Grace's Window: Entering the Season of Prayer - Softcover

Guthrie, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819223255 ISBN 13: 9780819223258

Publisher: Morehouse Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

Suzanne Guthrie teaches us about the seasons of prayer by letting us enter her own in these forty meditations stretching from Advent through Pentecost.

Against the landscape of northern California, Guthrie gently leads us through the ancient 'illuminative way’ of prayer, learning to see the extraordinary reality of God in the ordinary – the dry grass and circling hawks, raging firestorms in summer and the heavy winter rains. “Pray as you are drawn to pray,” she tells us, not as someone has told you how to pray.

About this title

About the Author

Suzanne Guthrie is an Episcopal priest, spiritual director, retreat leader, mother of four, and Benedictine oblate. She is the author of Praying the Hours. She lives in Citrus Heights, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

GRACE'S WINDOW

Entering the Seasons of Prayer

By Suzanne Guthrie

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2008 Suzanne Guthrie
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8192-2325-8

Contents

Foreword by Mary C. Earle
Prologue
Grace's Window Advent * Season of Conversion
1. Praying the Apocalypse
2. Aurora Borealis
3. The Music of Loneliness
4. Practice Time
5. Grace's Window
A Sense of Place Christmas * Season of Compassion
6. Rachel
7. A Sense of Place
8. The Holy Name
9. The Pilgrims' Way
Stargazers Epiphany * Season of Illumination
10. Stargazers
11. First Love
12. Come and See
13. Morning Prayers
14. Noon Office
15. Wing Chair
16. Crosswalk
17. Room for Another
18. A Habit of Gratitude
19. Pillar of Cloud
My Mother's Studio Lent * Season of Insight
20. Hospital Corridor
21. Sign of the Covenant
22. Bulldozers
23. My Mother's Studio
24. Refusing to Pray
25. The Rugged Terrain of My Heart
26. Night Watch
27. Grace, My Zen Master
28. Setting the Table
29. Good Friday
Prayers in Sacred Time Easter * Season of Union
30. The Empty Alley
31. Redeeming the Time
32. A Discipline of Doubt
33. Prayers Underground
34. The Labyrinth
35. Prayers in Sacred Time
36. Altar to an Unknown God
Homesick Ascension * Season of Unknowing
37. Homesick
38. Cathedral Heights
Pillar of Fire Pentecost * Season of Discipleship
39. Downtown Express
40. Pillar of Fire

CHAPTER 1

Praying the Apocalypse

All summer in Northern California the sun mercilessly bakes the earth, crackingit into jagged pieces, grasping life from every blade of grass. The hollow grassand dry earth and ominous breezes await the arbitrary whim of firestorms thatrage over the countryside during the season after Pentecost.

I am afraid of California firestorms. One day while I was sitting on the floorsorting laundry, I heard the wind suddenly whip around the wrong corner of thehouse. Curious, I went outside to discover the sky over the hills blackening,and within a few minutes smoke completely covered the sun. As the sky darkened Isaw the earth glowing, then erupt into flame as if just behind the hills theground had opened up, collapsing piece by piece into a widening pit of hell.

I hurried the children into the car and then learned from the radio the fire wasfarther away than it seemed. A few blocks from us, police set up a barricade toprevent curiosity seekers from going toward the fire. We went home to watch thesky. I stayed alert all night after packing photo albums and other preciousthings in boxes near the door. The Napa Valley fire was contained eight milesfrom our neighborhood even though it had looked as if it were just at the end ofour street.

In the late autumn in California, other portents appear in the sky heraldingchange. Clouds gather on the horizon. At sunset, blood-red rivers of light runbetween the last of this day's clouds. "Play outside now," say the mothers inour neighborhood. "Play outside as much as you can before the rains come."

By early December there is little daylight for play outside after school. Daysare shorter; gray afternoons descend suddenly into blackness. Deep in the night,foggy moisture comes in low along the ground, across roofs and streets, betweenhouses, pouring from the dark behind the streetlamp into the orange light.

