Process and Prayer and a 14th Century Mystic

For the past two blogs I’ve been writing about the alterations and meditations I’ve added to the Lord’s Prayer, and a little bit about my experience with saying this prayer twice a week.  At the conclusion of part 2 I invited you to pray some sort of prayer, too.  And maybe you’re thinking, “yeah, that sounds nice an all, but…I’m busy, I don’t believe in God and prayer doesn’t work; I do believe in God but God likes the standard Lord’s Prayer better …”   I can think of at least one hundred reasons why you shouldn’t pray this (or any other) prayer. 

But the seminary student in me is in the midst of reading St. Julian of Norwich and now thinks that none of those reasons is as compelling as the possibility that prayer might work.  The doctor in me does a risk-benefit analysis and determines that the risk is low and the potential benefit is high, so why not try it?  At the very least you’ll have 5-15 minutes of quiet time; you may have lower blood pressure as a result.

St. Julian was a 14^th century mystic whose reports of her visions of God and Jesus would have gotten her burned at the stake had anyone bothered to read them.  .  For example, she asked God specifically to show her sin and damnation in order to validate the church teachings and she saw neither.  She says of sin, “I saw not sin; for I believe it has no manner of essence nor any portion of being, nor can it be known except by the pain that is caused by it”  and of punishment  “I saw no wrath except on man’s part, and that He forgives in us.”

But what she said about prayer totally blew my mind, especially since I read it after I started my prayer practice.  God told Julian “I am the ground of thy praying—first it is my will that though have something, and next I make thee to want it, and afterward I cause thee to pray for it.”  And that implies that if I’m praying for the hungry to be fed, and all those other things, it’s because God is leading me to want it because God wants it.  Pause to reflect on that for a moment.  That means God wants us to be free, but we’re keeping ourselves down.  Ok, so if you don’t believe in God maybe this means nothing other than “Shelley needs to be medicated.”  So for the potential atheists in the crowd, consider replacing the word “God” with one of the following: The Consciousness of the Universe, The Spirit of Life, Gaia, The Earth, The Matrix, whatever works 

If God wants us to have it, why can’t God just make it happen for us?  Well, God doesn’t work like that.  Y’know how people are always saying you create your own reality?  And it’s all in your vibrations?  Well maybe there’s something to that, because God also told Julian that “What He intends is this: that we understand that He does everything, and that we pray for it. For the one is not enough, for if we pray and do not understand that He does it, it makes us sad and doubtful.”  Because of the vibrational nature of the universe if you’re sad and doubtful you can’t get yourself in vibrational alignment with the solutions to all of these problems, so they can’t show up!

And it gets even better, because when you do pray, then you are likely to see changes occur because, as Julian wrote, “by prayer comes to agree with God.”  So what that suggests to me is the possibility that God wants social justice, and God wants us to live more gently on the earth, and the other things I pray for in my daily prayer.  But my soul, and the souls of billions of other people are in disagreement with that prayer, so we can’t receive that gift.  I’m not saying that if we all pray for fifteen minutes right now everything will magically get better. But maybe if enough of us pray for fifteen minutes a day for more loving solutions to the world’s issues they will emerge over time.

And speaking of time, what if what we’re praying for doesn’t show up right away?  St. Julian says that in that case, “either we are to await a better time, or more grace, or a better gift.” So if it doesn't work right away be patient.

Maybe St. Julian’s visions were the result of a horrible delirium.  But I like to think that the Universe is conscious, and that consciousness is God.  And God wants us to live peacefully on the Earth, and we can participate in bringing it about by spending fifteen minutes a day agreeing with God’s good ideas.