The Book of Uncommon Prayer & How to Pray Without Ceasing

Brian Doyle's "A Book of Uncommon Prayer" & How to Pray Without Ceasing - on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The title first caught my eye: The Book of Uncommon Prayer. I’m a lover of the Book of Common Prayer, and I can’t resist a hint of irreverence. The table of contents promised prayers for “cashiers and checkout-counter folks” and for “muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor;” prayers for every layer of modern human life, from the mundane presence of port-a-potties to the heartbreaking reality of people whose dads left them as kids.

I had expected to find short blessings that could be spoken in strange places or at times when our own BCP feels a little stiff or distant. What I actually encountered was page after page of Doyle’s sincere, most-well-intentioned thought-rambles.

To name his prayers as ramblings may sound dismissive, but it’s meant in the holiest of senses. Doyle writes as though he’s the scribe of the voice that narrates the thoughts in our heads — that kind of focused run-on-sentence that deals with life as it comes, that helps us narrate our days and our identities, that talks us into wanting the best for others.

When reading his “Prayer for the Men & Women Who Huddle Inside Vast Rain Slickers All Day Holding Up STOP Signs at Construction Sites & Never Appear to Shriek in Despair & Exhaustion,” it felt as though I myself were behind the wheel of a car on a rainy day, idling past one of those workers, and that these are the thoughts that may go through my head. “I pray for warmth for you. Less rain. No idiot drivers whizzing past… I pray that you are getting paid decent wages.”

The real gift of Doyle’s work to us is not the words of the prayers themselves, which I doubt will ever be read over bowed heads at family gatherings. Rather, his gift is the recognition that all thought is prayer. And with that, the recognition that some thoughts are perhaps more worthy prayers than others.

St Paul reminds us to “pray without ceasing,” to pray “at all times with all kinds of prayers and requests.” I’ve heard people say that Paul was exaggerating, that he certainly didn’t mean to pray all the time, just to pray a lot.

But what if Paul did mean what he wrote?

What if the voice in my head could be nudged into giving up its criticisms and its concern for my schedule and its constant readying for the next thing, and instead became attuned to the people, animals, places, and items in its midst? What if my inner critic was re-formed into a silent chaplain?

Doyle’s work reminds readers how many opportunities we have to bless the world as beings and things come into our sight each day. We each have an unlimited abundance of blessing to offer.

From where I’m sitting, I can send blessings of gratitude on my dog for his (not entirely necessary) watchfulness; blessings on those who grew, picked, and dried the tea leaves in my cup; a prayer for good working conditions and fair wages for those who built my computer; a prayer of deep gratitude to anyone who takes the time to read my words; and of course, a prayer of appreciation that Brian Doyle reminded me of the power of my prayers.

These prayers may do nothing for their recipients, though we can hope alongside Doyle that they may feel a surge of joy for reasons they do not know. But the prayers will undoubtedly do something for us who mumble them, instilling us with gratitude, forming us to notice the whispered cries for justice, orienting us towards love.

So: a blessing on Brian Doyle, who didn’t at all punt it like he was afraid he would; who was transparent in his humanity for the sake of his readers; who not only gave us some lovely thoughts but more importantly showed us how it’s done. I pray the process of writing it was at least as formative as the process of reading it has been. I pray he’s proud of his work, and not too self-conscious about letting all us readers inside his head and his heart. And I pray he feels a surge of joy right now for reasons he does not know. And so: Amen.


Questions: What people, pets, or items call for your blessing in your immediate vicinity? Share in the comments below.

A Prayer for Women’s Equality

A Prayer for Women's Equality in the Celtic style

Below is a prayer for women’s equality, written in the Celtic style. Celtic prayers heavily utilize repetition and rhyme, and in both content and form these prayers emphasize the Trinity.

I wrote it at a time when I was attempting to understand my pastoral giftings and my womanhood. Too often, I have felt that USAmerican culture values a woman’s role as mother more highly than any other contribution she may make to society. Having come from a church with all male pastors and being a Divinity program, at the time, in which all the other students were men, I had very little imagination for being both female and pastoral. Those themes are heavy in this prayer; I hope it serves you well in whatever your struggles are today.

