Where prayer is valid

"You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid."

These words are from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding", from his Four Quartets.

Little Gidding was the home of Nicholas Ferrar.

The links above will tell you something about Nicholas Ferrar and the community he established with his family, about Little Gidding itself today, and about the fourth poem "Little Gidding" in Eliot's Four Quartets. They are here to provide a background for my practice yesterday.

Pope Francis asked for a day of prayer to be observed yesterday, Saturday 7 September 2013, a day of prayer for peace. At Little Gidding one of the spiritual practices was to keep the Night Watch, during which members of the family would read through the entire Psalter during the night hours. I chose, yesterday, to pray through the Psalms yesterday from noon to 5:00 p.m. as my prayer for peace.

I've done this before. In times of great need that supersede my personal wants, I turn to the Psalms. Reading them through takes from four to five hours. In this practice I find myself in what Eliot, in "Little Gidding", calls "the intersection of the timeless moment".

Photo credit Lois Keen

It is Saturday. I have been praying the psalms and suddenly I am moved to lift my eyes from the page and look around me. I gaze upon my garden, and past that to the labyrinth painted on the parking lot of the closed church next door, then to the trees and green of the church property and then beyond it all to the little piece of Norwalk, the neighborhood in which I live.

There I wonder about the gardens of Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq - are there still gardens there? What about the neighborhoods there?

Another time I notice the breeze. It is a cool, sunny, clear day with no humidity. I wonder if there is a breeze somewhere in Syria and is it conferring a benediction on those who notice it, the blessing I am feeling right now.

A black squirrel crosses the path of my vision. A robin perched on a branch over my head whinnies. I wonder about the animals in those countries torn my strife. I have a very light lunch and I eat it very slowly, wondering when the people, in the countries for which I am keeping vigil before God, have last eaten. Was their meal interrupted? Did they have to eat on the run, gulping down hurriedly whatever they could lay their hands on? Or might God grant a brief respite for people to eat together, in companionship, love, community?

Photo credit Lois Keen

All afternoon it was like this. Reading Psalms 42-72 I walk the labyrinth instead of sitting. The words from Psalm 63 stand out starkly: "O God, you are my God, eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water." I stop to clean a water tub next to the garden and fill it with fresh water - an enacted prophecy. I put the hose in and leave it to fill the tub as I read Psalms 64 and 65. As I read verse 9 of Psalm 65, "You visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous; the river of God is full of water" I look up and see the water has just now reached the rim of the tub.

"You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid." The Psalter of the Hebrew Scriptures have been the place of valid prayer for centuries. I have come to steep myself in those prayers and offer them to God, as others before me have done. I have some insights as to how God might be using my offering. And I let go of intentions so that God's Spirit might use these prayers in whatever way is most needed.

"...And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongues with fire beyond the language of the living."
(T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding", Four Quartets, 1944, Faber and Faber Limited, London.)

Grace Episcopal Church, Norwalk, Connecticut
Lois Keen