Finally the rains come. The fire watch is curtailed but this is only a lullbetween dangers. The ground cannot hold the winter torrent of water that willcome, and the flood watch begins. The portents in the sky in California inspirean unsettling and primitive fear in me.

Prayer arises out of the awareness of mortality, rather than the promise ofeternal life. Praying begins not so much as a response to a secret, innerspiritual call, but rather to the worldly threat of change, personal cataclysm,or impending death. The soul recoils into a state of prayer. Prayer begins notso much in piety as in panic.

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earthdistress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. Peoplewill faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for thepowers of the heavens will be shaken. (Luke 21:25-26)

The Christian year begins in late fall with warnings of the impendingapocalypse. This chaotic upheaval reflected in its scripture readings in turnreflects the chaos of the individual soul in personal cataclysm. Just asindividual prayer often begins in facing illness, death, change, tragedy, fires,and floods, the Christian year calls for conversion in the context of the end ofthe whole world, when the threat of apocalypse awakens the most radical call toprayer.

Perhaps every prayer in its essence is a cry uttered at the end of the world.Perhaps the end of the world bears every prayer ever murmured. Prayer occursboth inside and outside time. This summer's fire in California is the firewaiting the work of the winnowing fork. The flood to come this winter is Noah'sflood.

Observing the sky at the onset of winter, I am almost afraid I have seensomething I should not have seen. In blood-red sunsets and clouds lit with fierywrath and beauty I have seen a rare secret, something terrible and beautiful.The end of time threatens upon the horizon, coming upon the clouds, but soonthis vision closes in the dark cloud of winter. Soon the rains come.

During the rest of the time, during the other seasons, prayer does not seem sourgent. Still, I practice this prayer in Advent for that end time, that lastcrucial breath. I want to learn to pray so that my last moment might be prayerand not a hollow gasp. When I pray for God to rend the heavens and come down,when the skies open for the last time and the Son of man comes on clouds fromthe horizon, I want to look with longing, not fear, toward the horizon.

CHAPTER 2

Aurora Borealis

Once in my childhood, I saw the sky open. My mother woke up the whole family andtold us to put on our coats and come out on the front lawn. The sky blazed withluminous pictures. Moving lights like massive theater curtains billowed in asilent storm, suspended over us from somewhere deep in heaven. Random lightsexploded like fireworks and confetti streamers. In the north a giant arc of allcolors rippled in many directions at once, never losing its light, constantlychanging but never moving.

I thought the stormy sky should have been as deafening as fireworks, becausemoving lights filled the sky from just above us as far into space as we couldsee and the movements were as wide as the horizons. But the aurora was silent.We would have slept through it but for my mother's wakeful eye.

She told me that Indians believed these giant northern lights were magicalhorsemen riding toward them bringing the end of the world. Did the horsemenbring doom or salvation? I don't remember. I could never imagine the Indiansreally being afraid of this sight, as awesome as it was; I sensed that suchglory belonged to the sky. That night we simply beheld what is often there buthidden from our sleeping senses, like the silent presence of seraphim blazingamid the smoky train of God's mantle. That night we saw what is there but whatwe often cannot see.

When the northern lights faded we went inside. I spent another hour sitting onthe floor, writing in my notebook with apostolic urgency about the experience,compelled to describe the indescribable.

In those days we lived outside the edge of town, where city lights did notobscure the night sky. As the town pushed its boundaries around us, it broughtstreetlights and the sky disappeared at night except for the barest outline ofconstellations. With such artificial light, we couldn't see the darkness—or knowit, or learn about it, or come to love it. My mother never disapproved of mybrother's battle of wits against the town. In a quiet act of vandalism heunscrewed the bulb of the streetlight in front of our house to give us back partof the night, but the town prevailed in the end. Even as a child I found itironic that the artificial light of the streetlight was a world of darknessitself, veiling the magnificent lights of the night sky in a dull orange glow.