A Prayer for Women’s Equality

“By a woman and a tree the world first perished.”

I wish, O Son of the living God,
eternal, ancient King,
for reconciliation between the sexes,
that I might answer your calling.

I pray, O Son of the living God,
eternal, ancient King,
for –

I wish –
that –

Mother, Child,
Goose of the Wild,
Keep me from despair,
Hear my prayer.

I pray, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for compassion in men’s hearts
that they could view women as clean.

I strive, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for a new paradigm, not princess or bitch,
that views women as strong and not mean.

I hope, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for society to know women have worth
after their children are weaned,
or at least after the age of eighteen.

I long, O Child of the living God,
eternal, ancient Queen,
for rest within the body that is me,
that I may be serene.

Questions for You

What are your hopes and prayers for women in 2016? What are your concerns?

My Loosened Rule of Life

Loosened Rule of Life - {Literate Theology}

I was first asked to write a Personal Rule of Life in seminary. I researched various instructions on how to write a Personal Rule, I looked up examples. I struggled with the assignment. None of the formats I had seen seemed to fit what I needed, and I was determined that my Rule wouldn’t be a spiritual to-do list.

The Temptation of Achievement

I’m achievement-oriented as a symptom of my deepest brokenness. Some brokenness is manifested in substance abuse, in anger, or in sloth; mine is manifested in achievement. This has the added difficulty in that it’s seen as virtuous; achievement is heavily rewarded in our culture. But I can tell it’s feeding something poisonous living inside me.

Running parallel to my understanding that my achievement is unhealthy in some ways is the knowledge that the achievement doesn’t have a destination; it’s a road without end and no rest stops. No amount of achievement will ever satisfy the emptiness that is at the core of me that keeps trying to be filled. David Foster Wallace put it this way:

“The face I’d put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing’s enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there’s a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuageable by outside stuff.”

Achievement a temptation particularly heightened in our time in which there is so much we’re told we must achieve. Any single issue of any magazine may contain workouts for a perfect body, 9 foods to eat daily for a variety of vitamins (but beware they don’t push you over a strict calorie limit), advice on being the most attentive friend and lover, 5 steps to the perfect smoky eye, a list of activity suggestions to be the best parent ever, and  3 ways to get ahead at work. The cultural pressure to achieve in the realms of health, beauty, relationships, and career is staggering, if not crushing.

Too often, church is a place that piles on one more area of achievement: the spiritual. It’s yet another list of to-do’s in a world that is burdening us with perfection. We’re told to pray constantly, read scripture and devotions daily, attend church weekly, volunteer monthly, fill out the pledge card annually. Too often, the Church fails to be a sanctuary from the world and becomes another perpetuator of our world’s deepest brokenness.

Grace Frees from Achievement

My struggle with developing a Rule of Life finally came to this: I can’t imagine God wanting me to achieve even more as a way to draw closer to God.

So I threw out the formats of daily prayers and weekly rhythms. What I needed was a way to keep me from sacrificing myself on the Altar of High Achievement. I kept format is loose. Rather than prayers and habits to be done daily or weekly, it’s a way to go through life, a way to be shaped into a person of agency unto goodness, a way to learn to speak to myself as I would a loved child. I read it regularly so that its wisdom gathered from many mentors can become a voice in my self in daily interactions.

I share it with hope that it aids and frees others to have a loosened rule of life, to abandon legalism in favor of grace, to shift a body’s orientation away from achievement and towards communion.

