There is this thing about the Lord’s Prayer that Scot McKnight pointed out in a talk he gave not to long ago.
give us
forgive us
lead us
I thought, of course, prayer is as much an individual thing as it is a communal thing. We look up or look down or look straight into the open air and something begins in me but that very thing is happening in you when you pray. We enter into ourselves and beyond ourselves and think and sort through God’s intention for the world and our lives. But our lives are in no way disconnected from this world and our God. They are connected to the core. I like to think in gnostic terms once in a while because I think it can be helpful. I am defining gnostic thought as: spirit=good… material=evil. So if the material world were to disappear for just a few moments, well there might not be anything, but lets just pretend that the only thing remaining was ghost-like strands that represented the conversations, shared stories, love and connection we have with one another. When the clothes and the coolness and the new thing fade and we forget ourselves-loose ourselves- there is a moment when us becomes quite clear. It is our shared connectedness. The space inbetween us is a shared place.
There is this canoe trip that I have been apart of for the past five years. It is a week long middle school canoe camp and it is, wild. There is one day, one of the longer days, that we have consistantly roped all the canoes together for lunch. The lead boats stop paddling and one by one canoes come up behind and we attach them and then get lunch out . I find myself peeling oranges because I LOVE it, especially when I get it in one swipe. But we ride together. A few steer but mostly we ride together in the current.
When I think of prayer I suspect that there is a current moving us toward the way of Jesus in our thoughts and flesh and blood actions in the world. This guy Ronald Rolhieser said that our prayer needs our flesh to back it up. We pray so that God might be active in certain ways, ways that are in the current of his love and justice and grace but it is scary-as a friend once mentioned-when you realize you might be the answer to your own prayer. My friend honestly confessed that he doesn’t pray certain things these days because he knows prayer is action that begins as words with the potential to become flesh. Pray is always participation. Whether it is a word we speak and God brings into existence or a word that requires our flesh we participate… we participate.
