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The Table of Friendship

Written for my Irish friends

Like streams on the Mourne slopes, we merge round rock and turf, and descend together into still waters.

Like migratory birds we return to this table of friendship, to tell our stories, to remind ourselves of who we are. We are hard-wired to feast in this field together.

Time stills itself at the table of friendship as we bless our abundance and lift the cup our life. We chew and swallow the presence that inhabits the space between laughter, joy and sorrow.

The lime dressing soaks into our green leaves and beetroots, as spirit is drawn into matter. We are tossed together, refreshed by a foretaste of the merging feast that is our destiny.

We have come to a table where sacrifice lifts a glass to gratitude and sorrow reaches out to grasp the plate of joy.

We come to a table where our ego-shells resolve into porous membranes that we might pass beyond mere language into real presence.

And for all this feasting, still, only a glimpse of that broad heart-land that we are learning to make our homeland.

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The Tuning Fork of Prayer

Does God really need us to remind him of how great he is?

Is God an ego maniac that hungers and thirsts for our worship in order to slake His cosmic thirst?

Is God absent minded such that He often forgets our needs and will not answer us unless we constantly remind him with our petitions?

Of course these are silly rhetorical questions, and yet this is how we often relate to prayer and why many end up abandoning the practice.

What if we think of prayer as a divine tuning fork? A time to calibrate the strings of our humanity to the divine, universal notes? A time to come into resonance with the Holy Spirit.

Prayer and worship is not for placating God or attempting to manipulate God. It is a time for tuning our heart to His. God does not “need” our prayer, we need it, in order to be transformed into his likeness and become attentive to His voice.

We are often drawn to prayer from a place desperation and despair, seeking a healing or an answer to a petition, but if we take the time to just sit in God’s presence and allow His love to envelop us, we can discover a deeper level of security that is rooted in His being, and not in the circumstances of our life. In this kind of “tuning” prayer our whole perspective changes. This is the miracle of detaching with love that takes place in the divine encounter. It leads us out of our ego narrative traps, our deep irrational fears, and the narrow constricted places we get caught. This kind of prayer leads us out into a wide open space, a deep interior freedom. We may still want that healing or petition answered, but often not in the same way or in desperation because we have found a new resonance in Christ, in the living incarnate Word. With Him and in Him we can say to the Father: I love your will, may it be done. Glorify your name in me.

What about liturgical and sacramental prayer? We return over and over again to these ancient forms and we are tempted at times to say they feel like empty practices. But once we realize that worship is not about me or about getting my emotional needs met, but about finding that resonance with all of creation by entering into Christ’s own priestly offering to the Father, then we begin to allow the liturgy to “tune” our instrument to join in the orchestra, the one that sings in unison a response to God’s Love. This resonance can carry us when we feel empty, just by our showing up and being present. It can drawn us out of our isolation and into communion.