were fighting it out; nor was it on the ground where she
and others were nursing the sick and collecting the dead.
She became certain that the real fight was a spiritual one
and that she should enter a contemplative order. There she
is and there she prays for you and me.
  It is not possible to prove that prayer makes a difference
in the world of events. Every time anyone claims that God
has answered prayer by healing or converting someone it is
always open for someone else to say that it would have
happened anyway. What we have attempted to do is show
something of the picture of the world against which prayer
not only makes sense but is vital.
  It is possible that a person sympathetic to the under-
standing of prayer just outlined will still be puzzled by the
apparently emphatic promise of Jesus that we will be given
what we pray for. Are we really to think that all our
prayers, however selfish, will be granted just as we want
them? Here is the prayer of an 18th century businessman.
  O Lord, who knowst I have mine estates in the City
  of London, and likewise that I have lately purchased
  an estate Fee Simple in the County of Essex. I
  beseech thee to preserve the two counties of Middle-
  sex and Essex from fire and earthquake. And as I
  71
have a mortgage in Hertfordshire, I beg thee likewise
to have an eye of compassion on that county. For the
rest of the counties thou mayest deal with them as
thou art pleased.10
Such blatant self-interest in prayer is mind-boggling! It's
not that prayer for our own material wellbeing is wrong. Far
from it. Chapter seven stresses that our prayers must be real
and as we all have our own interests at heart this will
inevitably and rightly mean we pray for ourselves. But it is
difficult to see how the prayer just quoted could be
counted a Christian prayer at all. Prayer, to be classed as
prayer, must, in however limited a degree, be an expression
of love for God and other people. This means it will,
however slightly, transcend considerations of one's
own worldy interest. Most Christians who pray do in fact
make some attempt at altruism. 'I don't pray to God to let
me win an election' said Jimmy Carter in an interview in
April 1976, 'I pray to ask God to let me do the right thing. '11
  Having said this we are still faced with the person who
makes a passionate, sincere prayer, one which is not simply
an expression of their immediate wants, which is not
granted. A person with a strong Christian faith loved some-
one very deeply. He prayed for her daily. This prayer
included the heartfelt longing  that the love he had for her
might be returned. But it wasn't. When the person who
prayed in this way went for advice they were told 'The
Christian faith offers no guarantee that our desires will be
fulfilled in the way we want them to be.' But back came
the reply 'Look at John 14, verses 13 and 14,'And what so-
ever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do'. And then it's
repeated, made even more clear and simple in verse 14. 'If
ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it.' There are no
hesitations, no qualifications, no subjunctives and condi-
tionals, no ifs and buts. Obviously we must only pray for
things that we, so far as we can see, consider worthy, but
if we sincerely think so to the best of our ability, how then
can Christ refuse?'.
  72
  It's tempting, when faced with this plea to think 'Ah
that promise is in St John's Gospel, and that gospel is more
in the nature of a profound meditation on the whole
Christian experience than an exact historical record of what
Jesus said and did.' But this does not let us off the hook.
Matthew 21, 22, already quoted, reads 'Whatever you pray
for in faith you will receive', and Mark 1 1, 22 makes the
same point 'whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you
have received it and it will be yours'. So what can be said?
Commentators on these verses tend to stress the element of
hyperbole in the teaching of Jesus. Anthony Harvey writes,
Jesus was fond of exaggerations and striking simplifications.
The point is surely, as so often in Mark's Gospel, and doubt-
less also in Jesus' original teaching, the critical importance
of faith.'12 It is also fair to point out that neither here nor
elsewhere do we have the tone of voice in which the saying
was delivered or the look in the eye. It is very easy to
imagine such a saying as Mark 11, 22 being given with just
the slightest touch of irony in the voice and eyes, so that
the hearers would take the point without taking it literally.
  There is, however, one other interesting suggestion,
made by C. S. Lewis, which some have found a help. Lewis
wondered if the kind of prayers referred to in Mark 11, 22,
prayers made with the confidence that they will be
answered in the way we want them, are really the prayers
of the mature Christian. We tend to assume that asking God
for things with the expectation that he will grant our
request is the prayer of the simple-minded beginner. Lewis
thought that the opposite might be true. This is the prayer
of a person very conscious of being a co-worker with God.
'The fellow-worker, the companion, or (dare we say?) the
colleague of God is so united with Him at certain moments
that something of the divine foreknowledge enters his
mind.'12 This makes sense when we remember that people
who pray much don't just pray that God's will might be
done. They pray that they might pray according to his will.
Before praying they ask that the Holy Spirit will illuminate
their minds and cleanse their hearts so that their prayer
  73
might be God praying in and through them. Given this
attitude it is possible to understand how someone who is
close to God knows not only that he must pray for some-
one but that he must pray with confidence that his prayer
will be granted. Mature prayer is not just a matter of bring-
ing our shopping list to God. It is a continuing attempt to
pray according to the mind of Christ.
God of all goodness, grant us to desire ardently, to seek
wisely, to know surely, and to accomplish perfectly, Thy
holy will, for the glory of thy name.
<1(St Thomas Aquinas)>1
Into thy hands, O father and Lord, we commend this night/
day ourselves,
our families and friends,
all folk rightly believing,
and all who need thy pity and protection.
Light us with thy holy grace
and suffer us never to be separated from thee,
O Lord in Trinity, God everlasting.
<1(Based on a prayer of St Edmund Rich)>1
  NOTES
1.'The Growing Stone' p.152.
2.Matthew 26, 53.
3.J.  R.  Lucas,  'Rogationtide  Queries'  in <1Freedom  and  Grace,>1
SPCK, 1976.
  74
  4. 'It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, an "in-
terior" appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent.
This is enough to ensure that,in one degree or another,this "interior"
should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time.
Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of
itself, thre is neecessarily <1a double aspect to its structure,>1 that is to
say in every region of space and time -- in the same way, for
instance, as it is granular: <1co-extensive with their Without, there is a>1
<1Within to things.'>1 Teilhard de Chardin, <1The Phenomenon of Man,>1
Collins, 1960, p.56.
5. Sir Alistair Hardy, <1The Living Stream,>1 Collins, 1965.
6.The phrase 'The laws of nature' is not a very good one. People
now prefer to talk about the observed regularities in nature on the
basis of which we make predictions about the future.
  7. Richard Wilhelm, quoted by Barbara Hannah in <1Striving towards>1
<1wholeness,>1 G. P. Putnams, N-Y. 1971, p.264/5.
8.Irene Claremont de Castillejo, <1The Rainmaker Ideal, >1The Guild
of Pastoral Psychology Lecture No. 107, 1960, reprinted 1971. p.6.
9.'Pax' in <1The Complete Poems of>1 D. H. <1Lawrence,>1 p.700.
10. F. J. Fisher in 'Economics', February 1957, p.13.
1 1. Quoted  in  Niels  C.  Nielsen,  <1The  Religion  of President  Carter,>1
Mowbray  1977, p.v11.
12.A.  E. Harvey, <1Companion  to  the  Gospels,>1 OUP and CUP.
1972,p.175.
13.C. S. Lewis, <1Letters to Malcolm,>1 Collins/Fountain, 1977, p.63.
  75
  God as friend and God within
JUST BEFORE he turns in for the night Fred usually takes
his dog for a walk round the block. Normally he stops once
or twice to look up at the night sky, at the stars emitting
their light from so many millions of miles away and,
between their bright pinpricks, the unimaginable expanses
of black nothingness. When Fred returns to his home,
complete with welcoming fire, playful dog, children nicely
tucked up in bed and affectionate wife, he cannot help con-
trasting the human warmth he knows here with the cold
impersonality of the starry heavens. Sometimes he is aware
of the same feeling when standing on the cliffs and looking
at the sea. He loves gazing out at the horizon or watching
the waves break on the rocks beneath. But there seems such
a contrast between the friendly intimacy of his family
circle -- his two girls, licking their icecreams, coming now
to pull him down to the beach -- and  the harsh grandeur of
the natural world. Fred believes in God but when he looks
up at the sky or out to sea he wonders very much how the
author of what he sees can in any sense be called personal.
He is impressed, sometimes filled with awe, by oceans and
mountains, planets and microbes, but he finds it difficult
to believe there can be a tender mind behind these pheno-
mena; one to whom he can relate.
  Fred's wife Jennie  also believes in God and is in fact
rather more regular than her husband in saying her prayers.
But she too is greatly puzzled. Once, saying her prayers
before going to bed, as she had been told to do as a child
and as she had continued to do ever since, she was struck
  76
by the thought. 'There must be thousands, perhaps millions,
of people praying to God at this very moment. How can
God possibly pay attention to them all at once. Here am I',
she continued, 'thinking that God is interested in my little
doings. And everyone else is thinking just the same. God
can't possibly take it all in at the same time.' Jennie was
perhaps rather late for such a thought to strike her, but
when it came it hit her hard. For many years she could not
bring herself to pray at all. But she remained religious. She
wanted to pray. Eventually Jennie came to the conclusion
that God must be like a force of love going through people.
Prayer for her became a matter of trying to be at one with
this stream, of allowing it to flow in and through her.
  Fred  and Jennie,  in  their different ways,  came  to  the
conclusion that God could not be personal. Fred could not
see how there could possibly be a caring personal mind
behind the frightening impersonality of nature. Jennie
could not conceive how, if there was such a mind, he could
have a personal relationship with every single human being
both now and in the past. They were both aware of a
religious need within themselves. They wanted to believe,
to make sense of life, to pray, but found it impossible to
respond to sermons in which God was conceived in personal
terms.
  An obvious but important preliminary point needs to
be made. All human talk about God is inadequate. We take
an aspect of human experience and say 'In some ways God
is like this.' We cannot speak of God without using meta-
phors, similes, analogies, pictures or models. No one
picture gives us the whole truth. Moreover each analogy
misleads us as much as it helps us. These general considera-
tions apply to the statement 'God is personal'. God is
obviously not personal in the sense of being a person we
can see or whose voice we can hear with our physical ears.
He is not localized or describable. Yet in one all important
sense this model is true. It is possible to have a relationship
with God that in some respects is like a relationship
between two human beings. This picture of God as personal
  77
cannot be dropped, for the following reasons.
  First, it is the experience of countless millions of people
in every age that they have a relationship with God. They
are conscious of guidance, inspiration and strengthening
from the one to whom they seek to relate their lives. A
person who has a difficult decision to make prays that he
may choose rightly. After much indecision, reflection and
trying to be one with the heart and mind of Divine love, he
knows how he must decide. Without believing he is
infallibly right he knows that his decision has arisen out of
his relationship with God and that if he had not sought for
God's will and prayed that he might find it, it would have
been different. He has not heard voices or seen ticker
tape going across his mind but his honest seeking and quiet
conviction are, to him, the result of a relationship with a
God who guides those who sincerely seek to do the most
loving thing. This 'guidance' is not the exception. It is the
run-of-the-mill experience of millions in almost every part
of the world.
  It will be argued by some that this experience of
relationship with God is an illusion. Since Freud we are
familiar with the idea of our unconscious creating the kind
of God it would be comforting to believe in. Part of most
of us would like to think that behind the universe is a
rational, wise and loving power. So, no doubt, we are right
to be suspicious of a belief that conforms so nearly to our
deepest wishes. But it is one thing to be suspicious, quite
another to go as far as Iris Murdoch and say 'Almost any-
thing that consoles us is a fake.'1 Why should what consoles
be fake? On what grounds? Behind this assertion there
seems to be the assumption that reality is unconsoling, an
assumption which can no more be proved to be true than
its opposite. What Freud's argument in fact amounts to is
that the Christian faith is too good to be true! But this is no
argument. It is simply an assumption that reality is bleak
and hostile to human values. Furthermore, just as some will
point to the strength  of wishful thinking in human life,
others will point to the sense of threat which people feel at
  78
the idea of a personal God. For God puts a question mark
against our self-sufficiency and pride. To believe in God is
to believe in one who makes a total difference to our life.
Some people would rather run to the ends of the earth than
fall into the hands of the living God.
  The fact that people claim to have a relationship with
God does not prove that there is a God or that he is
personal. What we can say however is that alternative
explanations of this experience, such as the one which
suggests it is the result of wishful thinking, cannot prove it
to be an illusion. Moreover, just as a possible motive to
believe may be found in the desire to make the universe
more reassuring, so may a possible motive to disbelieve be
found in the fact that the idea of a transcendent and holy
will is a threat to human self-sufficiency. So we are left
with the experience, claimed by millions, of a relationship
with God. This cannot be proved to be true but neither can
it be dismissed as an illusion. lt is a fact which must be
seriously reckoned with.
  Second, and closely linked with the first point, most of
the great world religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and
strands within Hinduism, think of ultimate reality in
personal terms. The only religion positively hostile to this
interpretation is the Theravad tradition of Buddhism.
Again, the fact that a majority of the world's religions
conceive of reality in a particular  way does not prove it to
be true. But it is a fact to be listened to and taken into
account. For those who seek to build a coherent
and all-embracing world view it is of great significance that
whereas personal pictures of ultimate reality can contain
and include impersonal images the opposite is not true. If
the controlling picture is an impersonal one, then personal
ones must be excluded. If God is thought of as personal,
images of his being drawn from nature such as fire, rock,
water, wind, not only can, but must be included in order to
bring out the utter otherness and godness of God. But if
the controlling picture is, say, that of an impersonal force,
then ideas of purpose, will, caring and so on, simply have
  79
no place.
