A Litany for Thanksgiving

Kirk and I attended a Thanksgiving Eve eucharist service at our new little episcopal parish last night, and as part of the service, we prayed the following litany for Thanksgiving. I thought it would be meaningful to share it here with you, in case you’d like to take a moment to also voice these prayers of thanks to God today.

Let us give thanks to God our Father for all his gifts so freely bestowed upon us.

For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea,

We thank you, Lord.

For all that is gracious in the lives of men and women, revealing the image of Christ,

We thank you, Lord.  

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends,

We thank you, Lord.

For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve,

We thank you, Lord.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play,

We thank you, Lord.

For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity,

We thank you, Lord.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice,

We thank you, Lord.

For the communion of the saints, in all times and places,

We thank you, Lord.

Above all, we give you thanks for the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord;

To him be praise and glory, with you, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen. 

I am thankful for many gifts from God in my life, one of which is this space here at Still Forming and the people who gather here to reflect and grow and pray. 

For what are you giving thanks today? 

Becoming a God-Listener

Since April, I’ve been privileged to work alongside a team of people developing an online resource that offers hope to people who need a glimpse of God’s light in difficult places. It’s been such a meaningful and gratifying project to be a part of, and I’ve learned and grown so much through the experience. 

The project will wrap up in a few short weeks, and so I find myself asking one particular question with increasing regularity these days: What’s next? 

I’ve lived a rather unconventional life the last several years.

I left a full-time career in publishing in 2007 to pursue a path of contribution in the lives of people seeking their way. This led me, unexpectedly, to a ministry of spiritual direction and writing about the spiritual life and life of the heart. I have loved every moment of this journey and am so thankful for the way God has directed my steps along this path. 

But it has not been easy. 

It has required an immense amount of faith.

A lot of this journey has included that question: What’s next? Sometimes the work God has given me to do as I’ve trod this path of learning and growth has been freelance writing and editing; other times he’s given me special projects, like the one I’m currently finishing. 

God has been faithful, but each stepping stone has asked — and still asks — for my faith to believe it will emerge from the water at just the right time for me to step upon it. 

I find myself in that place of faith-testing yet again these days. 

Last week, I took a step forward to pursue a potential opportunity beyond the bounds of this current project, and I learned that potential opportunity wasn’t going to work out after all. I was disappointed. And it landed me back at that question yet again: What’s next? 

I texted my spiritual director, Elaine, about the lost opportunity and my disappointment that day. She knew I’d been exploring the possibility, and she had prayed with me recently about it. When I told her that I hoped God had something else in store and that I keep asking him to show me where to go, she responded:

You’re a good God listener. 

Her response encouraged me. It reminded me of the ways I’ve listened and heard and followed God’s lead before.

And then, over the weekend, I stumbled on the following prayer in 1 Kings from King Solomon. When he assumed the throne of Israel after his father, David, had died, God asked Solomon in a dream what he wanted as he began to rule the kingdom. Solomon responds: 

Give me a God-listening heart so I can lead your people well, discerning the difference between good and evil.

— 1 Kings 3:9

That prayer from Solomon has stuck with me the last few days. Give me a God-listening heart. It is my intent to lean deeper and deeper into that prayer. I want to follow the ways God wants me to go in this life of faith I lead. 

So here’s to faith. And to God-listening in the midst of it. 

The Role of Silence

Yesterday I asked what it’s like for you to experience silence. Today I want to share with you some words about silence that I read recently and hear your perspective on them: 

Some have said silence is the first language of God. It is in silence that we grow, we heal, and we open to God. 

I’m curious: what do you think of these statements? 

When I read these statements, I can’t help but consider each statement in its own right.

First, there’s the statement that silence is the first language of God. It makes me think of how God spoke the world into being — that he used words to do so. When God speaks, he creates. So before creation, there was just God, communing with God’s self.

It makes me wonder: does the Trinity require words to commune with itself?

Perhaps there is simply an all-perfect knowing that God has with God’s self that doesn’t require words at all.

And then there’s the statement that it is in silence that we grow, heal, and open to God. What do you think about this? 

I know that, for me, it is in silence that I’m able to get in touch with what is most true inside of me. When the noise of the outside world and the noise of my own internal chatter have quieted down, I can get in tune with what is true and then offer that to God. 

But I also know that conversation brings growth and healing, too.

Prayer can certainly look like a silent opening to God without the use of any words, but it can also be a conversation. Even in normal life, in conversations with soul friends, I experience growth and healing not just in a silent sitting together, but also through our conversations. 

Or perhaps the growth and healing of those conversations actually happens in the after-moments — the moments of taking in what was spoken about, of letting it sink in deep. 

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.

What do you think of this notion of silence being the first language of God? What is your response to the idea that silence is the place we grow, heal, and open to God?

