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| Photograph by Matilda Clifford |
Pray as you can, not as you can’t.
Abbot John Chapman
For a while now we have had a certain discomfort with our
prayers at meal time.
Set prayers become words of habit. My grandfather used to
pray in Dutch, in all probability because his father, who might have actually known
Dutch, prayed that way. My father prayed the same prayer before every meal as
my grandfather did, but only in Afrikaans. Something might be said for tradition
but somehow too much is lost in the process.
In that sense an informal or free form prayer is better. However,
that still left us uncomfortable on a certain level. We feel that we are
conveying a certain message by praying that way. As if we are the point of origin
in this case. We have done the planning and preparing with the food that we
indeed feel privileged to have and with that done, we call on God and say thank
you. Our discomfort lies on the level of the prayer directed to the God out
there. It implies a certain separateness, aloofness, distance. And that is not
at all how we experience God in daily living. He is always present, absolutely
present. As we have said on numerous occasions in our posts –God in all things.
This form of prayer does not convey this experience sufficiently for us.
What to do then?
At a few meals we did nothing. It did not work. It left us
empty. (Not the meal! The not praying.)
We have to admit that not praying made us feel guilty as
well. After all, we’ve been praying for every meal since we managed to string
words in a sentence.
What I personally found very enriching and wonderful in this
whole process was how we spoke about all the aspects of it all the time and
worked at it – how we longed for something deeper and more substantial; a form
of prayer that is a truer reflection of our spirituality. What rang true as we
tried it and what did not. And our feelings of guilt when we did not pray. It
was lived spirituality in the true sense of the word.
It was startling to realise how deep certain perceptions and
habits are engraved in us. Here we are, educated people living in the 21st
century feeling guilty for not saying a prayer at meal time. Why? Because we
are not grateful for what we have? No. We are grateful, but within a much wider
context than our prayers suggested. Does not saying a prayer make you a bad person?
In whose eyes? And according to what yardstick? When does a certain action or
the lack thereof become mere moralism? Do we disappoint God by merely sitting
down and digging in? I have a feeling he/she gets much less offended than
certain members of his/her flock.
Nevertheless, we longed for a ritual befitting our daily
experience of God.
We arrived at the following:
After dishing up and sitting down Matilda (who is mostly the
cook) tells me a little about the way she prepared the meal. What ingredients
did she use, which recipe did she follow, what did she harvest from our own
garden. We look at the food. We smell it.
We look at each other, notice each other. When we have
guests we thank them for sharing the meal with us and being with us.
Then we take hands and become quiet. We enter into the
silence. We practice the art of stopping. We become aware of being held by God,
of this simple meal being an integral part of a majestic whole, of us stepping
into a process that was active long before we have arrived. For us, only the silence
acknowledges that sufficiently. Words, however beautiful and even for us who
love words, make a hash of things. After several minutes I say amen and we
start to eat.
Somehow, over the years I developed the bad habit of eating
fast. This way of prayer led me to eat much slower and to really taste and
appreciate my food. The meal itself becomes an extension of what we did before
we started to eat. It becomes prayer in itself.
This feels much better and we are much more satisfied with
this way of “saying grace”.
A couple of years ago we read something by Richard Rohr and
in principle totally agreed with him. Now, through this whole process, we have
lived right into it: “Eventually you will find yourself preferring to say, ‘Prayer
happened and I was there’ more than ‘I prayed today’.”
George
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