  In the history of human thinking the idea of an imper-
sonal divine force has gained ground on a number of
occasions, including during this century. Considered as a
reaction to crude anthropomorphism and literalistic
thinking about God as personal this is very understandable.
But such a view can hardly stand up to serious analysis. For
what does the idea of an impersonal force add, in the way
of explanation, to an impersonal nature? If the word god is
just another way of talking about natural processes the
word is redundant and should not be used. Moreover it is
difficult to see how an impersonal force or idea could be a
proper object of religious worship. Personality is the highest
we know, the supreme achievement of the evolutionary
process. What we worship cannot be less than this, less than
ourselves. Our human capacity to think, choose, and act for
the good of others is, so far as we can judge at the present
stage of the process, the crown of creation. The object of
our reverence and worship will not be less than this. D. H.
Lawrence put forward the idea of an impersonal creative
force in a most attractive form in one of his poems.2
  The mystery of creation is the divine urge of creation,
  but it is a great, strange urge, it is not a Mind.
  Even an artist knows that his work was never in his
  mind,
  he could never have <1thought>1 it before it happened.
  A strange ache possessed him, and he entered the
  struggle,
  and out of the struggle with his material, in the spell
  of the urge
  his work took place, it came to pass, it stood up and
  saluted his mind.
  God is a great urge, wonderful, mysterious, magnifi-
  cent
  but he knows nothing before-hand.
  His urge takes shape in the flesh, and lo!
  80
it is creation! God looks himself on it in wonder, for
the first time.
Lo! there is a creature, formed! How strange!
Let me think about it! Let me form an idea!
This is an arresting picture with some truth in it. A great
work of art is never the straightforward result of some idea
that has been worked out in its entirety beforehand. It is
from the combination of half-formed idea and continuing
struggle with the material that something creative is
produced. God's creation is not a once for all act in the past
but a continuing struggle of joy and pain with the recal-
citrant elements of matter and human wills. Out of this new
things come. But the Divine mind is prior to any creative
act and it is out of the divine mind that creation springs.
When Lawrence says 'It is a great, strange urge, it is not a
mind', he seeks to make one limited picture, of an
impersonal kind, definitive and exclusive. In fact creation,
both human and divine, arises out of mind and is the result
of mind. When thinking about creation as a whole the
picture of mind, divine mind, is central and controlling,
however much it must be both qualified and enriched by
the use of other metaphors.
  'Star Wars', the film which was such a huge box-
office success, is an interesting indication of how millions
of people now feel about spiritual matters. First, it is note-
worthy that the dominant theme of the film is a religious
one. It concerns a war between supernatural good and
supernatural evil. Second, the power for good is talked
about in impersonal terms, being called 'the Force'.
Characters use such phrases as 'May the Force be with you'
and 'The Force will be with you -- always'. But, third, this
impersonal imagery is not carried through to its logical con-
clusion. For amongst other things 'The Force' gives
guidance and protection to the good people on its side.
This is very understandable but illogical. A force cannot
offer personal guidance. As already pointed out personal
images of ultimate reality can contain impersonal ones
  81
but this does not apply the other way round.
  In addition to these considerations there is one further
reason why the Christian faith must insist on the centrality
of a personal image of God. God has revealed the divine
heart and mind in a person -- in Jesus Christ. Jesus him-
self prayed to one whom he thought of in personal terms,
to 'abba, father' and after he had been raised from the
dead his disciples believed that in him had been revealed the
eternal word, the second person of the Trinity.
  The idea of entering into a relationship with God is funda-
mental. As the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber once put
it, properly speaking God is he who can be addressed, not
expressed. The same point is made by Karl Barth when he
wrote 'Theological work does not merely begin with prayer
and is not merely accompanied by it; in its totality it is
peculiar and characteristic of theology that it can be per-
formed only in the act of prayer.'3 Again, 'human thought
and speech cannot be <1about>1 God, but must be directed
<1towards>1 God, called into action by the divine thought and
speech directed to men, and following and corresponding
to this work of God.'4
  Having asserted the crucial significance of the personal
model of God it is then both possible and necessary to
qualify it. For it is not a literal description. Though some
modern presentations of the Christian faith have not
guarded against literalistic interpretations as carefully as
they might have done, the church in earlier centuries had
a built-in corrective to anthropomorphism. For God is
Holy Trinity. He is not simply an isolated being. He
combines in himself both personality and relationship.
The doctrine of God as Holy Trinity, when it has been
central to the devotional life, has kept people from think-
ing of God simply as a super person. That is why some of
the old Celtic and Gaelic prayers are still so satisfying. Here
is part of a traditional Gaelic prayer for example:
  The Father who created me
  With eye benign beholdeth me;
  82
The Son who dearly purchased me
With eye divine enfoldeth me;
The Spirit who so altered me
With eye refining holdeth me:
  ln friendliness and love the Three
  Behold me when I bend the knee5
Another way in which the church has expressed its
awareness that God is a mystery who cannot be summed up
in any human picture is by mixing impersonal images with
the personal one. This is very frequent in the psalms where
God is a rock, a light, a house of defence, a castle and so
on. Water is a familiar biblical image and in St John's
Gospel it stands for the Holy Spirit. In these three short
prayers the Holy Spirit is addressed in personal terms but
because the imagery is impersonal, there is no danger of
conveying a limited, localized god.
  O Holy Spirit,
  River of life,
  seep into the soil of our lives and
  nourish us.
  O Holy Spirit,
  rain on dry earth
  fall and soak into us  -
  make all things fresh
  O Holy Spirit,
  Mountain stream in spring
  zestful and clear
  make us alive with your life.
The danger of excessively personal imagery, when it is used
without qualification, is that it totally fails to communi-
cate the reality of God. Some years ago Austin Farrer gave
memorable expression to the feeling of many when he
wrote:
  83
And this is why, when Germans set their eyeballs and
pronounce the terrific words 'He speaks to thee' . . . I
am sure, indeed, that they are saying something, but
I am still more sure, that they are not speaking to
my condition.6
The personal image of God must be qualified in such a
way that it is clear we are not simply talking of a human
being writ large. Nevertheless there is no escaping the
primacy of the personal model. Reasons have been
suggested for the centrality of this in a religious view of life
but can we understand any more clearly how God can be
personal? Is it possible to deal, however inadequately, with
Fred's feeling as he looked up at the sky and couldn't see
how he could talk to the author of the cold stellar spaces?
Or with his wife Jennie's question about God being able to
attend to everyone's prayers at the same time? The follow-
ing five points, taken together, might help a little. They all
come from Austin Farrer.7  First, the natural world exists in
its own right. It is true that nature has produced us and that
many aspects of nature serve us by giving us food to eat and
beauty to behold. But before serving human ends nature
exists with a life of its own, as a free-for-all of self-moving
forces.
  Second, a person who is good at languages does not have
to translate from his natural tongue into another. He
actually thinks in other languages, as well as his own. So
God 'thinks' at many different levels at once, and what
God thinks he creates. 'The shape, the idiom of the
Creator's thought is the very shape and idiom of his
creature's existence. God's thought of man is human, for
he thinks man as he is . . . God's thought of lions is lion-like,
and of sparrows sparrow-like; and elementary things that
have neither life nor sense are thought and willed by him
exactly as they are or as they go.'8 At one and the same
time God thinks into existence our thoughts, the brain in
which they rise, the cells of which the brain is composed
and the underlying stratum of atomic forces.
  84
  Third, though we consider human beings from a number
of different points of view, from the standpoint of a bio-
chemist, a psychologist, a molecular biologist and so on,
man is in fact a unity. The idea of trying to see a person
whole is one we recognize and sometimes strive after. What
is for us an ideal is for God a reality. He sees us whole, in
every minute detail of our lives. Furthermore, he knows us
directly. As human beings we build up a picture of another
person from the external data, the way they look, what
they say etc. God, on the other hand, knows everything
from the inside, for he thinks and wills it into being.
  Fourth, when we think of the Divine mind holding the
universe in his care we usually have in mind the picture of
a person standing outside a situation in order to grasp it in
its entirety. But the case of God and the universe is so
different this analogy just does not begin to work. A better
picture is that of God acting as 'the soul of the world'. In
some rudimentary way we are aware of the whole of our
being from the inside. Nerves run the length and breadth of
our body for example. God, who transcends the world,
'acts as its soul'. He feels every part of it from within.
  Fifth, we are, to some minute degree, able to attend to
more than one object at a time. A person laying a table is
asked what train they caught home. The person answers quite
adequately and accurately whilst going on putting out the
plates and knives. He would not have answered any better
if he hadn't been laying the table. He gave both tasks all
the attention they needed. So God gives an entire, ade-
quate and perfect attention to every detail of his creation.
  God does not act with a mere fraction of his mind at
  any one point in his creation. I do not mean (how could
  I?) that every detail of his work is sufficent to fill and
  absorb an infinite mind. I mean that whatever he
  thinks is what he wholly intends, that there is no
  more to be thought about it beyond what he thinks,
  and that it could receive no fuller attention, were he
  to disattend from everything else.9
  85
  Our minds act like the beam of a lighthouse, picking up
one object after another. God's mind is like the sun
radiating simultaneousIy on all things at once.
  Are you brave enough to believe in God at all? If you
  are, you are bound to digest this bewildering fact:
  God cannot be God, he cannot differ from us in the
  essential way which makes us finite and him infinite,
  unless his mind is infinite too . . . We have a restricted
  power of attention or of thought and we do well if
  we bring the half of it to bear most of the time. But
  God is God; he is a being and a life infinite or
  unlimited; he can and does give an entire, an adequate
  and an undivided attention to every single creature
  and every single circumstance.
  It is not silly, childish or superstitious to suppose that
  God attends to your prayer or your conduct like a
  parent watching an infant when the parent has nothing
  else to do. It is merely to credit God with being God 10
  Austin Farrer takes us as far as we can go in understand-
ing the picture of God as personal. It is necessary now to
explore another model of God which has come to the fore
in recent years and is the one implicit in many forms of
Eastern meditation. Some forms of meditation can be
practised without any religious beliefs. The best known
example is Transcendental Meditation. But this way of
praying can use, and most other forms of meditation that
have come from the East do in fact use, a picture of God
derived from Hinduism. This thinks of God as the ground
and centre of our soul. On first acquaintance this under-
standing of God seems inimical to the view developed
earlier. Having a relationship with God in which one thanks
him, praises him, asks for help, says one is sorry and inter-
cedes for the needs of others seems very different from
seeking to locate the spiritual centre of one's soul. But
whilst the latter understanding of God, taken by itself, is
inadequate, when linked with an understanding of God
  86
as personal it can be fruitful. Two closely related reasons
suggest that this idea should be explored. First, it is the
distinctive insight of Hinduism that the ground of each
individual soul is none other than the ground of the
universe, Atman or God. It would be odd, on a Christian
view of the world, if the religious insight most central to
the oldest tradition in the world was totally false. It would
be strange if God had guided the monotheistic religions
into knowledge of his truth but had left the Indian sub-
continent in complete darkness. It seems more likely that
as the contribution of the monotheistic religions is to
emphasize the otherness of God it is the particular contri-
bution of India to stress the indwelling of God in each
human soul.11 Second, there is a strong Christian mystical
tradition with a similar insight. The same argument applies
here. It would be odd if the Christian mystical tradition,
regarded by many as the purest manifestation of religion,
had nothing distinctive to contribute to the way we think
about God.
  The question remains, how this insight is to be incor-
porated into a faith in which the idea of a relationship to
the Divine is central. Two points suggest themselves. First,
God is the creative source of all that is. Moment by
moment everything that exists depends upon his fiat for its
being. If God did not will the universe to remain in being it
would disappear in a flash. Every atom of my being is held
up by, and flows from, the fount of being. To exist truly is
to live at one with, and as part of, the stream of Divine life.
The mystical tradition and the schools of meditation, both
East and West, which try to help us rest in and live from the
deep centre of our being have a true apprehension of what
it is to be a creature. Our being does in fact flow from God.
If we can centre down to our soul's soul, we consciously
allow this to be so. We discover God within us. Second,
God knows us more intimately than we do ourselves. For
he is not only the source of our being, moment by moment
thinking it into existence, but through his boundless love
he is able to live our life from within. Sensitive human love
  87
is able, to some extent, to feel what another feels and to see
life through their eyes. God's capacity to do this is
unlimited. Therefore, corresponding to every thought and
action of ours there is the divine awareness of that thought
and action. More than this, there is the divine awareness of
what that thought or action would be if it was perfectly one
with the heart and mind of divine love. Therefore when we
try to rest in and live out from our true centre, we are
seeking within us what already exists in the Divine mind and
what the Divine mind is ready and waiting to create in us.