He Completely Understands You

There’s this meditation prayer that Kirk’s spiritual director uses whenever they meet for a session, and Kirk often opens our prayer times together at home with it. It goes like this: 

Be still and know that I am God.

(pause)

Be still and know that I am.

(pause)

Be still and know.

(pause)

Be still.

(pause)

Be.

Last night, before we prayed together over the week, Kirk began our time together with this prayer. And as I took in that very first line, Be still and know that I am God, I couldn’t help but settle into the relief of who God is. 

God completely understands everything about us.

There’s no need for debriefing or creating context because he has always been there. He has seen every moment and knows every thought and feeling. He knows the reasons certain things worry us or distract us or confuse us. He knows the certain things that excite us or put us over the moon. 

There’s such relief in that, isn’t there? 

What is it like for you to experience relationship with a God who completely understands and already knows? 

What Prayer of the Heart Looks Like

Hi, friends.

I want to begin by acknowledging the quiet in this space recently. I’ve been committed to writing in this space five days a week for you, and I still expect to maintain that rhythm here for the foreseeable future. But over these last couple weeks, life has caught up with me, and I’ve had to occasionally acknowledge the limits of my humanity once again. 

One thing is true: I’ve missed being present in this space each morning of the week with you.

This morning, though, I had the chance to sit quietly at my desk for the first time in several days. As I sat there, I could hear my mind buzzing like a lawn mower and whirling things around inside like a big and powerful leaf blower. But I sat quietly with all that internal mind-noise, glasses off and eyes closed, and let my mind descend into my heart. 

This is what prayer of the heart looks like for me. 

My mind, with all its buzzing and snapping, floated down into my heart and slowly settled. There, I saw my heart fold open, a bit like a water lily resting on a lily pad, opening to the honest truth of myself and opening to the presence of God with me. 

There is such a difference between the experience of the whirring and snapping of my mind and the experience of this prayer of the heart. I noticed that difference this morning.

When my mind is buzzing and plowing around, it’s like I’m talking to myself, trying to remember everything I need to do or dimly aware of the feelings surrounding me. I talk to myself about those feelings in my mind, telling myself: I feel sad. I’m overwhelmed. I’m scared. 

But in prayer of the heart, I talk to someone — God, specifically. 

When I open my heart like a water lily, laying my heart bare before God, and tell him what I think and feel, it’s an experience of relationship.

I feel sad. I’m overwhelmed. I’m scared.

It’s quite different to tell someone, with such vulnerability, what you are feeling, isn’t it?

What is it like for you to express the truth of yourself to another person? How is that different than expressing it just to yourself?

Learning Your Heart: Practicing Prayer of the Heart

One of the richest ways that I’ve learned to connect to the truth of my heart over the last several years is through what Henri Nouwen calls prayer of the heart. 

In his book The Way of the Heart (which I highly recommend — it’s a simple yet tremendous book), Nouwen distinguishes between prayer of the mind and prayer of the heart.

Prayer of the mind, he says, is what happens when we merely talk to God or think about God. Both of these activities are done from a place of detachment. We talk to God about things on our mind or things we’re trying to work out. This becomes a pseudo-form of prayer because we are, in effect, merely talking to ourselves. And thinking about God creates no engagement with God at all. What we think is prayer is more intellectual exercise or the creation of theological propositions. Who we are at our core has not shown up at all.

Prayer of the heart, however, is a different experience of prayer altogether. 

Prayer of the heart happens when the truth of who we are encounters the truth of who God is. 

How does that happen?

Nouwen gives us a helpful mental image of what this looks like. He quotes one of the desert fathers, who said:

“To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seing, within you.”

— The Way of the Heart, p. 73

What a great and helpful image this offers us! When I practice prayer of the heart, then, I actually imagine my mind descending through my body and landing every so slowly in the place of my heart.

My mind is often a jumbled, monkey-mind mix of thoughts and anxieties and projections and fears and to-do lists and questions, all colliding together and struggling to find any semblance of resolution or rest. But when my mind and heart begin to dwell together, the reality of who I am, in all my fullness, is present. The truth of myself is laid bare. I become aware of who I am and what is truly there.

And there, I find God standing before me, encountering this fullness of the truth of myself.

He sees me, and I see him. Here, we share a conversation.

We begin to engage in relationship.

Can you take a few moments and practice this prayer of the heart? Imagine your mind — everything within it — descending through your body and coming to rest in the place of your heart. Lay bare the truth of who you are in that moment. Then imagine the Lord God before you in that place. Allow him to see the truth of yourself, and allow yourself to look openly back upon him. What is this experience like for you?

What Is Your Intimate Prayer?

This morning I spent some time listening to one of my favorite songs by David Crowder, called “All I Can Say.” It’s a very intimate song, very sparse and offered like a deep and difficult prayer.