My Loosened Rule of Life

Ways of Being & Relating

  • Have a voice.
    • Use your voice for others and yourself; the strength that is in you can be for you.
    • It is not sufficient to be a self that only exists in relation to others.
    • Know yourself, and know that the self you know is not the entirety of your self. Know that the self others narrate to you is not the entirety of your self.
    • Follow your joy. Follow your own calling, not others’ callings for you.
    • Commit to living out the image of God that is within you, to allowing identity to overflow into agency.
    • You are valuable. Don’t stay where you are not valued. Go to where you are valued.
    • Note: This piece stems from a time in seminary when my words had become primarily for the good of others and I took a year of silence in class in order to learn that the power of my voice can be for myself.
  • Have courage.
    • The courage to say no, the courage to say yes. Remember that saying yes “to will the one thing” means saying no to lots of other things.
    • Remember that we all suffer. Keep going.
    • Lean into the pain, find what it has to teach you.
    • When you despair, lament until you find hope.
    • Believe in and seek out the holy contour of life.
    • Think and speak in categories other than good/bad, or find ways to define those terms.
    • Note: As someone who knows narrative and is intuitive, I often suspect where a trajectory will take me before I get there. I must remind myself that all good stories require conflict and that the work that must be accomplished requires leaning into the pain of my story. It’s in the moments that I want to stop that I must find courage to keep going into the discomfort and hurt.
  • Be vulnerable.
    • Risk emotionally.
    • Laugh, loudly.
    • Cry, openly and without shame.
    • Allow events and moments to impact and change you.
    • Pursue relationships and form communities that might not work out.
    • Show hospitality that will likely never be returned.
    • Be interested in growth, knowing that stretching muscles can be tender.
    • Ask basic, stupid questions, and find unexpected answers.
    • Ask complex, interesting questions, and delve into research for the most satisfying answers.
    • Note: Relationships are vital. My life is not only about my work but about being with others. Intimacy requires some level of risk. I know I can be dismissive when I feel hurt, especially with my family. This reminds me to stay engaged.
  • Live with simplicity.
    • Look for more livable ways to define and live the good life.
    • Know kinship with creation. Garden. What you do to the earth, you do to yourself.
    • Don’t be cool.
    • You don’t need more clothes, items, social media presence, or anything else trying to sell a false version of the good life. Consume less.
    • Live into rhythms of work and rest, each day, week, year.
    • Keep a daily routine… but don’t be rigid. Stay up late when ideas are happening. Get out of bed when they wake you up. And keep human! See people, go places.
    • Spend less. Or spend more for items of good quality, ethically sold, at rare intervals.
    • Note: I’m concerned about the consumer-driven narrative of today’s culture; there are other ways to live that have been livable and well lived for centuries and centuries.

Prayer

  • Be grounded in physicality; know your embodiment.
    • Sweat often. Sweat is your prayer.
    • Walk. Run. Practice yoga. Practice krav maga.
    • Breathe deeply and mindfully. Breath is your prayer, too.
    • Drink lots of water and tea. Eat colorful plants that died just recently.
    • Do the things that call you to mindful embodiment: hike, sail, garden, play violin, craft, sing.
    • Note: I tell people with complete sincerity that I became a Christian through a secular yoga practice. Yet as an pretty typical ENTJ, I know that I tend to neglect the physical, even knowing that engaging my body is the very thing that can restore me in times of stress.

Creation / Re-Creation / Recreation

  • Value the increments and explosions of re/creation.
    • Practice writing daily pages. Remember. Carry a notebook and pen. Write things down. Revisit journals.
    • Listen attentively and carefully.
    • Take field trips and artist dates.
    • Practice the gentle art of domesticity so long as it feels gentle. Cultivate home.
    • Say yes to preaching, teaching, speaking, and writing opportunities, even (especially) if they feel slightly beyond my qualifications.
    • Fail. Fail again. Fail better. Fail faster.
    • Collaborate. Everyone has something to offer.
    • There is nothing new under the sun; keep a swipe file.
    • You are powerful enough to create: apply words in a new way and make symbols relevant to a new day.
    • Note: I (hesitatingly) believe that writing is a task I am meant to be working at. At the same time, there is something rewarding and necessary about creating tangible items, whether a knit washcloth or a watercolor daffodil.