  Julian of Norwich wrote
  Our soul is so deep grounded in God and so endlessly
  treasured, that we may not come to the knowing there-
  of until we have, first, knowing of God, who is the
  maker; to whom it is owed. But notwithstanding I saw
  that we have, of our fullness the desire wisely and truly
  to know our own soul, wherby we are learned to seek it
  where it is, and that is in God. 12
Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed the same truth like this.
  Each man acts
  In God's eyes what in God's eyes he is --
  Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
  lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
  To the father through the features of men's faces.13
People sometimes suspect the mystical tradition as being
alien to Christianity. But what Julian of Norwich and Gerard
Manley Hopkins experienced is present in both St John's
Gospel and Paul.
  1 am the vine you are the branches <1(John 15, 5)>1
  I live, yet not I but Christ in me. <1(Galatians>1 2, <120j>1
Father Harry Williams is in this tradition when he writes
that God is
  88
'the fount or source from which we continually flow
. . . God can be described as the ocean of which I am
a wave, as the sun of which I am a shaft of light, as the
tree of which I am a branch '14
Or again,
  'God is both other than I am and also the same. For
  God is apprehended as the source from which I con-
  tinually flow, and the source cannot be separated
  from that which continually flows from it . . . In my
  deep communion with the mystery of another person
  and in the mystery of my own being, what I find is
  God.'15
  There  is  one  God,  living  and true,  who  is  mystery
beyond anything we can conceive. From the conflagration
of love, which is his being, God reaches out to us, stoops to
relate to us in terms we can understand, as a person. Like
Moses we can talk with God as a  man with his friend. But
God is also the fount from whom we flow. He is our heart's
heart, our soul's soul. So it is that some forms of medita-
tion concentrate on helping us to rest in and live from the
true, deep centre of our being, which is none other than
Christ within us. God makes himself available to us as
friend and brother. He also seeks to live in and through us.
We can relate to him and we can become part of his flow.
Most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
may I know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly
and follow thee more nearly, day by day.
<1(St Richard of Chichester, slightly adapted)>1
  89
God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at mine end, and at my departing.
<1(Sarum Primer 1558)>1
  NOTES
1.Iris Murdoch, <1The Sovereignty of Good,>1 Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1970, p.59.
2.D. H. Lawrence, 'The Work of Ceation' in <1The Complete>1
<1Poems of>1 D. H. <1Lawrence,>1 Vol. 2, p.690.
3. Karl Barth, <1Evangelical Theology,>1 London 1965, p.160.
4.<1Evangelical  Theology,>1  p. 164.
5.Martin Reith, <1God in our Midst,>1 SPCK 1975, p11.
6.Austin Farrer, <1The Class of Vision,>1 Dacre Press, 1948, p.8.
7.They are made in chapter 5 of A <1Science of God?,>1 Bles, 1966 as
well as elsewhere. Austin Farrer's genius  was so far in advance of
the rest of us that I must apologise for not doing justice to the
profundity and complexity of his thinking.
8.<1A Science of God?>1 p.74.
9.Ibid.p.85.
10.Austin  Farrer, <1A Saving Belief,>1 Hodder and Stoughton,  1964,
P.44.
11.One of the points made by R. C. Zaehner in <1At Sundry Times,>1
Faber and Faber, 1958.
12.Julian of Norwich, <1The Revelations of Divine Love,>1 Burns and
Oates,  1961, p.154.
13. <1The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,>1 p.90.
14. H.  A.  Williams, <1Poverty,  Chastity  and  Obedience,>1 Mitchell
Beazley, 1975, p.24.
15.<1Poverty, Chastity and Obedience,>1 p.111.
  90
  Prayer and the feelings
A WISE and saintly priest was talking to a group of
students about prayer. They asked him about 'experiences
of God.' He replied that he had never had any such
experience and that indeed for years he had had no special
sense of God's presence. The students became aware of a
contradiction. For here, if anywhere, was a man of God; a
man who after first class honours in a subject that could
have earned him a big salary in the secular world had spent
his life as a faithful country priest; a man who had a
regular, disciplined life of prayer that was obviously the
heart of his ministry; a man whose humility and kindliness
spoke eloquently of God. Yet a man who, according to his
own account, was not very conscious of God's presence.
The example of this priest reveals a point that cannot be
emphasized too much. Whether we <1feel>1 close to God in
prayer or not is beside the point; it does not matter one
way or the other.
  Most people, but particularly those who have become
aware of the reality of God as a result of conversion or
some particular moment of illumination, are inclined to
hanker after intense spiritual experiences. This is quite
understandable but very misguided. First as was suggested
in chapter three, the kind of emotional experience we have
depends on our personal chemistry. To take the obvious
example, a person of manic-depressive temperament will,
because of the way they are made, go through periods of
elation and dejection. If they are religious they will inter-
pret these moods in religious terms. During periods of
  91
elation they will imagine themselves to be close to God and
highly aware of his presence. During periods of depression
they are likely to feel cut off from God, even rejected. But
the facts of the situation may be very different from the
way they themselves feel about it. During a period of
elation, when they pray a lot and talk about God in an
enthusiastic way, this may be no more (and no less) than
religious high spirits. The mood may be enjoyable but not
spiritually profound and others, who notice a lack of
reverence with which the name of God is bandied about
together with a surprising insensitivity to the feelings of
others may sense this. During a period of depression, when
the person is aware of the absence of God, there may dawn
the truth that God is beyond anything we can conceive;
that it is the pure in heart who see him, and that for both
these reasons we are like blind men. This state can lead to a
tentativeness and humility which others sense to have a
spiritual quality about it. It is not being suggested that we
will always be closer to God when we are depressed. Heaven
forbid! But a person's own feelings about how close or
distant from God they are cannot be taken as a reliable
guide to the true state of affairs.
  The strength of our feelings, whether about God or any-
thing else, is a result of our personal psychological makeup.
There is nothing inherently spiritual or unspiritual about
their intensity or lack of it. A person subject to swings of
mood will reflect this in his relationship with God. There is
no need for a placid person to feel guilty just because his
manic-depressive friend seems, in his elated mood, to have
so much more enthusiasm for God. Likewise there is no
need for the person in a depressed mood to feel even more
guilty because a placid friend seems to have so much
more tranquillity of spirit. The tranquillity may be genuine;
equally, it may be that he just has a placid temperament
Which creates this impression. Our feelings about God
reflect the way we are made. We should not try to force
ourselves to feel one thing rather than another, in particular
we should not try to induce the feeling that God is close
  92
to us. All that is necessary to begin a period of prayer is a
pause, a moment of silence, a mental reminder that God is
present as the unimaginable reality in whom we live and
move and have our being. If this mental act brings a feeling
in its wake, well and good. If it doesn't, it doesn't matter in
the slightest.
  Although we should avoid forcing ourselves to have
particular feelings in prayer it is essential to bring our
ordinary human emotions into our relationship with God.
A recent survey of religious education in  schools showed
what everyone knew already, that children find religion
boring. So do most adults. This situation should be a rather
greater worry for the churches than it appears to be at the
moment; not in the sense of how religion could be made
more interesting so that it could be sold more easily to
others, but in a critical questioning of the kind of God we
believe in. If what we are communicating is boring we are
not revealing, and therefore not ourselves believing in, the
true God. For God is, by definition, the most interesting
and absorbing reality there is. Nothing could be more
captivating and enthralling than God -- if we did but know
the real God. Yet for so many people religion is a drag,
something they perform out of a sense of duty, if at all.
Or if attempts are made to brighten it up, the result so
often seems artificial, a forced jollity rather than something
authentic. We so often communicate a dull old stick of a
God because our own relationship with God is unreal. We
don't bring what naturally interests and absorbs us into
prayer. We behave as though we are out at a meal with
someone we don't know very well and whom it is impor-
tant not to offend. So we stick to safe subjects and triviali-
- ties. When a person does bring their real thoughts and
  feelings into prayer the result, whatever else happens, is
  interesting. In the TV series <1The Liver Birds>1 about two
  girls, Sandra and Carol, Carol, a Roman Catholic,
  occasionally kneels down and prays. Her prayers have an
  arresting naturalness about them. The same is true of the
  little chats with the Lord that the priest Don Camillo is
  93
always having in the stories of Giovanni Guareschi.1 The
principle of fundamental importance that emerges from
these examples, for those of us who are beginners in the
quest to know God better, is that our natural feelings,
whatever they are, should be taken into our relationship
with God. What naturally interests and absorbs us, what
naturally delights or irritates us, provides the juice, the sap,
the energy, that makes prayer real and living. There is a
proper and important place for mental discipline in prayer,
which will be considered in the next chapter. But unless
we bring into prayer what is real for us our prayers will
remain unreal and our religion boring.
  Alan Ecclestone in a clear and helpful article on prayer
for beginners suggests that we start from the three most
common experiences of everyday living, the moment of
gladness, the moment of need and the moment of exhaus-
tion. The principle behind this is entirely right. We take a
usual everyday feeling and try to turn it into prayer. In this
way the prayer has some impetus behind it. Take for
example the moment when we sink into a chair exhausted.
This can easily be turned into a prayer of committing one-
self into the hands of God. The physical act of letting go
and relaxing, the sigh and the prayer of trust come together
to form a whole. Alan Ecclestone writes:
  'The simplest thing to be done at this moment is to
  `let go' deliberately. In traditional language it was
  expressed in words like `Into thy hands I commend
  my spirit'. If words like these help you to pray at
  such moments use them as fully as you can. If you
  are not accustomed to them or helped by them, find
  the shortest phrase that expresses for you the entire
  act of putting yourself into the keeping of the Other.
  It may be done with such words as "I/we are in your
  hands", "we are yours" or simply reflecting "let go"
  while you permit your body to relax. It is probable
  that we should learn to do this regularly and notjust
  leave it to the times of exhaustion, but if we are going
  94
to learn to do it at all, we can begin with those
desperate moments.'2
Alan Ecclestone works on the principle of allowing our
natural feelings to lead us into prayer. The function of the
will and mind in such prayer is similar to that of the jockey
of a powerful horse rearing to go. Energy and power are
present. It is a question of making sure the horse goes in
the right direction. This is in contrast to what many feel
about prayer -- a rider berating an ass which won't budge.
The mind and will are active but our psychic energy
obstinately refuses to move in the direction we want to
drive it. Alan Ecclestone's moment of gladness can be
pursued a little further. In chapter two it was argued that
a sense of thankfulness is an entirely natural and
appropriate response to life. Most Christian people would
agree with this. Our failure is to make the range of objects
for which we give thanks too limited. G. K. Chesterton put
the point memorably in this little rhyme.
  You say grace before meals,
  All right.
  But I say grace before the play and opera,
  And grace before the concert and pantomime,
  And grace before I open a book,
  And grace before sketching, painting,
  Swimming, fencing, boxing, w alking, playing, dancing,
  And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
  Our religious outlook is usually too narrow, often
puritan, in the sense that we are unwilling to include much
that naturally delights us in our prayers. How much
unhealthy sniggering and banality would be avoided if men
were able to offer a silent prayer of thanks to God for the
  shape of the female body that attracted them. In this
respect Jewish prayers seem much more wholesome than
  Christian ones. In the Hebrew prayer book as well as
thanksgiving to be said on such occasions as 'On smelling
  95
fragrant woods or barks', 'On hearing thunder', 'At the sight
of the sea', 'On seeing trees blossoming the first time in the
year' and so on, there is one entitled 'On seeing strangely
formed persons such as giants and dwarfs' which reads
'Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe,
who variest the forms of thy creatures'. In another Hebrew
prayer book there is a blessing entitled 'On going to stool'
which goes
  Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the
  universe, who hast formed man in wisdom, and
  created in him many orifices and vessels. It is revealed
  and known before the throne of thy glory, that if one
  of these be opened, or one of those be closed, it
  would be impossible to exist and to stand before
  thee. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who healest all flesh
  and doest wondrously.
  Thanks leads naturally into praise and adoration. C. S.
Lewis pointed out that we can come to 'read' sensual
pleasures as God's touch upon us in such a way that
experiencing the sensation and adoring God merge into an
experience at once physical and spiritual. As we learn to
read we progress beyond seeing each letter separately to
taking in the meaning of the word or the sentence as a
whole. In the same way sensual stimulii can be 'read' in
such a way that there is no gap between experiencing and
interpreting. He says he tries to make every pleasure a
channel of adoration and then continues.
  'We can't -- or I can't -- hear the song of a bird
  simply as a sound. Its meaning or message ("That's a
  bird") comes with it inevitably --just as one can't see
  a familiar word in print as a merely visual pattern.
  The reading is as involuntary as the seeing. When the
  wind roars I don"t just hear the roar; I "hear the wind".
  In the same way it is possible "to read" as well as to
  "have" a pleasure. Or not even "as well as". The distinc-
  96
tion ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible;
to receive it and to recognize its divine source are a
single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly
redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air
whispers of the country  whence it blows. It is a
message. We know we are being touched by a finger
of that right hand at which there are pleasures for
evermore. There need be no question of thanks or
praise as a separate event, something done afterwards.
To experience the tiny theophany is itself to adore."3
C. S. Lewis suggested that no pleasure is too ordinary or
usual for such reception "from the first taste of the air when
I look out of the window -- one"s whole cheek becomes a
sort of palate -- down to one's soft slippers at bedtime.'
