![\"Straight,](\"http:\/\/www.the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/P1050707.jpg\")
<\/a>Straight, flat paths in Castilla La Mancha<\/p><\/div>\n
Some stretches are especially empty, as in La Mancha, Zamora and Burgos\/Palencia. \u00a0On my first caminos one of my frequent prayers was, “Lord, teach me how to pray.” \u00a0It still is although I recognise that my life in prayer is quite different now from at the beginning. \u00a0I used repetitive prayers, mantras, the rosary, home-made litanies, mini-rituals and the Iona prayers.<\/p>\n
I also just let prayer happen, or so I thought. \u00a0This was much easier on the long straight stretches without yellow arrows to look out for or much change in scenery. \u00a0My first experience of this was on the Via de La Plata in the Tierra de Barros, in the Province of Badajoz. \u00a0There is one very long straight flat roman road which stretches among vineyards for 26 kilometres. \u00a0It was on this plain in Extremadura that I began to say a prayer of thanksgiving. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0I did so one by one, and because I had so much time, I could be thorough. \u00a0I 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, \u00a0the family break up, right up till now.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Seemingly interminable path out of Salamanca. Wonderful for “letting prayer happen”.<\/p><\/div>\n
The thanksgiving covered successes and failures, \u00a0joys and sorrows, people I had hurt, all the people I love, those I have had difficulty with. \u00a0There 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.”<\/p>\n
<\/a>Near Astorga, Via de La Plata. Yet another part of the Camino for letting prayer just happen.<\/p><\/div>\n
This prayer just happened. \u00a0I slipped into it without forethought. \u00a0What happened next was that I imagined that not only could\u00a0I<\/em> fill mountains with the names of everyone who had helped me in life, but so, most likely, could everyone<\/em> else, in a gigantic network of love and collaboration in life. \u00a0To 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. \u00a0It was the magnitude of goodness and love which is our collaboration with God which astonished me most. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0If I feel sorry for myself \u00a0or overwhelmed by bad news I now start on this prayer of of thanksgiving.<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0I had adopted from Gerry Hughes S.J.<\/a> 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.” \u00a0 I begin my day with this prayer, \u00a0even before the morning offering. \u00a0This 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. \u00a0I now recognise the importance of this prayer in producing, in me, the prayer of thanksgiving. \u00a0It felt that I was just letting prayer happen, and I was, but it was prefaced by a determination to focus on God.<\/p>\n Nearing Medina del Campo, Camino de Levante. The ruined village of Honquilana and another straight road for letting prayer happen.<\/p><\/div>\n The prolonged and concrete prayer of thanksgiving gives way to a less systematic account of the goodness of individuals in my life. \u00a0What flows from it is an immersion in Love, very much as in the fourth week of Ignatius’ Spiritual exercises<\/a>, a prayer without words, a prayer of dwelling in the one body of humanity, of Christ. \u00a0By 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. \u00a0By then I was also emptier so there was more room for Love. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0This blog is very much in the first person \u00a0If, on reading it you encounter me in it, then I must pray this prayer much harder.<\/p>\n Faramontana on the Camino Sanabr\u00e9s.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. \u00a0Emptiness is everywhere. \u00a0There are none of the usual … Continue reading “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.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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