This summer my family got a whole lot bigger.
So far I’ve read five books/booklets and learnt the beauty of some new devotional practises. It began in July when I downloaded a copy of My Orthodox Prayer Book and began using some of its prayers as part of my devotions.
As one who came to Christ within a free charismatic church I’ve been somewhat suspicious of written prayers. They’ve always felt a little too much like spell casting. Nevertheless I learnt to recite the words of the Trisagion (thrice holy) and uttered the prayers in the privacy of my study: Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
As I read and prayed these words I was struck by their simplicity and strength. What’s more the words seemed to usher in the One they spoke of. At times I’ve read a few lines and then sat in quiet as the Spirit of God made himself known.
“The soul speaks and converses during prayer, but at the descent of the Holy Spirit we must remain in complete silence, in order to hear clearly and intelligibly all the words of eternal life which he will then deign to communicate."
Following this discovery a friend generously gave me his Orthodox prayer rope and introduced me to The Jesus Prayer. “Pray without ceasing” the Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians and now I have a tool to help me to do just that. Holding the rope in my hand and squeezing one knot at a time I’m learning to pray as I breathe in and out:
(IN) Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, (OUT) have mercy on me
In The Jesus Prayer we call upon Christ by name to draw near and he does, draw near.
“A name”, said Origen (d. around 254), “brings before us the distinctive character of what is named.” To call upon a person by name is to render that person dynamically present, and this is especially true when we call by name upon Jesus.”
At first the idea of repeatedly asking for mercy seemed a little odd but then I read this by Timothy Ware:
“Sometimes the Greek Fathers connect the word eleos, ‘mercy’, with elaion, meaning ‘olive oil’. This is probably bad etymology, but it is good theology. ‘Mercy’ signifies precisely the love of God, poured out to heal and restore.”
Asking for mercy isn’t me cowering in fear, a sinner before an angry deity. Rather in asking for mercy I’m calling for the oil of God’s goodness and grace to be poured out over me. I want to experience the delight of my Father, the favour my saviour and the kisses of the Spirit. Put through this lense “Lord have mercy” sounds more like “batter my heart three person God!”
Having recently read Natalie Williams’ superb book 'Tis Mercy All’ the prayer recalls to mind many of the things I read there. There are 100 knots on the rope and it takes around 20 minutes to pray them all, giving me plenty of time to dig into the depths of God's mercy in my mind.
I’ve been enjoying resting with Christ and ‘looking at him as he looks on me’. He loves us, he loves me and so I’m beginning to believe that prayer really is ‘relaxing into the goodness of God’. It’s saying with the Bride ‘I am my beloved’s and he is mine.’ All this is bringing me back again to what the Christian life is meant to be about - Jesus.
Learning to seek Jesus in stillness (in the tradition of the Hesychasts) is new for me. As one born again into lively (and noisy) charismatic Christianity it’s taken some work to convince me that silence is legitimate prayer in the first place. The Orthodox monk Timothy Ware has shown me however that to pray in silence is to pray not with the lips, but with the heart and the mind. It’s to invite my body, redeemed as it has been by the Son of God taking on flesh, to take part in prayer and to believe that it also can pray. Praying in quiet is a form of loving God with my heart, soul, mind and strength.
“The human being is a single, united whole; not only the human mind but the whole person was created in the image if God.Our body is not an enemy, but partner and collaborator with our soul. Christ, by taking a human body at the Incarnation, has ‘made the flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification.”
As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said: “If I were a doctor, and were asked for my advice, I would say: Create silence!”
Several years ago I was moved by hearing the testimony that surrounded Charles Finney. It was said that when he entered a room people would break out in worship and spontaneous confession of sin, such was the impact of the presence of God within him. St Seraphim of Sarov describes a similar reality when he invites us to draw near to Christ saying: Acquire the Spirit of Peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.
As I've read I've also gained an appreciation for the historic story of the church and been moved by much of the wisdom the Eastern church posseses.
For one thing I’ve really loved the emphasis on a fuller spirituality than I find within the contemporary charismatic church. To paraphrase James K A Smith Protestants often treat people as though they are merely ‘brains on a stick’, that we are ‘thinking things’. At church we tickle people's ears and by them hope that the mind, heart and spirit are revived. Orthodox spirituality however is more rounded (and grounded). It treats the whole of God’s creation (sights, smells and smells) and expects that all of it can mediate God’s goodness to us.
Ware puts it like this:
The human being is a single, united whole; not only the human mind but the whole person was created in the image if God.Our body is not an enemy, but partner and collaborator with our soul. Christ, by taking a human body at the Incarnation, has ‘made the flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification.
There are of course problems within Orthodoxy. It’s been guilty of nationalism for much of its history, it’s also fairly inaccessible to non Greek speakers and largely unintelligible to post-christian westerners. It’s contextualised to a context long since lost to time and it’s perhaps mystical and pietistic at the expense of being activistic or missional.
Like every part of the church it believes itself to be the sole possessor of eternal salvation. I’ve heard it more than once from Orthodox Christians that they’re the ‘oldest’ (read: truest) church, but then I also hear this from Protestants and Catholics. There are important differences between the branches of the church, but there’s much more that we have in common.
As someone who’s often made despondent by much of the spinelessness of Protestant Christianity, I see the timelessness of the Orthodox Church as being an important strength.
Whilst many within my branch of the church squabble over everything from ecclesiology, female priests, gay marriage, spiritual gifts, eschatology and many more things besides, the Orthodox Church at least acts like an institution believing itself to be the guardian of sacred truth.
My Orthodox summer has opened my eyes and helped break me out of my echo chamber. More importantly however I showed me that I have even more siblings than I realised!