There is nothing strange or artificial about experiencing
pleasures in this way. Uninterpreted experience is very rare.
When we look at the sun for example we don't just see a
mass of flames in the sky. We see it in terms of all that we
have heard and learnt about the sun. The sun moves us but
the way in which we express our reaction to its impact
upon us will have been provided by the culture in which we
live. We say 'Isn't it beautiful' or 'How mysterious the sun
looks' or 'Isn't it awesome'. All those are phrases that have
been given us and which act as a pair of spectacles through
which the sun is seen. The Christian, whilst not totally
rejecting the spectacles provided by the culture which has
formed his mind, wishes to use another kind of language
springing from a distinctive view of life. He believes that
all things spring from God's creative hand and he cannot
experience the natural or human world without something
of this coming to mind. John Hick 4 sees a parallel between
those drawings in which it is possible to see two distinct
pictures at different times, and viewing the world in faith.
At one moment we see a particular picture as a man's head
and at another as a vase. Both patterns can be seen and
there is no logical reason to see one rather than another.
He suggests that we see or experience the world in a similar
  97
kind of way. The believer experiences the world as created
and touched  with  divine  glory,  the non-believer doesn't.
Rational argument cannot show which of these two ways of
experiencing the world is true. But rational argument
cannot show us either that a world exists outside our mind
or that the moral claims upon us are real. The practical
living out of this understanding of faith, this epistemology,
to use the technical term, is along the lines suggested
by C. S. Lewis. The non-believer experiences something
marvellous and says 'How lovely', the believer experiences
the same sensation and almost instinctively says 'Praise the
Lord O my soul; all that is within me praise his holy name.'
  An idea of what is meant can be gleaned by contrasting
two passages, one by D. H. Lawrence and one by William
Blake. Both were passionate, intense people, both were, in
their different ways, profoundly religious. D. H. Lawrence
wrote to a friend.
  'We are having very beautiful weather, so h ot and
  bright. I have never seen anything so beautiful as the
  gorse this year, and the blackthorn. The gorse blazes
  in sheets of yellow fire, and the blackthorn is like
  white smoke, filling the valley bed. Primroses and
  violets are full out, an  the bluebells are just coming.
  It is very magnificent and royal. The sun is just
  sinking in a flood of gold. One would not be
  astonished to see the cherubim flashing their wings
  and coming towards us, from the west. All the time,
  one seems to be expecting an arrival from the
  beyond, from the heavenly world. The sense of
  something, someone magnificent approaching, is so
  strong, it is a wonder one does not see visions in the
  heavens.'5
Blake wrote in a letter to one of his friends.
  'What! It will be questioned when the sun rises do
  you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a
  98
guinea? Oh, no, no, I see an unnumerable company
of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the
Lord God Almighty.'6
Both the similarities and the differences, between these
two passages, the differences reflecting Blake's more
explicit Theism, go to underline the point being made. We
see or experience the world in terms of our basic standpoint
on life, and the Christian, believing that 'The world is
charged with the grandeur of God' will strive to open the
eyes of his soul to see it more and more in these terms.
  Two practical points can be made. First, it is useful to
know by heart certain phrases from the psalms or well
loved ancient prayers so that when something strikes us the
appropriate response comes easily and naturally to mind. It
might be thought that we could rely on our own sponta-
neous utterance. But praising or adoring God is not an
activity we always find easy to do in our own language.
Moreover if, when busy or pressed, we have in mind an
appropriate phrase, it is much more likely to come to the
surface of the mind than if we simply leave it to chance. We
are walking along the streets of some town, hurrying to an
appointment, with many things on the mind. We look up
between the houses to the sky with its hints of freedom
and mystery. The response of the untrained heart is likely
to be limited to a longing 'Oh', whereas the mind that has
been stepped in the adoration of the church down the ages
is likely to respond with 'Glory to God in the highest' or
some other well tried and loved expression of praise.
Second, in order that our worship does not become stereo-
typed, limited only to sunsets and flowers, we need to
intensify our awareness of what is about us. This is one of
the themes of chapter nine, but here it needs to be said
that poets and artists can help us to look with fresh eyes
and respond to what we see with something other than a
cliche.
  Glory be to God for dappled things --
  99
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim.7
Before reading that poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins I
would not have thought of praising God for dappled things.
Moreoever, having read it, I am more open to the possibility
of seeing God in 'All things counter, original, spare, strange'
as the poem suggests.
  We have five senses, windows from the outside world
into the centre of our being. Whatever stimulates these
senses can be used to lead us into prayer. This will be the
natural and normal way of praying for most of us. But can
we go beyond this and praise God without using the senses
as intermediaries? Can we think of and adore God in him-
self without any sensual stimulus? In chapter three the
examples of St John of the cross and St Francis were given
to show that this is possible, but once again the determining
factor must be honesty. Michael Ramsey brought this out
well in an address to students
  'The great things is to be <1wanting God>1 -- but, suppose
  you are so scatterbrain that you don't really feel you
  want God at all? Well, put yourself quietly with God
  and say something like this. "O my God, I want you,
  but I want you  little; indeed I can only really say
  that I want to want you". Simply say that. I once
  found myself in a bad state, saying to God only: "I
  want to want to want to want". I knew I was near
  Him because I was being really sincere '8
  So far only positive feelings have been considered. But
what about our negative ones, our feelings of anger, bitter-
ness and resentment? It's now widely recognized that one
of the great strengths of the psalms as vehicles of worship is
that they bring before God the whole range of human
feelings. Those who wrote the psalms were prepared to
bring before God their most unloving and bitter thoughts,
their anger and even their self-pity. Very often this troubles
  100
us and we are reluctant to say certain passages. But the
principle of bringing before God the person we really are,
warts and all, is a sound one. Only if we bring to God what
is real for us will our relationship with him become real.
God is not like someone we don't know very well with
whom we have to be on our best behaviour. He is our friend
and brother who knows us through and through. Moreover
he is the one who has borne our burdens and carried our
griefs. He, and he alone, can take the worst we have to
offer. Our hate is horrifying but it is no use pretending that
we don't feel what in fact we do feel. This doesn't mean we
have to remain at the level of anger and self-pity. But only
if we face our negative feelings, carrying them to the very
heart of God, can we work through them to something
better. In one of his poems called 'The Collar' George
Herbert obviously felt like a dog tied to a stake.
  'I struck the board, and cried, "No more!
  I will abroad.
  What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?
  My lines and life are free; free as the road,
  Loose as the wind, as large as store.
  Shall I be still in suit?
  Have I no harvest but a thorn . . .?'9
And so he continues, railing on about wanting to get away
from all that constricts him. But the poem ends
  'But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
  At every word,
  Methoughts I heard one calling, "Child!"
  And I replied, "My Lord".'
Because George Herbert brought the whole of what he was
to God he was able to hear the Lord's word to him. If he
had simply presented his best profile, that of the polite and
gentle courtier which he once was, for example, he would
have heard nothing.
  101
  This stress on bringing our real feelings into prayer
may strike some as self-indulgent. But those who pray
in this way often try to bring into prayer two other
elements. First, the use of the imagination. At theological
college during one Evensong I was even more bored than
usual with the readings and the three psalms set for the
day. I then thought of how many people there are in
the world whose jobs are sheer drudgery, offering no
scope for personal fulfilment or creativity. It then struck
me that the least I could do was to offer up my bored
Evensong on their behalf. Using one's imagination in
prayer does not mean indulging in wild flights of fancy.
It means trying to enter into the situation of others, sitting
where they sit, and offering up their situation to God.
Beginning with one's own feelings one imaginatively
reaches out to include others going through a similar
experience.
  The other factor in the situation is the unceasing prayer
of Christ in his church. In many schools there is a custom
on Ascension Day to give the pupils a holiday. When Evelyn
Waugh first went to Lancing he was without friends and
very lonely. On Ascension Day everyone else went out for
a day of fun but Evelyn Waugh had no companion. To add
to the misery it began to rain. Later he recorded
  'I wandered out with my damp pocket full of food and
  after a time took shelter among the trees called Lancing
  Ring, ate a little and for the first and last
  time for many years, wept. It was with comfort
  that late that afternoon l heard the noisy return
  of the holiday-makers. I have brought up my children
  to make a special intention at the Ascension Mass
  for all desolate little boys.'10
ln this little episode we see three principles at work. First,
the starting point is provided by our real feelings. Evelyn
Waugh's experience of loneliness and desolation provides
the psychic energy which gave his prayer reality and vitality.
  102
Second, this feeling is not indulged in. It is used as a centre
of sensitivity with which to reach out imaginatively to
others, in his case to 'all desolate little boys.' Third, the
feeling and the imaginative embrace of others in a similar
situation are linked to the prayer of Christ in his church.
Evelyn Waugh did this by making a special intention at
Mass. Others in different traditions will express the same
truth somewhat differently. People of all traditions use the
psalms. They contain a great variety of moods and aspira-
tions few of which will be identical with one's own at a
particular moment. Just for this reason they have a special
value. To say a psalm each day, or one in the morning and
one in the evening, according to some systematic scheme, is
a way of identifying with a whole range of human needs
and emotions. Saying a psalm is an objective way of joining
the unceasing prayer of Christ which is offered on behalf of
all humanity. It brings before God the needs of those who
feel let down, angry, self-satisfied  or self-pitying.  It  also
brings before God the longing of mankind. In the passage
of Michael Ramsey, already quoted, in which he tells us to
be sincere in our prayer he goes on to say
  'Some of the words from the Psalms can help a lot.
  "O God, thou art my God, early will I seek Thee" . . .
  "Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
  spirit within me" . . . These are some of the sentences
  from the Psalms that put into words that deep kind
  of heart longing  for  God from our hearts when we
  know that our hearts are very weak.'
Our hearts, and the hearts of humanity as a whole are very
weak. The spirit lifts our aspirations beyond themselves
when, through the Psalms, we are drawn into the unceasing
longing of Christ Himself.
                       * * *
Myself in constant good health, and in a most handsome
and thriving condition. Blessed be Almighty God for it.
<1Samuel Pepys, 31st December, 1660.>1
  103
Lord take my heart from me, for I cannot give it to thee.
Keep it for thyself, for I cannot keep it for thee;
and save me in spite of myself.
<1St Augustine>1
  NOTES
1.Giovanni Guareschi, <1The Little World of Don Camillo,>1 Penguin,
1975. Penguin publish six books on Don Camillo.
2.Alan Ecclestone, "On Praying" in <1Spirituality for Today,>1 edited
by Eric James, SCM 1965, p.29 ff.
3.C. S. Lewis, <1Prayer: Letters to Malcolm,>1 Fountain Books, 1977,
p.91.
4.John Hick, <1Philosophy of Religion,>1 Prentice-Hall, 1963, p.70 ff.
Also <1Christianity at the Centre,>1 SCM 1971, p.50 ff.
5. <1The Letter of D. H. Lawrence,>1 ed. Aldous Huxley, Heinemann,
1932,p.408.
6.'A Vision of the last Judgement' in <1Complete Works>1 ed. G. L.
Keynes OUP, p.652.
7.'Pied Beauty' in <1The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,>1 ed. W.
H. Gardner  and  N. H. MacKenzie, OUP Paperback  1970, p.69.
8.A sermon given in the University Church of Christ the King,
Gordon Square, WC1 on 4 November 1976.
9.'The Collar' in <1The Faber Book of Religious Verse,>1 ed. Helen
Gardner, Faber and Faber, 1972, p.126.
10. Christopher Sykes, <1Evelyn Waugh,>1 Collins I977, p.39.
  104
  Attending with love
EVERY MORNING John rises early. For twenty minutes
before breakfast he reads his Bible, thinks about what he
has read and prays about the day ahead of him. Every
evening before going to bed he reflects on the day gone by,
giving thanks to God for what has been good, saying sorry
for where he is conscious of falling short and commending
himself, his family, his friends and all he knows to be in
need, into the hands of God. John is regular in his atten-
dance at church, not only on Sundays but on some week-
days as well. Once a year he goes on a retreat. In contrast
to John, Elizabeth has no such disciplined routine. She is a
warm hearted girl with a strong faith but she has always
found it difficult to do things according to a rule. She tends
to be late for appointments and generally rather disorganized.
Yet prayer for her is a reality and many times during the
day spontaneous prayers of thanks and praise or requests
for help, not just for herself but for the people with whom
she is involved, rise to her mind.
  The trouble is most of us are neither John nor Eliza-
beth. We recognize the strength of John's life style and part
of us would very much like to be as disciplined about
prayer as he is. Time and again we make a fresh start but
soon falter and slip back into slipshod ways again. On the
other hand part of us is drawn to Elizabeth's natural and
spontaneous prayer. Yet if we, unlike her, simply left our
prayers to arise of themselves nothing very much would
come. Our life would rapidly become indistinguishable
from that of a non-believer, if it isn't already. The result
  105
is that most of us turn out to be somewhat mixed up and
guilty on the subject of discipline in the life of prayer. So a
few simple points need to be made.
