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IN EXILE

FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

Do we ever really understand or master prayer? Yes and no. When we try to pray, sometimes we walk on water and sometimes we sink like a stone. Sometimes we have a deep sense of God's reality and sometimes we can't even imagine that God exists.

Sometimes we have deep feelings about God's goodness and love and sometimes we feel only boredom and distraction. Sometimes our eyes fill with tears and sometimes they wander furtively to our wrist-watches to see how much time we still need to spend in prayer. Sometimes we would like to stay in our prayer place forever and sometimes we wonder why we even showed up.

Prayer has a huge ebb and flow.

I remember an incident, years back, where a man came to me for spiritual direction. He had been involved for several years in a charismatic prayer-group and had experienced there powerful religious emotions. But now, to his surprise, those emotions had disappeared. When he tried to pray, he experienced mostly dryness and boredom. He felt that there was something wrong because his fiery emotions had disappeared.

Here's how he expressed it: "Father, you've seen my Bible, seen how most every line is highlighted with a bright colour because the text spoke so deeply to me. Well, right now, I feel like pitching my Bible through a window because none of that means anything to me anymore. What's wrong with me?"

EVEN THE SAINTS

The quick answer could have been: "God is wrong with you." I pointed him towards the experience of Teresa of Avila who, after a season of deep fervour in prayer, experienced 18 years of boredom and dryness.

Today, I would have him read the journals of Mother Teresa who, like Teresa of Avila, after some initial fervour in prayer, experienced 60 years of dryness.

We nurse a naïve fantasy both about what constitutes prayer and about how we might sustain ourselves in it. What often lies at the centre of this misguided notion is the belief that prayer is always meant to be full of fervour, interesting, warm, carrying spiritual insight and carrying the sense that we are actually praying.

Coupled with this notion is the equally misguided notion that the way to sustain feeling and fervour in prayer is either through constant novelty and variety or through dogged concentration. Classical writers in spirituality assure us that, while this is often true during the early stages of our prayer lives, it becomes less and less true the deeper we advance in prayer and spirituality.

Much to the relief and consolation of anyone who has tried to sustain a prayer life over a long period of time, the great mystics say that once we are beyond the early, honeymoon stage of prayer, the greatest obstacle to sustaining a life of prayer is simple boredom and the sense that nothing meaningful is happening.

That doesn't mean that we are regressing in prayer. It often means the opposite.

A PROFFERED CANOPY

Here's a canopy under which to pray even as we struggle with boredom and the sense that nothing meaningful is happening: Imagine you have an aged mother who is confined to a retirement home. You're the dutiful daughter or son and, every night after work, for one hour, you stop and spend time with her, helping her with her evening meal, sharing the events of the day and simply being with her as her daughter or son.

I doubt that, save for a rare occasion, you will have many deeply emotive or even interesting conversations with her. On the surface, your visits will seem mostly routine, dry and dutiful. Most days you will be talking about trivial things and you will be sneaking the occasional glance at the clock to see when your hour with her will be over.

However, if you persevere in these regular visits with her, month after month, year after year, among everyone in the whole world you will grow to know your mother the most deeply and she will grow to you know you most deeply. As the mystics affirm, at a certain deep level of relationship the real connection between us takes place below the surface of our conversations. We begin to know each other through simple presence.

You can recognize this in its opposite: Notice how your mother relates to your siblings who visit her only very occasionally. During those rare, occasional visits there will be emotions, tears and conversations beyond the weather and the trivia of everyday life. That's because your mother sees these others so rarely.

Prayer is the same. If we pray only occasionally, we might well experience some pretty deep emotions. However, if we pray faithfully every day, year in and year out, we can expect little excitement, lots of boredom, regular temptations to look at the clock during prayer, . . . but a deep, growing bond with our God.

(Website: www.ronrolheiser.com)