A friend posted an article from the Guardian on Facebook last week, so I take it to be in the public domain. It was by Giles Fraser following a break in, in his church, in which a man had broken in to the church at night, to pray. After describing the situation Giles Fraser went on to say:
“Years ago, when I had the keys to St Paul’s Cathedral, I would frequently sit in there on my own at night. And I do the same now in my bombed-out 1960s community church. Of course you can do it elsewhere, but these are places set aside for it. Here the silence creeps into me, a bit like the cold. Not the silence of empty nothingness but the silence of sitting comfortably with a friend. And into that silence I bring all that is not OK with me.”
I am aware of the large number of visitors to our church who come to sit and pray. I find Giles Fraser’s reflection on prayer is helpful to my understanding of this and I hope, helpful to yours:
“The chemistry of prayer is the meeting of these two elements: that little surd of hidden desperation that some (most, all?) of us carry around with us, often without owning up to it, and that vast expanse of purposeful silence, the shorthand for which is God. In my experience, these two elements are drawn to each other. And the slow reaction between them is worth breaking into any church to find.
There are various accelerants to this chemical reaction – the repetition of liturgical formulas, even lighting candles. Like all organised religion, this is easy enough to sneer at. But key to the reaction is silence and time. For both of these eat away at our excuses, our false hopes, our lack of reality. Self-serving ***** doesn’t easily survive the rigours of time and silence. And in this fantasy-busting environment I am lent the courage to open the most defended bits of me to the infinite love of God.”
The life of faith is a constant facing up to reality, something we all are going to have to do more of in 2017. We live in “interesting times”. Prayer, being with God, helps me know that they are loving times too and never a curse. So do come. T.S. Eliot puts it well in Little Gidding:
“You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.”
Wishing you all Hope Love and Joy
Robin