  First, discipline in the Christian life is never an end in
itself. It is a means to the end of knowing God better. The
question about discipline is always whether we think the
end result is worth the effort. A person who goes down to
the running track every evening come rain, snow and ice
will do this for what he judges to be a good reason. Either
he wants to win some important race or he wants to keep
himself fit. There are times when he enjoys his training
session but what gets him going out even when he doesn't
feel much like it is the value he sets on his ultimate objec-
tive. If he is ambitious enough he will go out whatever the
weather. The Christian who prays regularly will sometimes
experience great joy. But he keeps going even when he
doesn't derive much satisfaction from it, even when it all
seems a great effort, because of what he judges to be the
supreme worth of the end, knowing God better and follow-
ing Christ more nearly. The definition of faith as 'life lived
on the evidence of its highest moments' has already been
alluded to. This definition is pertinent to the subject of
discipline. Most of us have very few 'highest moments'.
Between them there is much simple plodding on, sheer
keeping going. The evidence provided by the highest
moments is that God is  reality, the supreme reality in the
light of whom our whole life is to be lived. Living on the
basis of this evidence means going on trying to love God
and others, even when we don't particularly feel like it.
Most Christians recognize that this involves setting time
aside to be with God.
  Second, we need to realize that it is difficult to have a
rational discussion on the subject of discipline either with
others or ourselves, The word has become a flag which
some want to wave and others want to pull down and that
external controversy is reflected within ourselves. There are
those who are always crying out that we need more
discipline, in schools, in homes, in the country. Others find
  106
all discipline irksome and in contrast stress the value of
creative discovery. No doubt so many people have strong
feelings on the subject because of how they were brought
up and the particular way they have reacted to their own
childhood experience. But whatever the reason, we need a
less emotive word. Perhaps the idea of rhythm suggests a
direction? We all live by rhythms of one kind or another.
The rhythm of breathing in and out, of sleeping and
waking, of working and playing, of eating and digesting.
Even the most disorganized life has some rhythm to it. It is
entirely natural and appropriate therefore that in the
rhythm of living there should be time set aside for trying to
know God better. It is life-giving not burdensome to live
by some rhythm, and prayer, which nourishes the whole of
our existence, will take its place with breathing and sleeping
as part of the cycle of our day.
  Third, people who have managed to make prayer an
ineradicable part of their daily rhythm tell us of the great
benefits which result from this. People who pray even when
it feels a great drag, when for a long time they seem to
derive nothing from it, find strength when they most need
it. In prison in South Africa Gonville ffrench-Beytagh felt
himself surrounded by a great wall of prayer. He prefaced
that statement by saying:
  'I have always said to people when they are feeling
  "down" about their religion that if they can only go
  through the motions and do the things that their rule
  obliges them to, they will come out all right. This was
  my experience at this time -- not because I had any
  conscious feeling of the presence of God, but
  because, by doing what the rest of the church was
  doing, I was joining in something much bigger than
  myself. '1
It was actually saying his prayers, even when he was in an
acute state of panic, that made him aware of the on-going
prayer of the whole church and the prayers of other
  107
Christians upholding him. Bonhoeffer makes the same
point.
  'Not only at the beginning, but repeatedly, there will
  be times when we feel a great spiritual dryness and
  apathy, an aversion, even inability to meditate. We
  dare not be balked by such experiences. Above all, we
  must not allow them to keep us from adhering to our
  meditation period with great patience and fidelity . . .
  "Seek God, not happiness" -- this is the fundamental
  rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will
  gain happiness: that is its promise.'2
Behind the Bonhoeffer who eventually emerged to public
view, the courageous, human, attractive person who
impressed all who met him so deeply, there were years of
inner discipline.
  Suppose we wish to spend some time each day or each
week trying to get to know God better, how should we
use this time?
  First, spiritual reading. Although on occasions we will
just want to say things to God or be with him in silence, at
other times we will need first to be nourished by reading
something. The following points can be made.
a) If possible read something the night before the day in
which one intends to meditate. There are two reasons for
this. First, if a seed is slipped into the mind beforehand it
will have a little time to germinate in the unconscious as
well as the conscious mind. Second, if we begin reading
during the period we have set aside for meditation there is
a tendency for the reading to take up the whole of the
limited time available and this is less than ideal.
b) Don't read too much. A paragraph, a sentence or even a
word may be enough. Spiritual reading is not done in order
to gain new information or ideas. We read in order to find
something for the mind and heart to latch onto. Many of
us today read far too much too quickly. We flick through
papers, magazines and books taking in what we read, if at
  108
all, only at the tip of our mind. Spiritual reading is done
with the aim of taking in truth at a much deeper level. A
fragment of God's truth is mulled over in the mind, lived
with in the heart and drunk deep into our being.
c) Don't feel you have to read the Bible all the time. The
essential criterion is -- are you being nourished by what you
read? Many people find that they are bored stiff by the
Bible for quite long periods. Reading it should not be made
a great burden. The truth it contains is quite able to
commend itself and after a period reading other things,
perhaps quite a long period, we rediscover the Bible and
return to it with renewed zest. There are many good
books by authors of old and of modern times. What we
read is meant to <1help>1 us. If what we are reading is doing
that, then the word of God is being spoken to us.
d) Read with a sense of expectancy. As Bonhoeffer wrote.
  'In our meditation we ponder the chosen text on the
  strength of the promise that it has something utterly
  personal to say to us for this day and for our
  Christian life, that it is not only God's word for the
  church, but also God's Word for us individually.  We
  expose ourselves to the specific word until it
  addresses us personally. And when we do this, we are
  doing no more than the simplest, untutored Christian
  does every day; we read God's Word as God's Word
  for us.'3
Bonhoeffer was writing about meditation based on passages
from the Bible. God can and does speak to us through other
writing as well. The same principle holds whether we are
reading scripture or some other work that inspires us to
Christian discipleship. Read expecting to hear a word
from God.
e) Keep a notebook. In this book write down any
particular thought, sentence, prayer or word that you want
to use as a basis for meditation. Some people prefer to use
their ordinary engagement diary. This means that on each
  109
page, as well as the day's events, there is a sentence or
prayer written down which can be used during the day to
focus one's mind on God. The advantage of this is obvious.
If one's period of meditation has been curtailed, at least
something is retained when one writes down an idea or a
phrase in the daily diary. Then, whether the period of
meditation has been prolonged or cursory, it can spread
over into the day. During odd moments, waiting for some-
one to come or for someone to answer at the other end of
the telephone or waiting for a piece of machinery to go
through its motions, the mind can light on the sentence
written in the diary and further thought or prayer can
take place. In this diary or notebook it is useful to write
anything gleaned from Sunday worship. What has been said
about reading with a sense of expectancy applies equally to
the state of mind with which one should listen to the
Scripture readings and sermon in church. If one has a note
book and writes down an idea or phrase, we will be more
likely to listen in this way. Further, what one hears will be
more likely to be carried over into the week, doing some-
thing to bridge the gap between what we do on Sundays
and what we do on other days.
  This is a possible scenario. In bed before putting the
light out for the night I read a page of a book by, say,
Anthony Bloom or Monica Furlong. One sentence in
particular strikes me. It seems to challenge some aspect of
my personality and be generally relevant to my life. Next
morning sitting in the tube I return to the page again and
copy the sentence that struck me into my diary. I see there
a thought I had jotted down from the sermon on Sunday
and the two ideas seem to interact fruitfully. On the
journey I mull them over, particularly in relation to the day
ahead. Silently I commend the day, the people I will meet
in it and thejobs I will have to do, to God. In the middle of
the morning I check my diary to see what is next on the
day's agenda and my mind lights on the sentence I had
written earlier. ln a second of mental prayer I lift the office
situation to God. This happens once or twice more during
  110
the course of the day. After lunch, on the way back to the
office, I pass a church and pop in for a few minutes. I
simply want to be silent, seeking to be present with God as
he is present with me.
  Second, stillness. Many of us live such hectic, anxious
lives we find it difficult to concentrate for more than a few
seconds at a time. Spiritual guides have often given very
sound advice to people whose thoughts wander around a
good deal. They tell us not to try and banish what comes
into the mind with a great deal of fuss and bother. Simply
bring the mind back to what it is we are trying to con-
centrate on with quiet firmness. If we concentrate on
expelling stray thoughts they tend to come back with
renewed strength. If we virtually ignore them by simply
getting back to the job in hand, they lose their hold.
Sometimes it seems as though nothing will stop our mind
from wandering. In that case it may be better to pray about
the subject to which the mind keeps returning rather than
continue the original meditation. Suppose for example you
are going out in the evening but before you go you try to
have a period of quiet reflection and prayer. Yet try as you
will, you can't stop thinking about who you will be meeting
and how you will react to them. It may be best simply to
commit the people you are thinking about and the
evening's party or whatever it is into the hand of God.
But there is another way.
  In recent years we have learnt from non-Christian
traditions of meditation that it is silly to try and concen-
trate the mind if the physical frame in which the mind is set
is all agitated.4 The mind will pray better if the body is an
ally rather than an enemy. This means in practice that some
attention must be paid to posture. The experts tell us that a
position which is at once relaxed and alert is best for
prayer. Although most people are used to praying either
kneeling or standing it may be that sitting provides the
best position for any extended period of meditation. If we
sit, it should be with back straight, feet square on the floor
and hands, palm downwards, on the knees. This position is
  111
comfortable but does not make one feel lazy. Then many
people have discovered that concentrating on regular
breathing for a minute or two helps to settle both the body
and the mind. We breathe in and out, counting, to some
such rhythm as:
   Breath in -- 1,2,3,4,5,6
   Hold -- 1,2,3
   Breathe out -- 1,2,3,4,5,6
   Hold -- 1,2,3
This is only a very rough guide. Everyone has their own
rhythm, one which is definite but not a strain. Men breathe
from the stomach area, women more from the chest; so
there is a difference here also. Whilst breathing one thinks
only of the breathing, getting caught up in our own
particular pattern of inhaling, holding and exhaling air.
After a couple of minutes both body and mind are less
anxious and agitated. The personality in its wholeness is
ready for prayer. At this point it is possible to turn one's
breathing itself into a kind of prayer. Instead of breathing
in and out, just counting, one can say something like:
  Come Holy Spirit,
  Fill my heart and mind.
  Go forth Divine Love, fill all
  hearts and minds.
  The main medium for drawing closer to God in prayer is
silence. For most of us silence is not easy and it has been a
familiar moan in church circles in recent years that congre-
gations find it almost impossible to make proper use of
periods of silence in worship. (Quakers are of course the
exception.) In the ASBRite A Eucharist there are a number of
places indicated where silence could be used. But few
churches seem to avail themselves of this opportunity and
those that do often find the silence awkward rather than
enriching. Some people find silence difficult because it
  112
provides a chance for anxieties and fears that lie just below
the surface to come into the mind and make a nuisance of
themselves. When talking to someone or doing a job they
are all right. But when on their own or in periods of silence
in church, feelings that have been carefully battened down
break free. It may be feelings of guilt associated with some-
one once loved,, who is now dead; it may be a sense of
bitterness about someone. But whatever the cause silence is
not healing but disturbing and we need to understand this.
People in this situation, who find silence disturbing, should
pray in other ways, using their own words or well tried
prayers from the Christian tradition. No less important they
should find someone, husband, wife, friend, priest, it
doesn't matter who -- to talk to. No one should be ashamed
of seeking the ministry of a listening ear from a friend, and
most friends are only too happy to be of use in this way.
This accepting ministry we offer to one another is not apart
from prayer. It may be a way in which God hears our
prayer and answers it.
  Some people need to talk rather than be silent. But for
most of us, whose minds are simply full of the usual
chattering, silence is a medium which can and should be
cultivated. Not for its own sake. Silence is important
because it can lead us to something beyond itself. As
Gerard Manley Hopkins put it
  Elected silence, sing to me
  And beat upon my whorled ear,
  Pipe me to pastures still and be
  The music that I care to hear.5
Silence can lead us into stillness; the stillness which comes
from being close to God and in which we are attentive to
God.
  Third, the use of a mantra. This word has come into the
Christian vocabulary in recent years to indicate a particular
word or phrase which helps to focus the mind on God.
Though the word mantra is strange to most of us, the idea
  113
behind it is deeply embedded in the Christian tradition. A
well known example is the Jesus prayer of the Russian
Orthodox Church. The words 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me a sinner' are said over and over again, as a way of concentrating
the mind on God. Some will regard this with distaste
as a 'technique' little better than auto-suggestion, at any
rate something which is sub-personal and close to the vain
repetition condemned in the Gospels. Such objections are
understandable and must be faced. But they can be
answered. Prayer is always part of a relationship to God
who deals with us personally. But our awareness of God is
so clouded and intermittent. A mantra is a simple and
effective tool to help us be more continually aware of
God's reality and presence. The author of the classic work
<1The Cloud of UnknowingS,>1 written in the 14th century tells
us that though we cannot conceive God we can reach after
him with longing love. He says that 'A naked intention
directed  to God, and himself alone, is wholly sufficient',
and then goes on
  'If you want this intention summed up in a word, to
  retain it more easily, take a short word, preferably of
  one syllable, to do so. The shorter the word the
  better, being more like the working of the Spirit! A
  word like "God" or "Love". Choose which you like,
  or perhaps some other, so long as it is of one syllable.
