Prayer – just letting it happen.
The great plains of Spain.
One of the great joys of being on the Camino, especially walking it alone over long distances, is the emptiness. Emptiness is everywhere. There are none of the usual daily household chores, no-one else to cook for, nobody else to plan for, no letters or bills, no e-mails or internet (provided you leave your smart phones and tablets behind, which, once I didn’t), no television and, if you carry your own bed, no time-watching.
Straight, flat paths in Castilla La Mancha
Some stretches are especially empty, as in La Mancha, Zamora and Burgos/Palencia. On my first caminos one of my frequent prayers was, “Lord, teach me how to pray.” It still is although I recognise that my life in prayer is quite different now from at the beginning. I used repetitive prayers, mantras, the rosary, home-made litanies, mini-rituals and the Iona prayers.
I also just let prayer happen, or so I thought. This was much easier on the long straight stretches without yellow arrows to look out for or much change in scenery. My first experience of this was on the Via de La Plata in the Tierra de Barros, in the Province of Badajoz. There is one very long straight flat roman road which stretches among vineyards for 26 kilometres. It was on this plain in Extremadura that I began to say a prayer of thanksgiving. I began by thanking God for my parents and dwelt on all that they had given me, then on the doctor who came to the house and delivered me into the world – and who later took out my tonsils on the kitchen table and threw them into the fire. (I was four at the time). I thanked God for my sisters and my aunt, my grannies and grandpas, my teachers, my friends. I did so one by one, and because I had so much time, I could be thorough. I went through my school days, my adolescence, my years of studies, my career (of sorts) in teaching, my wife and family and children, my emergence into adulthood in my 50’s, the family break up, right up till now.
Seemingly interminable path out of Salamanca. Wonderful for “letting prayer happen”.
The thanksgiving covered successes and failures, joys and sorrows, people I had hurt, all the people I love, those I have had difficulty with. There seemed to me to be enough to fill all the mountains surrounding the huge plain I was walking on: mountains and mountains of people who had helped me survive this life, often in spite of myself and usually freely, providing for me, willingly helping me out of trouble or simply continuing to love me. I was amazed because I was still going with this thanksgiving list at the end of the day, like the never ending credits on “Around the World in 80 Days.”
Near Astorga, Via de La Plata. Yet another part of the Camino for letting prayer just happen.
This prayer just happened. I slipped into it without forethought. What happened next was that I imagined that not only could I fill mountains with the names of everyone who had helped me in life, but so, most likely, could everyone else, in a gigantic network of love and collaboration in life. To give thanks transforms complaints and resentfulness into gratitude, it recognises how, out of disaster comes new growth and allows us to appreciate the value of our failures and those who have helped us keep going. It was the magnitude of goodness and love which is our collaboration with God which astonished me most. The prayer was a great confirmation, for me, that God’s kingdom is here with us now, that all is not going to rack and ruin and that, for all the bad news which we gobble up daily from the media like insatiable pigs, the reality of the world is very different. If I feel sorry for myself or overwhelmed by bad news I now start on this prayer of of thanksgiving.
“Lord, let my whole being be directed to you so that you may be the God of compassion and love to me and through me.”
When I say, “just let prayer happen”, I need to qualify that with saying that it is not quite as “out of the blue” as it sounds. I had adopted from Gerry Hughes S.J. his adaptation of the Ignatian preparation for prayer which is, “Lord, let my whole being be directed to you so that you may be the God of compassion and love to me and through me.” I begin my day with this prayer, even before the morning offering. This is a hefty prayer: it not only re-focuses the present but enters wholly into another dimension of being in which we collaborate with God, in Him and He in us. I now recognise the importance of this prayer in producing, in me, the prayer of thanksgiving. It felt that I was just letting prayer happen, and I was, but it was prefaced by a determination to focus on God.
Nearing Medina del Campo, Camino de Levante. The ruined village of Honquilana and another straight road for letting prayer happen.
The prolonged and concrete prayer of thanksgiving gives way to a less systematic account of the goodness of individuals in my life. What flows from it is an immersion in Love, very much as in the fourth week of Ignatius’ Spiritual exercises, a prayer without words, a prayer of dwelling in the one body of humanity, of Christ. By the time I was on the Camino de Levante, when I was finding prayer easy, this carried me over the great plains of Spain, expansive like Love itself. By then I was also emptier so there was more room for Love. The vast plains in Spain helped make space in me to pray, to beg, that God might be the God of compassion and love, in me and through me. This blog is very much in the first person If, on reading it you encounter me in it, then I must pray this prayer much harder.
Faramontana on the Camino Sanabrés.