I have never seen the aurora borealis since. For whatever reason—city lights,streetlights, my own lack of awareness—there is never a dark enough night. Butnow I know it exists.

In California the night fog comes in slowly and then the rains come. The earthgreedily quenches its thirst. The rains bring a new silence and peace in thespaces between the houses and in the streets.

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. (Mark 13:33)

The threatening clouds do not bring the end of the world and yet I have prayedthe apocalypse. I have prayed the prayer of the dying. Prayer opened a newdimension of life for me, like a figure in a medieval book of hours lifting theflat blue backdrop of the sky at the horizon to peer beyond the firmament into acelestial realm of planets and stars. This prayer creates in me a desire to seeand hear what is just behind my life, to look just beyond the streetlamp intothe clarifying darkness, to listen for auroras in the silence, to try to expresswhat is in the fantastic display just behind the darkness and silence.

If the apocalypse is at every moment, then I must pray at every moment. Theurgency to pray is not only a call, but could become, perhaps, a way of life; away of looking and then seeing what is there and what is meant to be seen, a wayof listening and then hearing what is there and meant to be heard. Prayerbecomes a way of transcending time and space, but at the same time it is arediscovery of time and space, earth and sky, life and death, light and dark.

The watch upon the horizon is the waiting in darkness of uncreated light. Withinthe luminous night, you learn to see that the end of time undulates like auroracurtains at the boundary of the soul. Prayer teaches the whole of life to becomea watch, for you never know when the sky will open its mysteries or when theLord will come upon the blazing clouds.

CHAPTER 3

The Music of Loneliness

Once, in the deepest part of the night, I heard the voice of my own loneliness.Except for the voice itself, I remember little else of the circumstances. Iremember the cobblestones and white lamplight of Greenwich Village, and that Iwas with friends after a concert at a jazz club. We meandered through theVillage, walking reluctantly toward the train that would take us back to LongIsland. I was seventeen.

On a street I didn't know and would never find again, I heard the sound of alone jazz saxophone. The player was invisible. No detectable movements came fromdoorways or basement stairs. The music filled the cavern above the narrowstreet, echoing as it might in a cathedral.

I remember thinking a banal thought: this could never happen in my neighborhood.Lights would come on, windows would open, people would shout, the phone in theoffender's house would ring, the disturbance would be the talk of the school busstop next morning. But here in the city, this sound of beauty and sadness,perfection and longing played upon one hundred windowsills in solitude.

We lingered on the street, listening. This cry in the night seemed to containthe essence of time itself. This music was not a rehearsal for another, morecelebrated moment, nor a drill in technique and quality of sound, nor arecollection of some past triumph. This music belonged alone to this moment ofsolitude on this city street. This voice was a prayer rising to its god.

Suddenly it seemed, or seems in my memory, as though my own sadness and longingwere outside myself and in the music. This unseen musician seemed to be readingmy soul and playing it to the black and endless heaven. The music carried withit every inexpressible desire I could feel at seventeen and every longing Iimagined I might ever feel. This sound taught me to recognize the cavern ofemptiness within myself. Every possible seed of longing and sadness that layhidden and untouched in my fate seemed to be put forth as an offering in theperfection of that voice in the night. Especially that unnamed and infinitelonging that eclipses all others—the longing for God, rising to the unresponsivenight, lost, unless the longing becomes a prayer.

I went toward the Long Island train with a new awareness, conceived in themusical notes of a stranger's prayerful sadness.

Afterward I would remember the music of my loneliness. My heart would refer tothe prophetic sound of the saxophone as if it were the key to some ancient textof wisdom. I would recognize this voice at other times and in other forms,modulations, disguises, translations. I know this voice. It is persistent, itwalks through dreams, it awakens me from sleep. It haunts the days, hiding inevery shadow. I look for it even as I run from it, straining to listen even as Iclap my hands to my ears like a child given a command she does not want to hear.