  And fix this word fast to your heart, so that it is
  always there come what may. It will be your shield
  and spear in peace and war alike. With this word you
  will hammer the cloud and the darkness above you.'6
That anonymous author recommends a short word of one
syllable. But for most of us a phrase from the psalms or an
ancient prayer or even a prayer of one's own will do as well.
Some part of these verses are favourite ones, for example
  Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so
  longeth my soul after thee O God.
  114
My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living
God <1(Psalm 42>1
O God, thou art my God: early will I seek thee. My
soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after
thee: In a barren and dry land where no water is.
<1(Psalm 63>1
The purpose of the mantra is to focus the mind upon God.
When we are still we shape and express our intention to
draw closer to God by saying the word or sentence we have
chosen. This leads into a period of silence. At the beginning
of the silence the intention that has just been expressed in
words is now expressed without words. As the silence
continues the intention becomes attenuated and the mind
begins to wander. When we catch this happening, or just
before it does so, we again say our chosen word or
sentence. And so we continue with word and silence
interspersed, one continuous intention towards God expres-
sed now one way and now another.
  A possible scenario goes like this. Saturday afternoon,
everyone out of the house. Husband and son at football,
daughter doing her Saturday job. At last, a few minutes
peace and quiet on one's own. But mind full of worries
-- about children, about husband's job, about the many
things that need doing to the house. Sit down in the chair
in relaxed but alert position. Concentrate on breathing for
a couple of minutes till whole being feels much calmer.
Turn the breathing itself into a kind of prayer. Remember a
phrase from one of the prayers used in church on Sunday.
'O Holy Spirit giver of light and life'. Think of Holy Spirit
about us and within us. Use this phrase as a prayer; silence;
say the phrase again. Pray like this for three or four
minutes. Doorbell goes, end of meditation.
  The previous chapter concentrated on the role of the
feelings in prayer. It stressed how our ordinary feelings of
love and hate, gratitude and bitterness, can provide the raw
energy to make our prayer lively and real. The emphasis in
  115
this chapter is somewhat different. It is not a denial of what
has been said before. On the contrary the principle there
enunciated still holds, that we should use and transmute the
energy of our feelings in prayer, rather than work against
their current. But the concern here is on the crucial role of
the mind, whether or not it has much psychic energy
behind it. We are for so much of the time locked up in the
cave of our self-preoccupation. It is the job of the will and
the mind to prise us open to other realities so that we may
become aware of them. The key word is attention. For this,
as for so many things, we have to thank Simone Weil, one
of the most remarkable women of all time. 'Prayer con-
sists of attention'7 she wrote. Again, 'Attention, taken to
its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.'8 Simone
Weil believed that school studies were only really of use in
so far as they trained us to attend to realities outside our-
selves.9 She maintained that no effort to truly attend, for
example in struggling to understand a subject we are not
good at, was ever wasted. Further, all our efforts to attend in
school and elsewhere, come to a climax in an attention to
God. All attempts to attend are implicit forms of the love of
God.
  As prayer is inseparable from attention, so are art and
love. Simone Weil writes
  'The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his atten-
  tion on something real. It is the same with the act of
  love. To know that this man who is hungry and
  thirsty really exists as much as I do -- that is enough,
  the rest follows of itself.
  The authentic and pure values -- truth, beauty and
  goodness -- in the activity of a human being are the
  result of one and the same act, a certain application
  of the full attention to the object.'10
The same concern with attention is expressed in this poem
by D. H. Lawrence, called 'Thought'.
  116
'Thought, I love thought.
But not the jiggling and twisting of already existent
ideas
I despise that self-important game.
Thought is the welling up of unknown life into
consciousness,
Thought is the testing of statements on the
touchstone of the conscience,
Thought is gazing on to the face of life, and reading
what can be read,
Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to
conclusion.
Thought is not a trick, or an exercise, or a set of
dodges,
Thought is a man in his wholeness wholly attending.'11
Simone Weil and D. H. Lawrence unite in stressing the
crucial importance of attention. In prayer we try to attend
to God, to attend to him with love. In this kind of prayer
we seek to be rather less dependent on the feelings. The
mind acts as a pacemaker, the feelings follow after. We fix
our attention on God in himself, for himself.
By love alone is God enjoyed
by love alone delighted in,
by love alone approached or admired.
His nature requires love.
Thy nature requires love.
The law of nature commands thee to love him.
The Law of his nature, and the law of thine.
<1Thomas Traherne, The First Century,>1 72
Good Lord, you are good, truly good, all good.
  117
      NOTES
1.<1Encountering Darkness,>1 Collins  1975, p.146.
2.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, <1Life Together,>1 SCM 1976, p.63.
3.Ibid. p.62.
4.Various writers have sought to integrate Yoga techniques into
Christian meditation e.g. J. M. Dechanet, OSB. An Anglican writer
who has attempted to use not only Yoga but other schools of
thought and forms of movement is Herbert Slade SSJE.
A very brief but helpful Introduction is: <1Tools for Meditation>1 by
J. de Rooy, S. J. Gail, 1976. It's only 40p.
  5.'The Habit of Perfection' in <1The Poems of Gerard Manley>1
<1Hopkins,>1 p.31.
6. <1The Cloud of Unknowing,>1 Penguin Classics, 1961 , p.61.
7. Simone Weil, <1Waiting on God,>1 Fontana, 1959, p.66.
  8.Simone Weil, <1Gravity and Grace,>1 Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1963,p.105.
9.'Reflections on the right use of school studies with a view to
the love of God' in <1Waiting on God,>1 p.66.
10.<1Gravity and Grace,>1 p.108.
11.D. H. Lawrence, <1Complete Poems,>1 Vol. 2, p.673.
  118
  Politics, Poetry and Prayer
IT MIGHT seem odd that in a book on prayer there is a
chapter concerned with politics and poetry. Why are they
included? First, because many people regard either politics
or one or other of the art forms as more important than
anything else in life. Politics or music, for example, is for
them a ruling passion. One of the themes of this book is
that whatever matters to us, whatever we feel strongly
about, needs to be integrated into our prayers. In this way
our prayer will become honest and vital. So for this reason
alone politics and poetry could be mentioned. But their
significance is more than this. A person might say 'Chess is
my ruling passion' or 'Football is my religion' but they
do so in a figurative sense. They are using strong language
to suggest how important these activities are to them. When
a person is passionately involved with politics or one or
other of the art forms something else is present. Politics and
art mediate to us to claims of morality and beauty. These
claims are closely akin to those made by religion, for people
are conscious of their absoluteness. For many people
political activity or art becomes a substitute religion. For
some, politics is a matter of life or death seriousness. Others
live for literature or music. There are those who, night after
night, will attend long performances of Wagner's operas. In
previous generations some of the needs which are met in
this way would have been met by religious worship.
  An example, which is at once the most obvious and the
most extreme, of politics taking the place of religion occurs
in the case of Marxism. The Marxist interpretation of life
  119
and history offers a total world view which attempts to win
our allegiance. It wants us not only to see its truth but to
work whole-heartedly to implement its particular vision of
the future. The process whereby a person sees the truth of
Marxism and adopts it for himself is parallel to that
whereby a person  is converted to a religion. Everything
appears in a new light and there is a familiar mixture of
enthusiasm for the new beliefs together with criticism of
those who do not share them. Marxism as a whole is simply
untrue, but it does offer some crucial insights which non-
Marxists would be stupid or perverse to ignore. One of
these is that an individual cannot be properly understood
apart from the society which helps to shape him. We are
influenced and moulded by our environment, most
immediately by our family circle, but this is itself shaped
by the wider environment of which it forms a part. If
society as a whole is sick this will affect the families which
form it and, through them, the individuals who are being
nurtured. A coloured Methodist minister in South Africa
once described the unsatisfactory council meetings of his
church. Often the members seemed to want to take it out
of him. But the minister approached the situation with true
understanding. He realized that his congregation of poor
coloureds were treated with indignity during their working
day; they were degraded and humiliated. At meetings of the
church council they were working some of this off, taking it
out on others as others had taken it out on them. The
wounds inflicted by society could to some extent be
healed in that council meeting. Family units are more
vulnerable. Young hearts and minds are being formed. They
can be badly damaged. If there is a deadening situation at
work, so that for eight hours a day a person knows nothing
but slog and frustration, the pent-up irritation of the day
will be released on those at home. If society is unjust, then
those oppressed at work will tend to become oppressors at
home. Individuals cannot be considered apart from the
society which helps to shape them. And for various reasons
the influence of society as a whole on our lives is becoming
  120
more pronounced. If there ever was a time when a family
could live in splendid isolation defiantly asserting its own
values against the state, this is becoming less and less
possible. The power of the state over our lives is increasing.
The influence of the national media is becoming more
pervasive.
  True prayer is inseparable from caring for individuals.
Caring for individuals means caring about the society which
helps to mould them. To pray seriously is to pray politi-
cally. This means praying with political awareness and
about political issues. The problem is that in the lives of
most people there is a disastrous lack of connection
between their prayer and their politics. This is so whether
their politics are right wing or left wing. One difficulty, felt
by people of left wing views, has less to do with ideological
matters than with fundamental attitudes. Religion seems to
require people to have a basic respect and reverence for
things, a sense of awe, and a consciousness of one's own
fallibility and limitations. Taken by themselves these
qualities do not usually drive people to bring about radical
change. On the other hand a person who wants to change
society seems to need a certain brashness and irreverence, a
willingness to challenge what has been hallowed by long
usage. This seems to necessitate at least an outward show of
self-confidence, an apparent assurance that you are right
and other people are wrong. Such different attitudes and
qualities appear to be required that it is difficult to see how
they can be combined in an outlook that is at once myst-
ical and political. W. H. Auden stated the dilemma
well.
  'And it is now that our two paths cross.
  Both simultaneously recognize his Anti-type: that I
  am an Arcadian, that he is a Utopian.
  He notes, with contempt, my Aquarian belly: I note,
  with alarm, his Scorpion's mouth.
  121
He would like to see me cleaning latrines: I would
like to see him removed to some other planet.
Neither speaks. What experience could we possibly
share?
Glancing at a lampshade in a store window, I observe
it is too hideous for anyone in their senses to buy: He
observes it is too expensive for a peasant to buy.
Passing a slum child with rickets, I look the other
way: He looks the other way if he passes a chubby
one . . .
You can see, then, why, between my Eden and his
New Jerusalem, no treaty is negotiable. '1
How can the Arcadian and the Utopian, to use Auden's
imagery, come together in one person? The following
considerations suggest themselves. First, the most radical of
revolutionaries will have certain things he respects. If he
wants to overthrow society it will be in the name of a
better order and a new humanity. It is out of respect for
what society and humanity could and ought to be, that he
is driven to work for change. Second, if a person really
respects and reverences life, he will be forced to notice the
contrast between life as it is and life as it could be. An
awareness of this gap can and should lead him to work
towards a realization of his ideal. Third, as a matter of fact,
there have been people, in the modern world and in the
past, who have been both mystics and prophets; deep men
of prayer and implacable enemies of social injustice. It is
notorious how one can project one's own ideal onto the
person of Christ but does not he come across to us as one
who combined within himself both mystical awareness and
fierce denunciation of cruelty?
  It was once said of a well-known Cabinet minister that
his Christianity took the form of being kind to the cabinet
  122
office cat. We know what was meant by that remark. All
that was really important to him, the kind of policies he
should advocate and the means he should use to get them
accepted and implemented, were kept separate from his
religion. His religion was confined to relatively non-contro-
versial areas like being kind to animals and no doubt, also,
courteous to his secretary. But, as has already been shown,
it is impossible to be a praying Christian without caring
very much about the kind of society we live in. This, in a
sinful, fallen world, will mean advocating and working for
change. But it will not only mean that. It will also include
a sense of thankfulness for what we enjoy and foolishly
take for granted. When you were last booked by a traffic
warden, as well as the usual irritation one feels on such
occasions, were you able to thank God for the fact that we
live in an ordered society in which law is for the most part
enforced without bribery or corruption? When you last
received an income tax form to fill in could you thank God
for a system which makes possible an orderly collection of
dues and pray for honesty in fulfilling your obligations as a
citizen? By both these tests most of us would be revealed as
schizophrenic. Our political life and our prayer life are not
integrated.
  It is not easy to integrate political life into prayer. The
obvious point to start is by trying to read the news or
listen to the news on television or radio, in a prayerful
spirit. It's not so easy, first of all, because news for many is
a way of escaping from more pressing and painful personal
concerns. News sometimes gives the impression of being our
great national pastime and diversion. To take our mind off
a family row, or pressures at the office, we amuse ourselves
by reading about some scandal involving a public figure, or
we reinforce our prejudices by a highly selective reading or
hearing of the news on some issue. The other reason why it
is difficult to respond to the news prayerfully is that it
moves so fast from one item to another, from something of
extreme seriousness to something of a trivial nature. The
total effect is to damp down one's critical, prayerful
  123
concern with what is happening. But a start has to be made
somewhere and trying to respond to the news in a prayerful
spirit seems the obvious place to begin.
