Prayer - isn't it hard sometimes.

I have always found prayer hard. It has been hard to fit it into my life - perhaps because I've not wanted to make it the priority it should be. It means making time, being disciplined, deciding something it your life doesn't have the same importance and so giving it up to make room for prayer.

Having made room for prayer then comes the task of how best to use the time you are setting aside for prayer. When I was a kid my prayers (which I said lying in bed, in the dark, just before going to sleep) consisted of saying thank you for some good things in my day, in my life and then a long-ish list of God blesses... 'God bless Mummy and Daddy, Bob, Beth, Rachael, Peter, & Rebekah, Granny and Grampy, Grandma and Grandpa...' ending with 'God bless me, amen!' Easy, eh! Then there were the prayers I remember praying when I woke in the wee small hours with ear-ache: 'Lord please heal my sore ear.' They seemed to fall on deaf ears. I never got the instantaneous healing I hoped for. I was 10 years old and a burgeoning Pentecostal.

In my prayer times since the worst thing to contend with (after the need to be disciplined and make time) was the distracting ambient noise of my own brain and imagination, coupled with the apparent lack of Divine feedback. I kept giving up, feeling guilt, trying again. I tried to read the Bible, I still do. I'm encouraged by Bishop Tom Wright's books to to read it, to see what he sees in the Gospels especially and in St Paul's epistles, and I get overwhelmed (especially by St Paul), I often feel worse for reading it than better. I must say that I mostly love the Gospels and the Psalms. And I come away from the Good Book with more questions than answers.

I gladly joined the 'theology group' in my previous parish, 'cos they were about to embark on a study of NT Wright's "The Challenge of Jesus" and I, reflecting on the my own understandings and ideas of Jesus, wondered if the Jesus I thought I knew wasn't more of a figment of my imagination than an historic reality - that I had kept him safe and comfortable in my imagination, rather than engaging with the reality of who he was/is and allowing Him to challenge and change me. I'm still thinking about all that and being challenged there.

And where am I at, a year or so on. I'm in a parish with a vicar who has a great heart for liturgy - as opposed, as I understand, to something that looks more non-conformist mish-mash than Anglican. A man who seems to want to wrestle with the text of Scripture and with theology rather than settle with a fluffy, trendy 'charismatic' or an all-out liberal interpretation. And his wife, (also ordained and with eleven years of preaching under her belt) has taken charge of the music. She plays piano, and mixes the old A&Ms and the best of charismatic song with songs of social justice from Iona and chant from Taizé. She is beginning to preach for us too. New, but welcome challenges here too.

Beginning with the Lent just past I have been giving prayer another crack - prayer that is as a period of time set aside. Being unemployed is helpful. I find time between walking old Jazz the dog, and getting into my day proper.

I began with the Franciscan prayer book, praying the morning office and deliberately saying everything out loud. I began with a sense, which I still have, of joining my prayer to that of the church universal, picturing my new Anglican friends especially as I did so. My chief worry over time is that this kind of prayer becomes rote, that ambient brain noise creeps more and more as the office becomes all the more automatic. I did/do close out the time with extemporé prayer. And I need a lectionary - is there one on-line?

Lately my reading of Donald Spoto's "In Silence - why we pray"(sadly I've not been able to renew this library book) and Abbot Jameson's "Finding Sanctuary" I have this desire to build much silence into my time before God. This I find difficult. Ambient brain noise, again! And praying "The Jesus Prayer" or some similar 'centering' prayer' doesn't feel natural yet, though I want to persist. Certainly a 'monastic' silence seems to settle over me as I spend my days almost alone (I see family a wee bit and Joan, my mum-in -law is just down the garden in her cottage) keeping house & cooking, gardening and in my studio recording (tho this can get a bit rock'n'roll) or doing wee desktop publishing and web design jobs for my church.

Thanks David and Elizabeth for your encouraging responses to my postings. This was how I hoped this blog thing would work. Come on the rest of you! I'll give you the low down of the good abbot's book soon. Meanwhile keep praying. Pray for me and I'll pray for you. Thanks to Debs for your discouraging encouragement.

Life's hard. God is good. Come, Holy Spirit!

Richard