The Place of Prayer: Teresa's Picture of the Soul

THE WILLINGNESS TO RECEIVE

Prayer.  Why do I want to go there?  Prayer begins with a question.

Addressing God is an almost involuntary response for most people.  We see it in emergencies as well as in fits of anger or surprise.  God is addressed.  But we cannot call that prayer.  At best it is what is left over when prayer has been abandoned.

Will God hear the prayer of someone who only calls out when he almost cannot help it?  Of course.  But will that person hear God's answer?  Often not.  Why?  The reason that a person doesn't pray is the same reason why he can't hear God.  Our willingness to ask often reflects our willingness to receive.

It all comes to a question: Why pray?  Let's say that prayer opens the door to a wonderful new world and that the world is the one in which each of us is living right now.  Let's say that the joys and wonders of prayer are just behind the curtain of what we call "ordinary life" and it just takes our eyes some time to get used to it, like entering a dark room from a  lighted one.  Let's say this wonderful place is where all the most amazing people gather and have gathered for centuries to meet and be with the most delightful person of all.




GOD IS NOT FAR OFF

Where is this place?  Where is the door?  It is not far away.

Now what I am commanding you you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.  It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, 'Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?'  Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, 'Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?'  No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.  For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws;  then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you.  (Deuteronomy 30:12-16)

The place of prayer is at God's side.  The delight of prayer is in God's presence, his ways, and his words.  The place of prayer is also where we are at right now.  Like Jacob realized even as he was a fugitive from his own family sleeping on a rock pillow, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it. . . .  How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."  (Genesis 28:16-17)

I have been describing our souls as a place.  It captures the "otherness" and vastness we sense about this deep part of ourselves.  Teresa of Avila uses this idea: "I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions."  Perhaps when the psalmist says, "My soul waits for God alone" (62:1), it waits as a room waits to be filled by an inhabitant.  Maybe Jesus shows not only the value, but the vastness of the soul when he says, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet be ruined in his soul?"  (Mark 8:36)

FINDING THE PLACE OF PRAYER

Maybe the wonder and joy of prayer lies in what it cures, the most basic human illness: loneliness.  Nothing is more lonely than an empty soul.  It is lost and wandering.  It lies in ruin awaiting reconstruction.  Only the living God can satisfy or fill this place called the soul.  Only the God who comes to us can rebuild the soul-castle we inhabit.

We tend to think that we have to invite God into our souls as if he is not already there.  God is everywhere and most of all in our souls.  He is not absent.  He has not abandoned us.  Somehow we have been taught that he is far away.  No, our souls are not empty of God.  He is there waiting for us.  No, our souls are empty places because we do not inhabit them.

I seem rather to be talking nonsense, for, if this castle is the soul, there can clearly be no question of our entering it. For we ourselves are the castle: and it would be absurd to tell someone to enter a room when he was in it already! But you must understand that there are many ways of "being" in a place. Many souls remain in the outer court of the castle.  (Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle)

 The question that comes with prayer is the question of whether I want to relate to God in the context of my soul.  Loving God at a distance is a popular notion.  God is fine if he remains "out there" or "over there."  However, conversing and relating to him in the confines of our own soul can be difficult and even threatening.  Since God inhabits the human soul, we often vacate it, trying to escape intimacy with him.  As a result, our lives are fractured and confused or lived merely in the context of things that are visible and passing away.

For myself, I find that prayer does not begin so much with my great desire to be with God, but my great fear of being alone.  The yawning chasm of my nothingness drives me to his arms.  His eager reception makes running to him easier.  It makes praying possible.

I am slow to trust God, though.  Many things promise to take away the pain of an empty soul, but they take more than they give.  Worst of all, they keep me from entering into a conversational relationship with God.  They choke out all meaningful interactions with God, leaving me with God at a distance and my body as my sole source of energy and meaning.  It is pain that drives me into such distractions and sins, but it can also drive me into God's arms.  The pain is a soul empty of companionship.  What will fill it?

Lord, for some reason I fear coming close to you.  I fear what you might ask me to do.  I fear what I might need to face.  I fear, I fear.  But I find outside the walls of such companionship it is cold and lonely.  Let my pain overcome my fear.  Most of all, increase the anticipation of your goodness and kindness in my mind and in my heart.  From those teach me how to ask of you, how to pray.  Amen.

Do you think that your willingness to receive is connected to your willingness to ask?  Is it possible that your trouble with praying comes from a fear of intimacy with God?  Instead of pain driving you into distractions and sin, could you use it to drive you to God and his kindness?