Sanctae Scripturae

In the arid palm of August, this region is not as hot as Texas but it is hot enough to drive me inside for most of the day. I bookend the hours on days like this with a walk and a long sitting/meditating/praying/reading session before the sun gets too high in the sky and then again after it drops behind the western ridge. The stretch in between is taken up with whatever piddling and puttering can be accomplished inside, in the cool dark cathedral of home.

This morning, I sat out in the piney shade of the front yard, breviary on my knees, and with the stiff breeze it was almost cool enough to supplement the prayer-book with a blanket. My tattered, rangy old barn cat wandered around the flower beds, nibbling shoots of dewy grass for his morning tonic.

Part of my Lectio Divina was this, from Ecclesiasticus 11:22 (DRV):

Abide not in the works of sinners, but trust in God, and stay in thy place.

The crape myrtle is finally blooming, the tiny flowers the color of red velvet cake, the unopened buds begging to be squeeze-popped as my tiny fingers did so long ago, and this takes my mind back to battles with my sister, throwing nandina berries at each other, and now she is like unto me, and we are throw-less and the red berries are almost all gone, because successive hard winters take a toll on certain plants.

Prayer is a mystery, a mystery in which I imperfectly believe. The act comforts me, and it has an inexpressible effect on me. The great prayers of the Church have my affection; they are works of beauty and profundity, and after saying them over and over again, I still feel  the warmth of their power, and when I speak these ancient prayers I feel my heart and my spirit rise and glide on them like eagles on thermals, effortless and yet purposeful.

But extemporaneous prayers have become more difficult for me with the passage of years. I think this is perhaps one of the many negative carry-overs from my long years as a Protestant. The prayers I heard in those years in my wilderness-wandering were all of the things the written prayers of the Church are not. Everyone from pastors to Sunday School teachers to laymen prayed wordy, predicable prayers that always, always, always left me with the clear impression of performances, improvised speeches designed to dazzle other people in the room while ostensibly being addressed to Almighty God. And in my years teaching and sometimes preaching, I prayed many prayers that were just this sort of thing. Am I projecting on others my own flaws? Perhaps — I probably do so frequently. But a white liar can always spot another white liar, and the practiced cadence of so many prayers gives me the willies, because I know what the pray-er is doing.

And so when I pray aloud extemporaneously these days, I try to focus on not praying with the same knowing slant I once used. But then I am distracted by what I’m trying not to do, and the prayer becomes artifice of a different shade, and the whole things seems to spring leaks and finally collapse in on itself.

This is why for some time now I have been writing my prayers.

This is not to say that I write them in the sense that I compose them and then read them to Christ or to my Heavenly Father. To do this would simply be to add an extra step to the “performance” approach. No, what I do is this: I kneel before the crucifix hanging above my writing desk, make the sign of the cross, then arise and sit in the chair. I take up my pencil and open my notebook and write the words as they flow from me. This helps me pray, and it is a pure and almost violent act, the way shadowboxing or kata are violent acts with both sharp focus and a calm inner purpose. This is not “automatic” writing, nor is it stream-of-consciousness scribbling. When I am bent forward over my Walmart composition book, and scratching out the words in pencil, my complaints and pleas and intercessions and petitions and imprecations go forth in taut, sinewy sentences. It is a sort of divine communication, if I may. And the act of writing my prayers as they are created within me and born in pencil strokes on serviceable paper serves the latent purpose of becoming a record, or journal, if you will, but this isn’t primary. The notebook is no mere record. The book itself becomes prayer.

The act of writing my prayers as they shine from me slows me down and makes my intent truer, cleaner, just as lectio divina slows down the eyes and bids the soul tarry in the cool garden of God, under His gaze, having caught His affectionate attention.

And this is good and proper. He wrote letters for me — I write letters back to Him. Wielding my pencil becomes a holy act. It is divine writing.

~ S.K. Orr