Here is a simple video of the song so you can hear it, plus some of the words listed below: 

Approximate run time: 4 minutes, 30 seconds

Click here if you’re unable to see the video.

Lord, I’m tired,

So tired of walking.

And, Lord, I’m so alone.

Lord, the dark is creeping in,

It’s creeping up to swallow me.

I think I’ll stop and rest here a while.

This is all that I can say right now.

This is all that I can give.

This is all that I can say right now.

This is all that I can give —

That’s my everything.

Oh, did you see me crying?

Oh, and did you hear me call your name?

Wasn’t it you I gave my heart to?

I wish you’d remember where you set it down.

This is all that I can say right now —

I know it’s not much.

But this is all that I can give —

That’s my everything.

Do those words not arrest you? Are they not the desperate, weary plea of someone who has come to the end of himself? 

I love the way these words demonstrate an intimate reality between this person and their God. He is not afraid to tell the truth. In fact, he seems completely unable to avoid the truth that is inside him. He is not afraid to cry out, be real, and ask the hard questions before God. He’s not afraid to tell God he’s tired and alone. 

Do you ever speak such intimate prayers before God? What might be the intimate prayer of your heart before God right now?

Sitting on a Bench With Jesus

Today, I invite you into an imaginative prayer exercise. I encourage you to read each paragraph slowly, taking in each question, one at a time, and considering your response before moving on.

Imagine yourself sitting on a bench with Jesus right now. Where is the bench? What kind of material is it made out of? What is in the environment surrounding you on that bench? 

Now consider yourself on that bench with him. What are you wearing? How are you sitting? What are you doing with your hands? Do you have a sense of any feelings at work in you as you are aware of sitting next to Jesus on the bench? 

Now look at Jesus on that bench. What does his face look like? What is he wearing? How is his posture as he sits there with you?

Look closely at his eyes, then. What are they like? What do they say? 

As you sit on this bench with Jesus, what do you say? How does he respond?

Where Do You Talk With Jesus?

When I was a little girl, I had a very strong sense of Jesus being with me everywhere. His presence seemed very close, whether I was at home or at school or at church.

I don’t recall talking to Jesus directly very often at this young age, but I thought about him a lot and always sensed him near. I knew that I loved him very much. 

As I grew into my teen years, though, that awareness and joy faded. In its place were far-off images of what I imagined God the Father to look like: an old gentleman with silvery-white hair, seated on a huge throne, watching over the world he created.

I prayed to this Father God often in my prayer journals. Most of the time, these were prayers of contrition and sadness and desperation. I tried so hard to please this God up in the sky, and I hoped very much to find happiness and peace by serving him the best ways I knew how.

But then in my young adult years, the image of Jesus returned — and with it, a greater practice of talking directly with him.

The first time this happened, I was sitting in a small group and was invited by the group leader to do a prayer meditation exercise.

He invited all of us to close our eyes and imagine ourselves in a safe place. I imagined myself near a walking trail in the mountains where my family used to go camping from time to time. A small creek flowed nearby where I would hunt for fool’s gold with my siblings and cousins, and there was a tree with a bench underneath it right off the trail.

The group leader invited us to imagine Jesus in that scene with us. I could see myself sitting on the bench under the tree and Jesus standing right in front of me. 

Next we were invited to talk with Jesus about anything we wanted. At the time, I was struggling through a great deal of anxiety and perfectionism issues in my personal and professional life, so I started to talk with him about those things. 

As I poured out my heart to Jesus, he came and sat next to me on the bench. He just listened and took it all in, as though he would sit and listen forever. 

That was a deeply transforming prayer experience for me, and it changed forever the way I relate to my God.

I knew him to be a God that listens, that cares, and that offers me his presence. I also learned how to listen and hear him speak to me by practicing prayer in this way over the years.

In this approach to prayer, I have imagined myself talking with Jesus in many different kinds of places. Sometimes we have walked on the beach. Other times we simply sit together in my home on the couch. More recently, we’ve been walking and talking in the woods. 

Do you ever practice talking with Jesus this way? If so, where do you talk with Jesus? What are those experiences of prayer like for you?

How Do You Approach Jesus?

I’ve been listening to a podcast before bed every night called Pray as You Go. (I highly recommend it.) Each day, there’s a new recording with a bit of sacred music, a Scripture reading, and an opportunity for reflection and prayer on the Scripture passage. Each recording lasts about 10-13 minutes, and I find it to be a centering and grace-filled way to end each day. 

Last night, the Scripture reading was from Matthew 15. It was a story about a woman who comes calling after Jesus in a crowd to heal her daughter, who is afflicted by a demonic spirit. In the story, Jesus doesn’t respond to her at first, and his disciples ask Jesus to tell her to go away because they think she’s quite disruptive. But she persists and keeps asking Jesus to help her. At one point she lands on her knees and begs him. But still he resists. Yet even when he persists in resisting, she persists in asking … until finally he answers her plea.

