As I have often acknowledged, the foundation of a spiritual
journey is anchored in some kind of discipline.
Too often discipline gets a bad rap, as if it is some kind of
punishment. For some folks hearing the
word, discipline, conjures up running laps!
This is unfortunate. Discipline
is the dailiness of activity that leads to growth and development. One of my disciplines is using the lectionary
for some spiritual reading each day.
This discipline enables me to do a little reading that
hopefully feeds my soul and nurtures my spirit.
It is not a guarantee. But
without a discipline I can virtually guarantee that we won’t get very far in
the spiritual journey. It is like
training for the marathon. It is stupid
to think you can wake up one weekend, decide to go somewhere and run a
marathon. Twenty-six miles is too far to
go on a lark! The same goes with the
spiritual journey.
When I turned to the lectionary reading for today, I went to
the Morning Prayer. I know this connects
me with the community of monks around the country as they, too, are reading the
same words that I am reading. This helps
me sense that I am not alone in this journey.
I am traveling the road with the monks and nuns. The context is different, but the journey is
very similar.
The first reading comes from Psalm 5. One verse immediately stuck out to me. That verse contains the words of the Psalmist
to God: “As I make my
prayer to you, Lord,
listen to my voice in the morning; in the morning I will stand before you and
await you.”
This underscores
the importance of discipline. The
Psalmist says, “as I make my prayer.”
That means he makes prayer. If we
are honest, many of us probably should say, “when I make my prayer.” Or maybe, even more of us say, “if I make my
prayer.” Discipline puts us into the
game every morning!
Since
the Psalmist does make his prayer every morning, he can petition God to “listen
to my voice.” I think of the words many
Jews utter on a regular basis: the Shema.
The Shema is taken from Deuteronomy.
The word, Shema, is the Hebrew word that gets translated, “hear.” The sixth chapter of Deuteronomy begins the
Shema. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our
God, the Lord alone. You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might.” Every prayer is a petition for
God to listen. And that should be
followed by an expectation that we, too, should listen.
The
Psalmist says that he will come in the morning to God and “stand before you and
await you.” This is a good word for our
culture. We are not a waiting culture. We are a doing culture. In fact, we usually start by doing. Think about how we get up in the
mornings. I know I begin by doing. It is coffee, newspaper, and maybe a quick
glance at the weather channel to see what clothes to wear. I jump out of bed into action. There is no waiting.
If I
wait, it probably is at a red light or a traffic jam! I can imagine most of us don’t have time to
come in the morning, stand before God and await the Divine One. No doubt many folks I know would consider
this to be a royal waste of time. Why
would you be waiting when you could do something! As I type these words, I indict myself. I put myself in judgment. That is why I need the discipline of the
lectionary to remind me of what I say is important.
For
me the lectionary reading leads to a little time in prayer. When I think about prayer in this context, I
recall the words of the great Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel. In his book, Quest for God, Heschel wrote
these words: "We do not step
out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different
setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving
wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of
living from self-consciousness to self-surrender."
Heschel is a wonderful mentor for waiting and for prayer. Take time to wait. Take time to pray. Prayer helps us see it is not all about
us. Being egocentric is not what the
spiritual journey is about. If we can
pray and wait for the Holy One, then we are taking the steps to be
self-conscious.
To be spiritually self-conscious enables us to surrender our self to
the Higher Power. Literally, it puts us
in our place. In God’s eyes our place is
exactly where we should be and want to be.
I know my place in the world is to be a servant and a minister. This is my version of self-surrender. The irony of it, however, is how much I
receive! I feel like I have been given
so much more than I give. Maybe that is
the spiritual secret of self-surrender.
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