Loosened Rule of Life - {Literate Theology}

 

Conjuring the Spirit of the Season

The absence of Christmas spirit is a presence in my home. I skipped out on the normal mantel decorations. I didn’t even take the stockings out of storage. My gift wrapping is minimal and sloppy. I just haven’t been able to tap into the spirit of the season. In a world celebrating a season of merriment, music, and memory-making, my internal experience has not been able to align.

My first response was to “fake it til I make it” — to go through the motions of Christmas cheer and observe the rituals in order to make the warm fuzzy feelings follow. That did not work.

A few voices in my life have suggested prayer practices. I’ve sat in my office and settled into the quietness of prayer, only to find that my prayers are laments. My prayers are calling God to do better, to intervene more strongly. A wonderful woman gifted me a gratitude journal, nudging me to acknowledge the goodnesses, no matter how small, that my daily life holds. And while it does keep away full blown depression and does orient me toward gratitude, the practice also highlights that there are many who do not have what I do: a loving spouse, stable housing, warm meals.

It strikes me that my concern has been my inability to tap into the spirit of the season, but perhaps I’ve been overwhelmed by advent: a season in which we hope for light while surrounded by darkness.

The darkness is literal in a solstice sense, in a lack of daylight hours, but darkness  is also metaphorical and spiritual.

In advent, Christ — the light of the world — has not yet begun to shine. All we have to guide our steps is faint, distant starlight, traveling lightyears to get to us.

In advent, we remember that Mary carried in her self something divine that was growing and waiting to enter the world. We remember that carrying and birthing the divine is a marathon labor: it can feel like walking miles on swollen ankles only to find there is no rest to be had at the end of the journey.

This is Mary’s story, and the Christmas story, and it’s also our story, it’s a creation story. The work of allowing a message to cultivate inside one’s self, the labor of bringing it forth, the frail hope that it will be received by others. We each have a gift that is waiting to be birthed.

So perhaps my sorrow and failure of Christmas spirit are right where I am meant to be this advent season in which darkness has many manifestations.

And tomorrow is Christmas, and I have the starting place of hope: not that tomorrow the world will be different, but that tomorrow I may feel differently, which could alter the world.

On Prayer & Policy-Making

Prayer & Policy-Making - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The divide is growing. In the wake of another mass shooting, the US has entered a now familiar liturgy: people demand changed policies; politicians offer prayers; nothing changes.

This time, rather than placating constituents, the prayers of politicians has been met with backlash. The New York Daily News released a bold cover: “God Isn’t Fixing This.” On twitter, #thoughtsandprayers was trending, with use ranging from a recognition of congress’s inactivity to blatant mockery of prayer practices in general.

Which of course created a backlash against that backlash: Christians defending prayer and speaking against such “prayer shaming.”

Part of what causes my heart to break so deeply in the midst of this conversation is that, across the illusion of the chasm between them, both sides have something beautiful to offer the other side. The Christians are correct in saying we should be praying; the secularists are correct in saying that there should be action.

What made Christianity radical is its anti-theist understanding of prayer, that prayer is never complete until it is followed by action. There are lots of articles and Bible-verse lists about how Jesus prayed: usually alone, often on a mountain or in a desert. But often the sentence about Jesus’s prayer is followed by a sentence about his action. Jesus prays and immediately after, he gathers and teaches. Jesus prays and immediately after walks onto the water to the disciples in a boat. Jesus prays and then raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus prays and then is arrested and goes to the cross.

For Jesus, prayer seems to be the inhale he takes before exhaling into action. He is filled through the inhale prayer so that he may exhale into action through preaching and miracles. For Jesus, prayer and action are so interwoven as to be inseparable; the prayer is not complete until exhaled into action.

We Christians often end our prayers with the words “in the name of Jesus Christ” or “through Jesus Christ.” We pray in and through Jesus. We receive eucharist that metabolizes us in and through the Christ. We receive baptism that has brought us in and through the church, which we also call the body of Christ.

