The Entire Thought

Perfect—Pitch Prayer

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks,
for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)


We hear Paul’s command to pray constantly, and we feel overwhelmed by the impossibility of always praying. But the “always" is the easy part of the command! And you can do it. Because “always" does not literally mean every single second; it is a figure of speech. When Willie Nelson sings “You are always on my mind," he does not mean that he thinks of you every second, but that you surround his activities, circle his thoughts, are an abiding presence to him.
You can do that with God. Of course, you would have to love God as much as Willie loves all the girls he left behind. God would have to be a personal friend of yours, a joy and comfort to be around, someone you really enjoyed spending time with. It is hard to make God that real, but you could. And if you did, you would fulfill Paul’s command.
That is, if you could fulfill the hard part of the command: “Pray.” Just saying prayers by reciting words is easy. But that is the lowest form of prayer. We have to accept the fact that God and we live in two different universes, we are on two different wavelengths, we don’t speak the same language. There is no way we can communicate on a verbal level.
Then how can we pray? Well, we deal with ultimate reality, the actual situation between God and us. We are a unique “word" spoken by God. Prayer is our understanding of that word, our
acceptance of that word, our becoming that word.
Let’s put that in context. God first spoke his Word, and that Word was the Son of God. That Word became flesh and lived a human life. His life was to do God’s will, to become on earth what he was when he came forth from God’s mind. The whole life of the original Word of God was to be continually in God’s presence. The prayer of Jesus was simply to be aware of his Father’s abiding presence.
That is how we are to pray. Simply to be ourselves with God. Like a rock or a rabbit is happy just being. Of course, a rock or a rabbit is not even aware of being what it is. Humans have the unique capacity not only to be, but to be aware that we exist, and aware that we exist in the face of our Creator. Moreover, unlike rocks and rabbits, who are simply specimens of rock or rabbit nature, we are individual, personal expressions of human nature. We do not fulfill our self by simply being what we now are. No, we have the power of becoming more than we now are. Our very nature is to improve on our nature.
We do that in countless ways: getting smarter, growing taller, increasing strength, amassing wealth, winning friends, influencing people. All of us work out of this same common human nature. But each one of us is also endowed with a personal grace: Each of us is a unique utterance of God. God never speaks the same word twice.
The purpose of our whole life is to understand the word of God that we are, to accept that word, to speak that word in its fullness back to God. We do that by living always in God’s presence, as Jesus did. That is “praying always.” And when we pay attention to the awesome fact that we live in God’s presence, when we attune our life-rhythm to God’s heartbeat — that is perfect-pitch prayer.

Fr. James Smith
Celebration, December 14, 2008

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