Be Still: Attention Is A Habit

Hey, Y'all,

Friday (and Sabbath) at last! Long week--looking forward to a change of scenery. Today's RST takes us back to Yancey's Prayer--and it starts out with one of my favorite verses--not because I'm any good at it, mind you, but because I aspire to it. :-) It's good stuff--check it out...and you've been prayed for today.

"Be still and know that I am God." I read in this familiar verse from Psalms two commands of equal importance. First, I must be still, something that modern life conspires against...Mystery, awareness of another world, an emphasis on being rather than doing, even a few moments of quiet do not come naturally in this hectic, buzzing world. I must carve out time and allow God to nourish my inner life...

[Patricia Hampl wrote that prayer] "fundamentally is a position, a placement of oneself...Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that [truly] is." Ah, a habit of attention...Be still...In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.

This stillness prepares me for the second command: "Know that I am God." Only through prayer can I believe that truth in the midst of a world that colludes to suppress, not exalt God." [Also, the obvious implication is that if He is God, I am not. Simon Tugwell says that] "God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing all those "important things" we have to do in our capacity as 'god,' and leave it to Him to be God." Prayer allows me to admit my failures, weaknesses, and limitations to the One who responds to human vulnerability with infinite mercy.

To let God be God, of course, means climbing down from my own executive chair of control. I must uncreate the world I have so carefully fashioned to further my ends and advance my cause...If original sin traces back to two people striving to become like God, the first step in prayer is to acknowledge or "remember" God--to restore the truth of the universe, "that man may know he dwells not in his own," as Milton says.