Learning to Breath

Before knocking off to sleep, I’m working on a book called “Mystically Wired” – a book on prayer from the pastor at Ann Arbor Vineyard. We live in an intentional Christian Community called Desert Rain that tries to be contemplative and prayer focused. We host retreats for groups and individuals and offer them an escape from the city. So I was thinking that this book might be a good view on how someone in the Vineyard is viewing the relatively new shift toward more ‘mystic’, or ‘unexplainable’ points of life – blended with our heavy-science-individualistic American culture. We’ve been listening to a lot of topics like this from the early church fathers, but the modern folks who are commenting on them are typically from the monastic communities, Catholic streams, or from older denominations. This is the first book from a Vineyard pastor that I’ve noticed specifically focusing on these topics as the exclusive subject of the book. (Note: Don’t let the word “Mystic” bother you – its just from the word ‘mystery’ – which means you can’t explain it with science. Christianity is a very Mystic religion.)

 

So far I like the book. The author (I’ll get his name for the next blog) described how he always felt obligated to pray, but wasn’t very good at it. “Pastors are supposed to pray! It’s their job!” So he forced himself to have a private prayer life but he always felt guilty that he didn’t like it very much. He started using a prayer book and practicing periods of silence. It helped him because he was tired and uninspired. He said it felt like cheating, but he started looking forward to it, because it didn’t rely on his own efforts as much. He was able to make the prayer time more of a retreat.

 

I can relate to him on these points. I’ve grown up feeling like written prayers were “cheating” and that you should pray your own prayers like in a conversation. But that wears down after a while and is hard to do 3 times a day. We’ve been practicing prayer meetings at the community 3 times a day, 5 days a week off-and-on for the last 5 years or so. We started with on-the-fly prayers, then went to “topic-based-on-the-fly-prayers”, where we all pray about something together. Eventually we went to starting each prayer time with a written prayer from a prayer book and having periods of silence, with some optional on-the-fly prayers at the end. This style does feel more sustainable just for the fact that you get sick of hearing you and your friends talk all the time! Its nice to know that if no-one is specifically inspired, we can just sit and listen to the breeze blowing. It’s a chance to listen to your own breath, reminding yourself that the Holy Spirit, Wind, and Breath are all the same word in the Bible. Its good to take a breath.