Prayers from the Deck

The summer has begun with our sunny and hot days. The cycle of picnics and outdoor celebrations is filling up our calendars. Some folks have been fortunate to move toward summer destinations. Others still look forward to time away at the beach, in the mountains, or visiting family.

Either in reality or in our imaginations, summer is to be a time which is a bit slower and more leisurely. Such an imagining is a challenge for those of us who live in Northern Virginia, where life seems to move faster and faster. The temptation is to move forcefully into the business of enjoying the summer, with its outdoor activities and with its social demands.

Each summer in this space, we read summer after summer about this season as an invitation to “summertime spirituality”. Each summer the reaction to the thoughts is the same. Parishioners talk about the need to develop a spirituality, to slow down, to have some more time for spiritual things. A goodly number think such an endeavor to either folly or just not possible to pursue.

Prayer and Hospitality

Summer is a time of hospitality. We often welcome guests to our homes or we are guests in other people’s homes. We give and receive hospitality. In offering hospitality, we offer an invitation which we pursue by preparing an appropriate space for the exchange of food, rest, conversation, and welcome. There is a keen awareness of the acceptance which we give to our guests.

In arriving, we welcome our guests with greetings, with embraces, with a time for talking and a time for listening. In these exchanges we make discoveries and our lives our enjoined in a new way.

The reading at last week's liturgy, from the Second Book of Kings, spoke of the hospitality offered to Elisha the

prophet. In the story, the couple often received the prophet as he passed in their area. As they grew in relationship to this “man of God”, the wife suggests that they prepare a “prophet’s room”. The room was simple enough: we read it had only a bed, a chair, and a lamp. There the couple received the prophet and their lives were co-joined.

The prophet’s assistant brought to the attention of the prophet that the couple was childless. This might have been noted as a lack of the blessing and full presence of God in their lives. The prophet brings a word of hope to the couple: next year they would have a son. God would transform their emptiness with the full joy of a child, a sign of his action among them.

Prayer as Welcome

Hospitality is a good metaphor for prayer. We invite the presence of God into our lives. We then set out preparing a place suitable for the encounter with God in our lives. The preparation is to remove obstacles to the meeting. In the case of prayer it is to sit still, to be silent, to listen. The distraction of business, of noise, and speaking is removed to enable clear attention to the guest of our mind and heart.

Some of the preparation is interior readiness of heart. Other is the preparation of physical space: a clear and focused area to hear and listen to God’s Word. The traditional definition of prayer of “lifting the mind and heart to God” is to focus our attention, to be fully open to the action of the Spirit.

The place of hospitality to receive the Lord in prayer might well be the back deck, or the beach in the quiet morning, or the mountain top of magnificent power. The encounter with the Lord might well be in the quiet corner of a Church where we “visit” the Lord. It might be in offering hospitality to friends and family. Prayer is about attention to the presence of God and being open to the mystery of that presence. Summer might be just such an invitation to the prayerful welcoming of God into our lives.

CDH