  Watching or listening to the news prayerfully means a
kind of continuous act of intercession -- inwardly lifting
people and situations to God. But it is more than this. It
involves watching or listening critically, that is, with an
awareness that all news is imparted from a particular stand-
point with one set of assumptions rather than another. It
means questioning what these are. It also involves trying to
see the wider significance of what is happening, being alert
to what is really going on and relating it to one's Christian
understanding of the world. All this sounds quite
impossible and very far from the reality of most of us,
which is slumping down in an arm-chair for a few minutes
as a break and diversion from other things. It seems to
require an unattainable degree of alertness and critical
reflection. But, for the Christian, the news cannot simply
be regarded as a piece of entertainment. It demands to be
integrated into our discipleship however inadequately we
may do it.
  If we do try to listen prayerfully it is likely that at some
time or another we will be overcome by a feeling that it
doesn't really matter very much whether we respond in this
way or not. What effect is the attitude of one tiny mind
going to have on great historical events? But great historical
events come about as a result of millions and millions of
hidden omissions and commissions. When a fight breaks out
between two communities involving destruction and loss of
life, such an outbreak does not just happen out of the blue.
The conflagration is the result of millions of tiny
unthinking acts of prejudice and blindness. The apparently
insignificant act of a solitary individual should not be
underrated.
  Another way in which a person's prayer and politics can
be brought together in a healthy union is through praying
for particular people who are in prison for political
offences. An obvious way of doing this is through joining a
  124
local Amnesty International group. These groups adopt
political prisoners, in all countries of the world, write to
them, try in various ways to get them released or their
conditions improved. This particular concern, at once
individual and political, can easily be linked with a person's
prayer. If we still doubt whether the prayer side is any use,
as we all do from time to time, then let Canon Gonville
french-Beytagh reassure us. A paragraph already quoted
continues . . .
  'Underlying my panics and weeping-fits and fear,
  there was a sense of immense strength upholding me,
  and surrounding me like a wall. Later, of course, I
  found that Christians all over the world, including
  many religious communities, had been praying for
  me. I did not know this at the time, but I did feel
  quite certainly that I was surrounded by a wall of
  prayer. '2
  True prayer is inseparable from politics. It is also
inseparable from poetry, or to be more exact, from art in
one or more of its forms. A group of young clergy once
listened to a Lancashire parish priest talk about his under-
standing of the Gospel and how it was to be expressed in
the parish. This priest, it must be said, was no ordinary
clergyman. After three first class honours degrees he had
turned down numerous offers of academic jobs in order to
spend his whole life on a Lancashire housing estate. But he
did not let his mind seize up. On the contrary he kept
worrying away at what the Gospel really was and what it
meant to be a priest in the particular situation in which he
found himself. What he had to say to the young clergymen
was the result of a first class mind, coupled with a warm
human sensitivity, reflecting on the experience of some
thirty years ministering to ordinary people in their situa-
tions of sadness and gladness. When the speaker finished it
was clear that the hearers were strangely divided in their
reaction to what had been said. Half felt that they had
  125
never heard the Gospel spoken so clearly and powerfully.
The other half were angry with the speaker for not speaking
about the Gospel at all. Those in this category did not all
belong to a particular tradition within the Church of
England. This writer, it must be said, was one of those who
heard the Gospel and was amazed at the degree of anger
aroused in those who hadn't. The only explanation of this
situation seems to be that the Gospel wasn't heard by some
of those present because it wasn't communicated in terms
with which they were familiar. The speaker's words had
been wrought out of his own intense experience; they were
the result of a lifetime's struggle to relate the Christian
verities to the situation in which God had placed him; they
were fresh, subtle and sharp. As one listener said
afterwards.  'There wasn't  a cliche during the whole  day.'
This experience raises a disturbing question. Do we only
hear the Gospel when it comes to us in cliche?
  Cliche is the deadly enemy of true religion. To fall into
cliche is not just to make a technical lapse. A cliche/ is the
sign of a moral and spiritual failure. Furthermore, a cliche/ is
not just an overused word in everyday speech. The most
hallowed phrases from the Bible and Christian tradition can
become cliche/s. They can be used without any deep
personal experience behind them, without thought or
sensitivity. So, as someone once remarked. 'God is Love" is
the greatest cliche/ in the world'. Art is desperately
important because it can rescue our religion and so our
prayers, from cliche/. It can lead us away from relying on
second hand experience, used-up words and empty
sentences to discover something for oneself.
  Two clergymen sat talking, asking each other who they
thought were the great prophets of today. Both sadly
agreed that there didn't seem to be any. But both admitted
to reading and being helped by poets. They found that their
faith was nourished not so much by theology and theolo-
gians but by poetry and poets, novels and novelists. These
made a religious impact upon them. If this is so for people
within the household of faith, like priests, how much more
  126
so is it true for those who have little or no formal belief. As
was suggested at the beginning of the chapter, many people
today find a substitute for religion in one or other of the
art forms. How are we to account for this religious impact
of art on believer and non-believer alike? The likeliest
explanation is that great or good art only comes about if
two particular qualities are present in the artist; qualities
which are central to the Christian understanding of God.
First, to produce genuine art the writer, painter or sculptor
must learn to see. This means leaving behind self-preoccupa-
tion and self-concern. He has to open his eyes wide, not just
his physical eyes, but the eyes of his mind and heart to
what is before him and truly behold it. Truth, beauty and
goodness are, as Simone Weil put it, 'The result of . . . a
certain application of the full attention to the object.'
Second, in responding to what is before him, the artist has
to put something distinctively personal into the work. He
doesn't just copy what is before him. He tries both to see
what is there and at the same time to express a fresh vision
of what he sees. He puts himself into his work. This makes
him vulnerable. This is the crucial difference between
genuine art and a pretty picture or poem. When an artist
paints a rose or a cathedral which will eventually find its
way onto an attractively designed box of chocolates he
knows that what he has done will be acceptable.
Commercial interests would not commission him to do the
work unless they thought it would help sell the chocolates.
But when a genuine work of art is produced the creator
does not know whether what he has done is acceptable or
not. It goes beyond what has been well received in the past.
He puts himself into his work, in an intensely personal way,
and he does not know whether it will be welcomed or
spurned. A cliche/ is a cliche/ or in art a pastiche is a pastiche
because it will receive an easy acceptance by the uncritical.
There is no personal risk because there is no personal
contribution.
  Genuine art comes about because the artist has opened
the eyes of his mind and heart wide enough to respond to
  127
some aspect of reality and because he has not rested on
other people's ways of seeing this reality. According to
Constable there are two things to be avoided in art, 'the
absurdity of imitation' and bravura, 'an attempt to do
something beyond the truth'.3  In other words moral and
spiritual qualities are necessary. These moral and spiritual
qualities are present primarily in God himself. God and God
alone truly sees. In him is no vanity or self-preoccupation
to hinder him from seeing what is there in every detail and
nuance. But God does more than see. He puts himself into
his work. Indeed there would be nothing there for him to
see unless he had first created it by putting himself into it.
In creating the world God takes a risk, he makes himself
vulnerable: and becoming incarnate in the world God leaves
himself totally at the mercy of men.
  A person who follows Christ will become more like God.
Loving others means trying to be sensitive to them, to see
them as they are without making them in one's own image.
It also means giving oneself to them in such a way that one
is at risk: caring about them to the extent that one is
dependent on how they react. One can be hurt by them.
The same moral and spiritual qualities are present both in
Christian discipleship and in the production of true art.
These qualities are present first of all and in supreme degree
in God himself. It means that whether an artist is himself a
believer or not, if his work is true art it will make a religious
impact. Producing art is not just a technical matter. It is a
question of integrity, of purity of heart, of love in the
proper sense. To read a poem or look at a picture with
attention is in Blake's words to 'cleanse the doors of
perception'. It is a purifying experience. T. S. Eliot wrote
of 'the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings';4 of
the poet's job to  Purify the dialect of the tribe'.
Reading such people is important for our prayers in
two ways. First, they communicate fresh insights, new ways
of seeing things, which, when imbibed, keep our prayers
lively. Like everything else in life it is easy for prayer to
become stale, tired, matter-of-fact, bored. Reading a
poem or a novel, looking at a picture or hearing some
music, can shake us out of a dull routine and give new
zest to our love of God. Second, the arts can release some
of our own creative potential. Everyone has far more
creativity in them than they realize. This comes out in little
ordinary ways, in gardening, in woodwork and so on. The
arts can have a purifying effect on us in making our
personal response to life and to God more real and honest.
They can help us respond in a way that is truly ours and
not just second-hand; not just cliche/.
'To pray seriously is to pray politically'
  129
In your wisdom, good Lord, you have made us part of
human society and placed us in communities which shape
our lives.
Alert us to the ways in which through their false values and
unjust ordering we damage one another.
Strengthen our resolve so to organize our corporate life that
it may help each one of us develop to our full potential.
'Reading a poem or a novel, looking at a picture or hearing
some music, can shake us out of a dull routine and give new
zest to our love of God.'
Thank you God for all those who have seen clearly,
felt strongly and thought deeply
and whose artistic skill and integrity
has enabled them to express their experience in works of
honesty and vision.
Liberate us from all that keeps us locked up in ourselves.
Prise us open to see what lies before our eyes,
and help us to respond with some of that creativity you
have planted in each one of us.
      NOTES
1.'Horae Canonicae', 5. Vespers, <1Collected Poems,>1 Faber and
Faber,1976,p.482.
2.<1Encountering Darkness,>1 p.146.
3.Quoted by Herbert Read in <1The Meaning of Art,>1 Penguin 1956,
p.131.
4.T. S. Eliot, 'Burnt Norton', line 70.
  130
  10
Waiting in Silence
ONE SUMMER recently there was a picture in the news-
paper of a queue of cars 40 miles long on the border
between Austria and Yugoslavia. Turkish workers returning
to their home country for a holiday were having to wait
three days. This is an extreme instance of a feature in every-
one's life. We wait for trains and buses. We wait at a
counter to be served or a cash desk to pay. We wait
anxiously for someone to come and with irritation for
someone to go. We know old people waiting to die.
They are not unhappy. They have done all they can
usefully do and agree with St Paul that the better part is to
go and be with Christ. But they are kept waiting. There are
others for whom life itself seems a long wait; people whose
deepest desires for a family or fulfilling job are continually
frustrated; people whose brisk useful acts of charity and
cheery face almost conceal the pain; the pain of endless
waiting.
  For some people life is a long wait for something desperately
wanted which never seems to come. For all of us life itself
is a kind of waiting for we know not what. In Samuel
Beckett's play  <1Waiting for  Godot>1 Vladimir and Estragon
come to halt.
  <1Estragon:>1 'Charming spot.  Inspiring prospects. Let's
  go.
  <1Vladimir:>1 We can't.
  <1Estragon:>1 Why not?
  <1Vladimir:>1 We're waiting for Godot.
  131
<1Estragon:>1  Ah! You're sure it was here?
<1Vladimir:>1 What?
<1Estragon:>1 That we were to wait.
<1Vladimir:>1 He said by the tree. Do you see any others?
<1Estragon:>1 What is it?
<1Vladimir:>1  I don't know. A willow.
<1Estragon:>1 Where are the leaves?
<1Vladimir:>1  It must be dead.
<1Estragon:>1  No more weeping.
<1Vladimir:>1 Or perhaps it's not the season.
<1Estragon:>1 Looks to me more like a bush.
<1Vladimir:>1  A shrub.
<1Estragon:>1  A bush.
<1Vladimir:>1 A--. What are you insinuating? That we've
  come to the wrong Place?
<1Estragon:>1  He should be here.
<1Vladimir:>1 He didn't say for sure he'd come.
<1Estragon:>1  And if he doesn't come?
<1Vladimir:>1 We'll come back tomorrow.
<1Estragon:>1  And then the day after tomorrow.
<1Vladimir:>1  Possibly.
<1Estragon:>1  And so on.
<1Vladimir:>1 The point is --
<1Estragon>1 :  Until he comes.
<1Vladimir:>1 You're merciless. '1
Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, whom they have
never met. They don't know when he will come or indeed if
he will come at all. All they know is that their life is a
painful, confused waiting. The fact that Beckett's 'parable'
immediately attracted widespread attention and the title
quickly passed into our language indicates the extent to
which it managed to bring into consciousness something we
all feel and find difficult to put in words. For all of us life
is a mysterious waiting for we know not quite what. There-
fore when we talk about waiting on God we are not dealing
with something esoteric that is suitable only for a few
devout souls. We are concerned with an aspect of every
  132
human life. Waiting is a fundamental category of human
experience. It has a religious dimension which the Christian
faith can bring into awareness.
  There are two specific reasons why the idea of waiting
on God is so important. When we first meet someone we
don't usually bound up to them and bombard them with
questions concerning the most intimate details of their life.
We recognize that a certain distance must be kept, not a
lack of warmth, but a basic respect for their otherness. It is
a feature of all sensitive human relationships that a person
should reveal their mind and heart to another only when
they want to do so and in a way that is appropriate to the
level of intimacy that the relationship has reached. Any
attempt to force a disclosure or press for an intimacy
before the other person is ready is a failure in the sensitivity
that is an essential quality in true love. If this applies in our
relationships with other people how much more do such
considerations apply in our approach to God. God is not
just other than us, but utterly other; not just better than
the person we admire most in the world, but of incandes-
cent holiness. As Paul Tillich put it:
  'Is God less than a human person? We always have to
  wait for a human being. Even in the most intimate
  communion among human beings, there is an element
  of <1not>1 having and <1not>1 knowing, and of waiting.