I’ll be honest and say that upon first hearing this passage on the podcast last night, all I could think about was how much it bothered me that Jesus resisted her. It distracted me that he did this, especially because I know Jesus to be fully accessible to anyone who wants to know him. 

But instead of asking me to reflect on my initial response, the reader of the passage on the podcast asked a different question: 

Put yourself in the crowd. What do you hear? 

I started thinking about all the other voices in the crowd. How many of them judged this woman for crying out over and over again to Jesus to get his attention? How annoyed were they? What did they say as they whispered among themselves about her? How many verbally cut her down? 

And then I noticed: I would do the same.

In fact, I was doing the same thing. It bothered me that she would come so boldly in a crowd to receive something from Jesus — the one person in that mass of people that everyone else wanted to touch and hear and see, too. What made her so special that she would be the one to make the most noise and get the most attention?

Then the reader asked a second question: 

What do you see? 

I saw a woman bold enough to throw herself at Jesus’s feet. I saw someone who didn’t care about her reputation because she knew exactly what she wanted and cared more about getting it than getting anything else. I saw her tears, her distress, and her despair at her daughter’s pain. I saw her great hope in Jesus to heal. Hope shone through her eyes, even as tears flowed from them. 

Then in the passage, we see a even stranger exchange between the woman and Jesus. He calls her a dog! (The reader notes this was a word the Jews commonly used for non-Jews at the time.) And yet the woman is able to use that name “to her advantage,” says the reader. She can hold her own with Jesus. She can match his wits. 

And that makes all the difference. Jesus gives her what she wants.

I think Jesus knew she had great faith. There are many passages in the Gospels that speak of Jesus’s ability to know the hearts of those standing before him. Her heart was not unknown to him, even as he resisted her in the crowd. 

And yet he waited. He walked on. He let her throw herself in front of him. He resisted her with cultural norms. And then, eventually, he awarded her for her faith.

I found myself wondering: would I have that kind of faith? How boldly do I approach Jesus?

This whole experience made me think of you. It made me want to ask you these same questions: 

How do you approach Jesus? Are you bold? Shy? Skittish? Demanding? Do you ask him anything at all? Do you expect him to respond? What would it be like for you to demonstrate the kind of faith this woman did?

What Would You Say to God?

Lately, we’ve been talking about prayer:

… how prayer can mean finding a few quiet moments to sit before God in simplicity and honesty.

… how our concept of God evolves and shifts and yet always connects to the ways we pray.

Today, I want to invite you to consider your side of the conversation in prayer. Specifically:

What would you say to God today?

Before you answer this question, I want to encourage you to listen — really listen — to what your heart’s voice has to say.

Did you know your heart has a voice? It does.

It is the part of your being that makes up who you really are. It lives at the very center of your being, and it speaks the truth of what you believe. It’s where your true identity and your core beliefs commingle and dwell together. It is what God sees when looking upon you, and it is where God wants to meet you in relationship.

The regular pace of life doesn’t create a hospitable environment for the heart to speak. Life keeps us busy, and distractions abound, and the sheer noise of the world becomes so utterly loud. 

The heart must be invited to speak in order to be heard. It requires that we take the time to listen. To care. To lean in and really hear.

So today, for a moment, come apart from the noise and distractions.

Take a moment. Still yourself.  

When you become very quiet and listen to the truest voice pulsing deep at the center of your being … what does it have to say? And can you speak those words directly to God?

Sitting Quietly in Prayer

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

— Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:6, The Message

The last few times I have turned to the book of Matthew in my devotional times, I’ve gotten stuck at this one verse. I read it over and over and marvel at its gentle simplicity. Jesus invites us to center ourselves into a silence of prayer and then to just be there before God “as simply and honestly as [we] can manage.” 

Just be before God.

Have you ever prayed that way before? What is it like for you to come before God that way? Is it hard? Is it a relief? 

If you’ve never tried this as a form of prayer before, what is it like for you to consider being this way with God? Is it scary? Is it difficult? Does it intrigue you?

Today, I want to encourage you to try this.

Take five minutes apart from your normal routine and sit quietly in a place uncluttered by any distraction.

As you sit there, remove all the heavy trappings of normal life weighing upon your shoulders, your back, your mind. Set them down, one by one, to the side of you.

Then focus your attention on God.

Sit wordlessly with God for a moment. Experience what it is like to sit quietly and simply before God, unadorned by any other thing. Sit this way with God for as long as you want or are able.

After this time of quietness before God, reflect on what this experience of prayer was like for you. Did you speak any words to God? Did God speak any words to you? Did you experience any feelings?

Consider whether this is an exercise you would like to try again sometime.

If you would like to share your experience, you are welcome to do so in the comments below.