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March 1st, St David’s Day – Contemplation and Intercession – Waves of Prayer
I have been really encouraged by the responses to my first blog. I am delighted to share this second web log on the feast day of the patron saint of Wales!
I know I need to pray more! Much, much more. Why am I waking up on occasion at 2.30am or 3.30am or 4.00am? It could be that I’m doing too much and not relaxing enough. It could be that I have two or three tasks of real significance that require concentrated energy and attention. All these reasons may, at one time or another, be true. But, just a few nights ago, I knew a different prompting. I was being called to pray. To pray in a fuller and profounder and more comprehensive way than I had ever prayed, other than at those times when a dire emergency or crisis gave rise to an intensity of prayer – and then it was more likely to be heartfelt petition (prayer asking for peace, healing, forgiveness or whatever, for oneself) or a particular pleading for a close family member. This was a call, perhaps a vocation unfolding, to intercessory prayer coming from the heart of contemplative prayer. This was the summons to lift into God’s presence those in danger, those in distress, areas and people buffeted by the brutalities of political adversity, natural disaster or personal malice.
One strong thread of meaning made itself real to me in those hours of attention to the practice of prayer: it was the metaphor of waves of prayer. Jill and I love the sea, and the particular liminality of the seashore. The ocean is massive, outrageous, strong and evocative of many emotions, aspirations, vulnerabilities and delights. I saw a stormy sea, wind buffeting in towards the land, waves high and green-white, dramatic and beautiful. What I saw were necessary waves of prayer. These waves were an emergence from the heart of the divine to the outer reaches of human culture and of the fragile planet. The ocean is the energy, the ontology, the being of God; the wind is Spirit, blowing where it wills; the waves are the sometimes tiny, sometimes mighty expressions of that energy of love, peace and healing that emanates from God. The challenge in this picture is that I, and perhaps you too, are called into the midst of this sea of prayer, into its dynamism, into the Christ energy of love.
And so, from 2.30am onwards, I spent some time responding, as best I could, to this invitation to intercession. I knew that I was being drawn out from my comfort zone into the further self-emptying of the prayer of love. I knew in the depths of me, with a fresh urgency, that within the parameters and tracery of contemplative prayer there lies an essential, intercessory dimension, which has a momentum for expression. The wordless resting in the presence of God opens into love outpoured. Waves and waves of prayer are vitally necessary now in a topsy-turvy and fractured world.
I share with you two small examples of a prayers of intercession forged from a time of interiority and reflection. Perhaps you might use them sometimes. I wrote the first one on the day when London stopped at noon in silence to remember those killed and affected a week before in the 7/7 bombings. I was at St Ethelburga’s on Bishopsgate, in the heart of London’s financial district. The church bell tolled and thousands upon thousands of office workers and shoppers stood still on the street; even the traffic paused for two minutes. The prayer emerged from a place of personal and corporate stillness, tears and a deep longing for God’s protection and shalom:
Angels of the cities,
angels of the coasts,
angels of the universe,
O you heavenly hosts;
Stand guard over us,
stand guard over us,
stand guard o’er the ones we love,
guide us into Light.
The second prayer again was fashioned in the dark time “long before dawn”. Jesus often withdrew to pray alone at such times. The biblical and monastic tradition from which we draw so much gives witness that this late/early time and texture is sensitive to prayer:
O energy of grace, O fire of light
let my heart express its longing and its love
for you who are within and without
for the immersion in your essence and your vibrancy
for your flow in the very marrow of my soul
and in the music of my members and molecules.
O Christ, energy of love,
pilot me, indwell me, transfigure me
enlighten me, release me into your being.
Much love,
Philip