  Therefore, since God is infinitely hidden, free, and
  incalculable, we must wait for Him in the most
  absolute and radical way. He is God for us just in so
  far as we do <1not>1 possess Him.'2
  Before speaking to God in prayer the sensitive mind will
stop and pause, as we might pause before going in to see
someone whom we admire very much; will wait, as we
might wait for someone whom we respect to address us
before we speak to them; will hesitate as a lover will be
hesitant before someone who means everything to them.
For God isn't just a projection of our mind. He is the real
  133
  God, living and true. Therefore he is free over against us.
 Any attempt to induce certain religious feelings, to make
ourselves feel God to be present, is mistaken. As Anthony
  Bloom puts it.
  'We must not come to God in order to go through a
  range of emotions, nor to have any mystical
  experience. We must just come to God in order to
  be in his presence, and, if he chooses to make us
  aware of it, blessed be God, but if he chooses to
  make us experience his real absence, blessed be God
  again, because he is free to come near or not.'3
  The second reason for waiting on God is because all our
ideas of the Divine, however sanctioned by ancient usage,
  are to some extent inadequate and misleading. In our
pictures of God we express our all too human fears and
  frustrations, our subtly distorted desires and wishful
thinking. Consider the most hallowed of all Christian
  approaches to God, the word Father. Leaving aside all
intellectual considerations of the way this particular picture
  is at once helpful and misleading, there are the more impor-
tant emotional factors. When we use the word father, even
  about God, there will be present, consciously or in our
unconscious, our feelings about our own father. Even if we
have a father whom we admire enormously, we know, from
all that analysts tell us, that our feelings will be ambivalent.
There will be negative elements as well as positive ones.
More than this the Father image is a focus for our very
understandable insecurity in a threatening world; a touch-
stone for our feelings about any kind of authority; it will
  arouse our unconscious assumptions about male figures,
and so on. Such considerations do not make the use of the
picture invalid. We just have to realize that whenever we
pray to God we bring into the relationship the picture of a
God created in our own image, a God who reflects our
personal ideals and hang-ups. So long as we are on the
journey, in this life and in any other lives in other worlds
  134
there may be, until that time when we know God as he
already knows us, our images of God tell us as much about
ourselves as they do about him. It is essential therefore to
approach God with a sense that he is more unknown than
known. To quote Anthony Bloom again.
  'We should always approach God knowing that we do
  not know him. We must approach the unsearchable,
  mysterious God who reveals himself as he chooses;
  whenever we come to him, we are before a God we
  do not yet know.'4
  The real God, living and true, cannot be contained in or
possessed by our frail and fallible human conceptions of
him. For this reason drawing closer to him is as much a
matter of discarding what we already know as it is of dis-
covering fresh insights; it is a process of unknowing as well
as knowing more deeply. This was classically stated by St
John of the Cross.
  'In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,
  desire to have pleasure in nothing
  In order to arrive at possessing everything
  desire to possess nothing.
  In order to arrive at knowing everything
  desire to know nothing.'5
By use of these paradoxes he tries to convey that knowing
God better involves purging our ideas about him. One of
the ways we can try to do this is through imageless prayer,
through a silent waiting upon Him who is beyond anything
we can conceive. The lines of St John of the Cross, already
quoted, lie behind some words of T. S. Eliot, which make
the point supremely well.
  'I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope
  for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait
  without love
  135
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is
yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the
waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for
thought.'6
The medium which we use to wait upon God is silence.
The use of silence has already been discussed in chapter
eight, as have other points pertinent to a disciplined form
of prayer. First, some attention will be paid to the posture
of the body. Second, through concentration on a relaxed
controlled breathing for a minute or two, we try to let our
whole physical frame become settled and expectant for
prayer. Third, for those who find it helpful to use their
imagination in prayer, some picture or image will be taken.
Simone Weil, through whom the idea of waiting on God has
come to the fore again in Christian thought, wrote:
  'The attitude which brings about salvation is not like
  any form of activity. The Greek word which
  expresses it is hypomene . . . It is the waiting or atten-
  tive and faithful immobility which lasts indefinitely
  and cannot be shaken. The slave, who waits near the
  door so as to open immediately the master knocks, is
  the best image of it. He must be ready to die of
  hunger and exhaustion rather than change his
  attitude. It must be possible for his companions to
  call him, talk to him, hit him, without his even
  turning his head . . . attention animated by desire is
  the whole foundation of religious practices.'7
This picture of Simone Weil, or a variation of it, can be
used as a basis for prayer using the imagination. You are a
servant waiting in the entrance hall before a large door. The
hall is marble, somewhat cold and bare. Behind the door is
the throne room, filled with warmth and light and glory.
You wait outside the door. You may be summoned or you
may not. In any event it is your duty and your joy to wait.
  136
This is of course only one picture from a great variety that
could be used and many people will prefer to use a scene
from the New Testament in which they can picture them-
selves simply waiting upon Christ. You are on the edge of a
circle that he is teaching. Others are clamouring to touch
him or ask questions. You sit quietly, not wishing to be
noticed, desirous only to look, to attend to the source of
light and life. It must be said that some people find such
exercises artificial and unhelpful. They are certainly not
essential, and in any case they are designed simply to lead
into the heart of the prayer. Fourth, one needs a suitable
phrase from the psalms, or someone else's prayer or a
prayer that one has written oneself. Psalm 62, verse 1 is the
obvious basis for a prayer of waiting upon God. 'My soul
truly waiteth still upon God.' It is better however to turn
this into a direct address to God. For whatever techniques
may or may not be used prayer is always an encounter with
one who is never less than personal. A variation such as 'My
soul truly waiteth still upon Thee O God' may prove suit-
able. This will then be said, perhaps rather slowly, so that
the mind, heart and whole being are drawn to wait upon
the Lord. Then as described earlier it can be repeated at
intervals, interspersed with periods of silence, during which
one continues to wait upon the Lord without words.
Because it is wordless it does not mean it is empty, on the
contrary the heart and mind are attending in love. When the
mind goes dry or wanders then it is brought back into
prayer by saying again 'My soul truly waiteth still upon
thee O God.'
  Two points need to be made to answer entirely proper
questions that arise in the minds of down-to-earth practical
people. First, waiting on God is not a substitute for
activity. What has to be done still has to be done. But so
much of our activity is the wrong activity, a frenetic
attempt to compensate for some inner malaise. The reasons
why we do things are manifold and often don't bear too
much examination. The only activity that contributes to
the building of the Kingdom is that which arises out of and
  137
expresses our life in God. The results of such activity will
survive into eternity, the rest will simply disappear into
nothingness. Like candy floss much of what we do looks
attractive and substantial but when you taste it, there is
almost nothing there. Waiting upon God means that our
activity is more likely to be the right activity, rightly
motivated and pursued in a right frame of mind. To stress
waiting on God is not to advocate quietism. It is to insist
that what we do is only of use if it arises out of a life
rooted and grounded in Christ.
  Second, praying like this is not of itself time-consuming.
When people think of prayer as anything other than
bringing our immediate needs and thanks to God they tend
to think of the time needed for this, of people in monaste-
ries or convents with a set period for being with God built
into the rhythm of the daily routine. But throughout this
book the person borne in mind is someone who has to get
up early for work, whose morning routine is a scramble to
get children off to school and himself/herself to the train or
bus. Similarly at the end of the day there always seem a
million and one things that need doing. But in any day,
however busy, there are always moments of enforced
waiting. These moments of waiting for a bus or train,
waiting in a queue to be served or pay, for someone to
answer at the other end of a telephone, can be turned into
a waiting upon God. It is unlikely that we will actually do
this unless some time in the week is deliberately set aside
for waiting upon God. It's always a shame if a day has gone
by without this being done and we need constantly to
remind ourselves that God is the supreme reality with
whom there is endless fulfilment and without whom our
life quickly crumbles to dust. In these periods -- they need
not be long; it's amazing what a change in outlook can take
place in even two minutes -- we learn to wait upon God. It
then becomes more likely that we will be able to turn the
moments when we are forced to wait into a waiting upon
the Lord. Moments which would otherwise be wasted
champing impatiently, the mind filled with anxieties or
  138
fantasies, become instead nourishing for the next stage of
the day.
  When we wait we usually want the waiting to be over as
soon as possible. We think of it as something which is
essentially useless and which we would like to eliminate
altogether or at least cut down to a minimum. It is natural
to think that waiting plays the same role in the Christian
life. We wait for the time when we will come 'to those
unspeakable joys which thou hast prepared for them that
unfeignedly love thee.'8  But waiting, on the Christian view,
is not just this; it is not simply a prelude to something
better. Waiting is important in itself. This is well expressed
in a poem by R. S. Thomas called simply <1Kneeling.>1
  'Moments of great calm
  Kneeling before an altar
  of wood in a stone church
  In summer, waiting for the God
  To speak: the air a staircase
  For silence; the sun's light
  Ringing me, as though I acted
  A great role. And the audience
  Still; all that close throng
  Of spirits waiting, as I,
  For the message.
  Prompt me, God;
  But not yet. When I speak,
  Though it be you who speak
  Through me, something is lost,
  The meaning is in the waiting.'9
How can this be? How is it that 'something is lost' even
though it is God himself who speaks through us? This is
partly so for reasons already indicated. When we pray we
bring our own fallible and warped images into the relation-
ship. Even though it is God who speaks, because he has to
speak through us some human dross gets mixed up with the
  139
divine gold. God's voice reaches us through the filter of our
hates and fears, desires and fantasies. The meaning is in the
waiting in the sense that when waiting we are not projecting
on God what we most want or most fear. We are ready for
him to make himself known to us in his own terms. The
other reason is that in waiting on God, and in that alone,
we learn to draw our life from him. When we think we
know what God is saying to us or when we think we know
what God wants to do through us, it is easy to slip into the
way of believing it is because of some merit of ours that
this is so or that we are capable of doing everything on our
own. But true thinking, willing and acting comes from a
heart hid with Christ in God. Waiting upon him is the way
we live out this truth. This is why some people, whose lives
are frustrated in some major way, have on occasion with
great courage and love, managed to turn their enforced
inactivity into a kind of prayer. Milton gave classical
expression to this fact in his poem <1On His Blindness.>1
  'When I consider how my light is spent,
  Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
  And that one talent which in death to hide
  Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
  To serve therewith my Maker, and present
  My true account, lest he returning chide,
  "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
  I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
  That murmur, soon replies; "God doth not need
  Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
  is Kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
  And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
  They also serve who only stand and wait.'
Wrestling with his blindness Milton came to wait upon God
and to learn that waiting upon God is the highest form of
wisdom. People like Milton, whom disability has forced to
draw almost moment by moment on God for strength to go
  140
on, are the pillars upon which the world stands. Circum-
stances have forced them to live out the truth that the rest
of us, with blithe self-confidence, ignore for much of the
time; that it is from God that 'all holy desires, all good
counsels and all just works do proceed'.10
  Waiting is not an optional extra to the life of prayer; it
is its heart. As Tillich said, 'Waiting for God is not merely
a part of our relation to God, but rather the condition of
that relation as a whole. We have God through <1not>1 having
Him.'11  But this waiting is in no way a negative thing. As
Tillich continues:
  'If we wait in hope and patience, the power of that
  for which we wait is already effective within us. He
  who waits in an ultimate sense is not far from that for
  which he waits. He who waits in absolute seriousness
  is already grasped by that for which he waits. He who
  waits in patience has already received the power of
  that for which he waits. . . We are stronger when we
  wait than when we possess.'12
  Waiting upon God, which is at the heart of the Christian
life, can be deepened through proper use of silence and
some such phrase as 'My soul truly waiteth still upon Thee
O God', as already indicated. This disciplined use of a few
minutes' silence can transform the frustrating, potentially
wasted moments of waiting that every day contains, into
moments that nourish all we do.
They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run,
and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.
<1Isaiah>1 40, <131>1
  141
    NOTES
I.Samuel  Beckett,  <1Waiting for  Godot,>1  Faber  and  Faber,  1975,
p.13/14.
2.Paul Tillich, <1The Shaking of the Foundations,>1 SCM 1957,
p.150.
3.Anthony Bloom, <1Living Prayer,>1 p.102/3.
4.Ibid. p.104.
5.St John of the Cross, <1The Dark Night of the Soul.>1
6.T. S. Eliot, <1East Coker,>1 lines 123-127.
7.Simone Weil, <1Waiting on God,>1 Fontana, 1959, p.149/50.
  8.Collect for All Saints Day, <1Book of Common Prayer.>1
9.R.S. Thomas, <uNot that he Brought Flowers, Hart Davis,>u 1968,p.32.
10. From the second collect at Evening Prayer in <1The Book of>1
<1Common Prayer.>1
11.The Shaking of the Foundations,>1 p.151.
I2.Ibid.