Prayers by the Lake - XIX - by St. Nikolai of Zicha

XIX

Amidst the racket and ridicule of people my prayer rises toward You, O my King and my Kingdom. Prayer is incense, that ceaselessly censes my soul and raises it toward You, and draws You toward her.

Stoop down, my King, so that I may whisper to You my most precious secret, my most secret prayer, my most prayerful desire. You are the object of all my prayers, all my searching. I seek nothing except You, truly, only You.

What could I seek from You, that would not separate me from You? Should I seek to be Lord over a few stars, instead of reigning as Lord with You over all the stars?

Should I seek to be first among men? How shameful it would be fore me, when You would seat me at the last place at Your table!1

Should I seek for millions of human mouths to praise me? How horrible it would be for me, when all those mouths are filled with earth.2

Should I seek to be surrounded by the most precious ob¬jects from the entire world? How humiliating it would be for me for those objects to outlast me and be glistening even as earthen darkness fills my eyes!3

Should I seek for You not to separate me from my friends? Ah separate me, O Lord, separate me from my friends as soon as possible, because they are the thickest wall between You and me.

“Why should we pray,” say my neighbors, “when God does not hear our prayers?” But I say to them: “Your prayer is not prayer, but peddling merchandise. You do not pray to God to give you God but Satan. Therefore, the Wisdom of heaven does not accept the prayers from your tongue.”

“Why should we pray,” grumble my neighbors, “when God knows what we need beforehand?” But I sadly answer them: “That is true, God knows–that you need nothing except Him alone. At the door of your soul He is waiting to come in.4 Through prayer the doors are opened for the entrance of the majestic King. Does not one of you say to the other at your door: ‘Please enter’?

“God does not seek glory for Himself but for you. All the worlds in the universe can add nothing to His glory, much less can you. Your prayer is a glorification of you, not of God. Fullness and mercy are to be found in Him. All the good words that you direct to Him in prayer, return to you twofold.”

O my illustrious King and my God, to You alone I bow down and pray. Flood into me, as a raging stream into thirsty sand. Just flood me with Yourself, life-giving Water; then grass will easily grow in the sand and white lambs will graze in the grass.

Just flood into my parched soul, my Life and my Salvation.

Herman Hesse, on "Trees"

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the forces of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals it’s death wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk, in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal tress grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought. I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."

Flowers for God

by Fr Sergei Fudel (1901-77), married Russian priest, bearer of light and love for the Church during and beyond his years in prison and exile at the hands of the Communist régime:

People who believe in God in their own way, yet do not believe in the Church, often say, "Does God really need all this ritual? Why do we have to have all these formalities? We only need love, beauty, and humaneness." A man, on his way to the woman he loves, seeing flowers, buys them or picks them and brings them to her, never stopping to think whether this is a formality or not. Yet this is the very concept of church ritual.

Love for God gives birth to the beauty and humanity of the ritual, which we lay, like flowers, at the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is to be in love with God and to feel that the Church is His body which has remained with us and lives with us on earth. This feeling expresses itself in actions which we call ritual.

However, if only external and dead action remains, then such action will be sterile and self-deceptive, not only in Christianity but in any sphere of human life, even in science. This truth should be clear to everyone.

Formalism and sanctimoniousness is not Christianity. Each one of us has to move along this long and narrow way from non-Christianity to Christianity, from artificial flowers to live ones.

"In a world full of so much ugliness, liturgy should be a rest for the soul, a repose where the soul can breathe.

Beauty is not aestheticism. It is not an aim in itself. It is a glimpse of God's glory. We shouldn't stay with a glimpse . . . because people are thirsting for beauty and for what they rightly feel is behind beauty: the glory of God revealed to us.

Heaven opens in liturgy. Beauty in liturgy costs time, love, care, commitment. We must take time for preparing the liturgy, looking for the beauty of the flowers, the songs, the space, the incense, the candles. All this has nothing to do with pure aestheticism, but it is an expression of love.

The faithful can tell whether or not there is the love of God in a church. My experience is that wherever you have a beautiful liturgy, people come. People are attracted, and rightly. We should not say that this is only a superficial attraction.

Beauty is one way to God. It should never be separated from goodness and truth. Beauty without goodness is not beauty; so love for the poor has to be cultivated together with love for beauty -- and, of course, with love for the truth."

-----Cardinal Schonborn

Mathis Gruenwald

I'm taking a break from all my verbalizing, to show some images. Gruenwald(1480-1528) is justifiably remembered for his rather "grue-some" depiction of Christ's crucifixion. These two images I find quite powerful: "The Resurrection"(above) and "The Agony of St. Anthony"(below.)



(extra credit: do you know how St. Anthony is linked to L.S.D.? Clue: "St. Anthony's Fire.")

As a child rests in its mother's arms, so I rest in you...

A Psalm of Darkness, Silence and Despair

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low:
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

I've never seen a night so long,
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud,
To hide its face and cry.

Did you ever see a Robin weep,
When leaves begin to die?
That means he's lost his will to live.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star,
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.


By Hank Williams, noted psalmist, performer, and martyr for his faith

the line, "...the silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky..." is pure gold!!

A Time to Listen

"Psalms are answering the God who has addressed us. God’s word precedes these words: the prayers don’t seek God, they respond to the God who seeks us.

Presumptuous prayer speaks to God without first listening... You cannot breath out what you have not first breathed in."

----Eugene H. Peterson

In about a month, we will have another "40 Hours Eucharistic Celebration" at our church. You might remember that last year we decided to revive this ancient practice that fell by the wayside in recent times. With the consecrated host(we call it "Jesus") enshrined on the altar for all to see, it is a time for some group prayer, but mostly individual, private, quiet prayer. We keep the church open day and night for 40 hours
and encourage people to stop in for quiet prayer whatever the time.



During this next month I hope to have people consider silent prayer. Our congregation is a talkative, group-oriented bunch, and some think meditative prayer is only for monasteries. So don't be surprised if I use this space to collect thoughts on this.

"Be still and know that I am God."

"I will come to you in the silence."

There was a quote somewhere about the ultimate in contemplative prayer: to be able to hear God listening to us.

The website for the celebration is stnicksfortyhours.blogspot.com and I hope to post some of the group prayers
in mp3 form so you can listen in -------or just be silent with yourself!!