Praying with Stanley Hauerwas Pt. 2
Here’s a second of four prayers I want to share with you from Hauerwas’ Prayers Plainly Spoken.
Blessed Trinity, you gather us so that we will not be alone. You will us to enjoy one another, to rejoice in one another’s existence. Just as you can be three, perfectly sharing but without loss of difference, so you make us capable of love without fear that in our love we will be lost. Yet we do find ways to be alone, to be in hell. Caught up in fantasies that we can create ourselves, we become frozen in our self-imposed smiles of self-satisfaction. Because we can fool others into believing we are in control, we even come to believe it ourselves. Great and powerful Lord, shake us free of such loneliness that we may cry for help and be surprised by the willingness of your people to share. How happy we are to be your people. Amen.
This one connected with me very deeply. I think many know what it’s like to be in such a hell. Hell, which is the perfect word for it, is exactly what it is outside of the flowing cycle of love that is the Triune God. In such a hell all I end up with is darkness, a crippling, numbing, darkness. I can’t see my own reflection, who I am, nor can I see the one in the room with me. I ignore him. He is pushed away in favor of what is called relaxation, sleep without rest. The hours tick away but he’s still there. Sometimes he’s quiet, others he overwhelms with violent grace.
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:8-12 NRSV)
Thank you God for the surprise of receptive and tender people and that you won’t seem to leave me alone.