The voice clarifies a dilemma I would rather ignore, the dilemma of two equalfears: fearing God and fearing existence without God. If the foundation ofexistence is God, then everything about my life must change; if there is no God,no change is possible. My soul, like a deserted street, a wilderness of emptywindows, hears the prophet's voice: if there is no God, there is no realloneliness, for if there is no God there is no such thing as real longing. Andso the voice cries for me to turn every particle of my being toward theloneliness, to orient my life in a way that accommodates God's existence. I letin the invisible saxophone player to sing through my own soul, crying my heartaloud to the black sky, making my offering for me until I lift my own voice andmake my cry of loneliness a prayer.

A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass,their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flowerfade, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.(Isaiah 40:6-8)

The prophet's exquisite cry is the forerunner to my first feeble lifting of myown solo voice in prayer. John the Baptist, the great teacher of prayer, criesaloud in the wilderness to prepare for the reality of the presence of God. Ihear his voice as I turn in longing toward God and practice the conversion of myloneliness to prayer.

Is it possible that beyond the enfolding darkness the Lord cries out to me withlonging?

CHAPTER 4

Practice Time

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waitsfor the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receivesthe early and late rains. (James 5:7)

All autumn the strains of a saxophone playing "Jolly Old St. Nicholas,""Sleighbells Ring," and other holiday songs have come from the baby's room wheremy son practices. Practice time is in the early evening while I am cooking. Ileave the kitchen stove to help.

"Try that measure with an F sharp. That's right. Now play the phrase."

Jack plays it correctly while I am in the room. Back at the stove and the over-browned meat, I listen. He renders the song with an F natural.

In the living room my daughter Grace plays an elementary version of thebarcarole from Tales of Hoffman on the piano in 4/4 time despite yesterday'sexhaustive coaching. I leave the kitchen and pull the opera from the recordcabinet, find the aria, and draw my daughter to the record player.

"Let's dance it," I say. "ONE two THREE ONE two THREE ONE TWO THREE ONE twoTHREE ONE two THREE ONE two three ONE two three ONE TWO THREE!" We dance, ourhands clasped together, smiling. We try it at the piano together. I return tothe dried-out vegetables as the Barcarole mysteriously converts back into 4/4time.

Upstairs there is a borrowed drumset whose music shakes the light fixtures. Awobbly, lurching anti-rhythm creates a surreal atmosphere. I go upstairs andstand in the doorway. Trevor finally looks up. There is a stunning silence.

"Why don't you practice with the metronome?" I suggest.

"It's too hard with the metronome."

"Precisely." I wait a moment and try again. "Do you want to see that program Itaped with Max Roach teaching?"

"Not now, Mom. I'll just play along with the radio."

The rice has become crisp around the edges of the pan.

Prayer is an art that asks for daily attention. I found this discipline verydifficult, especially at first. In many ways, learning to pray daily is likelearning to play music. I think about this as I help my children learn topractice their instruments.

Learning to play music, like learning to pray, is a complex and tedious processthat depends upon very boring rote work. Years go by before there is any realgratification. But the years of unrewarded labor at a musical instrument willultimately yield music as well as the lesson of practice: in retrospect, allthat time was a way of achieving disciplined progress toward any endeavor weundertake.

A friend describes prayer as playing a huge cathedral organ with myriad stops,swells, buttons, keyboards, and pedals that combine in infinite ways to make themusic of prayer. This may be true, but if I thought of prayer as thiscomplicated I would be afraid to begin. Every musician must start somewhere, ifonly by banging on a garbage-can lid or lifting the voice from speech into song.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from GRACE'S WINDOW by Suzanne Guthrie. Copyright © 2008 Suzanne Guthrie. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819223255
• ISBN 13: 9780819223258
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 147