Mount Shoop notes that there are two collective wounds of our dis-embodied faith: the wound of intellectualization and the wound of fear. For a while, we will listen to her thought about the first - intellectualization.
She begins with a scene in a hospital where the woman she is with does not really want her to pray with her - but, pastor, if you need to do it all right. She continues:
For Sarah prayer was an irrational thing that pastors did in hospitals, far from any kind of connective tissue of the Body of Christ. He strong commitment to justice was her spiritual calling card; prayer was meaningless in a world where rational thinking informs doing. Sarah put her faith into action. Hers was a faith embodied on the ethical layer of her being and doing. And, to be sure, all the work of great saints like Sarah is embodied and deeply important to how the Body of Christ is alive in the world. But her dismissal of prayer trivialized how her faith could be transformative in her life, not to mention the lives of those for whom she could be in prayer. Prayer was intellectually embarrassing and pragmatically useless to her religious sensitivity. Sarah's faith had integrity, but the mysterious power of prayer made no sense in her well-ordered system.
Our fear of prayer or our disassociation with prayer is part of the dis-ease that comes when we allow our intellect to rule and to be the only way we move forward. The dis-ease is one in which we lose our ability to dream - to imagine - to let ourselves wander out into a place and time that is beyond our ability to control and manage. Just this week in a meeting about life within our congregation, someone used the expression dis-ease to give me a picture of myself. My dis-ease was one part a need to be in control - one part trying to be the problem-solver - one part a lack of imagination. Damn - I thought I was good at faithful imagination. But then again, under the pull of fear and uncertainty fear can easily infect me and one of the aspect of the dis-ease is a journey into my problem-solving intellectualization. A place that bring very little new life - just the same old same old. Damn. Connection: When I do let myself pray and when others pray there is no magic - but there sure is connection and the grand reminder of my limits and what is available to all of us from our God who is always saying 'rest in me alone.' When we are broken and in need of healing, O God, you invite us to come to you and rest. In prayer we have your ear and we begin to hear what it is to let go and allow some space in which we are open to another voice than our own. In your voice - silent and constant - comes life that even cuts through our great powers we think we have. Again, there is only thanks. Amen. |
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