In these ways, we are living members of the Christ to whom we pray in and through; we pray ourselves into being part of Christ, and pray ourselves into becoming part of the answer to the very prayers we speak. Christian theologian Ronald Rolheiser reminds us that “to pray as a Christian demands concrete involvement in trying to bring about what is pleaded for in the prayer.”

For an everyday example: consider someone who prays for healing for a sick neighbor, but never brings a meal or offers to drive to the doctor. She does the inhale of the prayer, but never completes it in the exhale; she prays as a theist and not as a Christian.

The dynamics might be similar in our nation-wide conversation about gun violence and prayer. Non-Christian people are calling Christians to action; they are calling us to exhale our prayers into action. It is not always done tactfully, kindly, or lovingly, but if we are open to their criticism in the way that Christ received death, perhaps we can develop ears to hear how deeply, prophetically Christ-like their call to action is.

Likewise, Christians are calling the country to prayer. We are right to say that it is impossible to exhale indefinitely; we must inhale in order to receive the Spirit that Jesus breathed upon us. In our inhale, we begin to grow in the ability to discern God’s will for humanity. In our inhale, we begin to let go of what our own desire may be for the future of our country. In order to act lovingly, our actions must originate in prayer.

Secular society is calling the church to action; the church is calling secular society to prayer.

Both sides have something beautiful to offer. We should be praying. Prayer is not complete until followed by action.

Each could be a blessing to the other, if we all soften our hearts enough to hear it. It’s risky. A soft heart is a much more easily broken heart. But perhaps broken heartedness is not an inappropriate response to such circumstances.

prayer corner
Where I pray — and then write.

Prayer for Graduates

A Prayer for Graduates - post on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

In my last week as a Divinity student at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, the registrar approached me. She explained that the last thing that happens before walking into the graduation ceremony — after the rehearsal and the formal photos and getting into our caps and gowns and lining up in the order in which we’ll walk — the very last thing is a prayer, offered by one of the graduating Divinity students. She asked if I would pray for our graduates this year.

So on a sweltering Saturday in June, at the registrar’s cue I left my place in the ordered lines and stood before my peers. I knew that the other speakers that morning were all on the theme of pilgrimage. This is the prayer I offered.

*          *          *          *          *

At the end of the prayer, I’ll lead us in singing the doxology, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” We’ll sing it two times through. There are a few pronouns in the doxology; feel free to use whichever pronoun you wish, or to simply say “God” instead of pronouns, and in the multiplicity of our choices we will more fully bear the image of God.

The Lord be with you. And also with you.

Let us pray.

Divine One from whom we came, and to whom we go,

It has been such a long journey.
We have walked through valleys of readings.
We have hiked trails of paper-writing.
We have climbed through practicums
and scaled internships
and trekked through so much work to be here.

And now, today. Today we summit. Today we pause. Today we set down our packs,
we tend to our blisters,
we enjoy the view from up on this mountain,
and we rest.

May we enter this rest with freedom to celebrate and freedom to grieve.

May this rest bear witness to the complexities of our circumstances and to the ambivalences of our experiences.

May everything that comes to us during this time of rest this morning be for our healing and for your glory.

As you have always been with us, you are present now, and will always be. Help us to remain present with you and with one another this morning.

Send us now with hearts open to receive your blessings of grief
and your blessings of grace.

Send us now with eyes to see and ears to hear all your gifts as blessings of beauty.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise God/Him/Her all creatures here below,
Praise God/Him/Her above ye heavenly host,
Praise Father/Mother, Son/Child, and Holy Ghost.

*          *          *          *          *

When I started singing, I thought my voice would shake, but it was steadier and stronger than it should have been, given the tears that were forming. People joined quickly, a few scattered voices providing resonant harmony that helped every voice come more alive.The pronouned places were a beautiful jumble, not unlike humanity. At one point I stopped singing and let those I have held in prayer hold me in song, and I wept. As we all sang the amen, I quietly walked back to my place in the queue.

And we walked upstairs, me struggling through my tears to follow the black robe in front of me.

Photo courtesy of Paul Quinlivan, MACP, MATC
Photo courtesy of Paul Quinlivan