Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

Today's Gospel passage from Matthew 6 contains the origin of the Lord's Prayer, from Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. There is a lot to say about prayer, but I think it is helpful to start with just that, prayer.

There is a lovely book of Daily Prayers that draw from an intentional community's work of prayer, and these along with my usual Rowan Williams quotes, help me to think about this central act of humility and hope in the Christian life. The preface to the book says:
Henri Nouwen said that the only way to pray is to pray; the only way to try is to try. So the only way to pray well is to pray regularly enough that it becomes a practice of encounter. No prayer is hollow - whether it is answered in one way or the silent way.... To pray is to trace the edge of chaos and find a way to contain it, not control it (Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, xii).

So much of the life of Jesus is hidden: his walks to the wilderness; his early mornings; the sound of his voice; the words he said underneath his breath; the the sound of his breath. He sometimes lifted up his own voice in joy and praise... When he died, he prayed the night-prayer from the twenty-second psalm... In his prayer, we hear the interplay between form and freedom, and the space between them; the ways in which form and freedom feed each other, helping us enjoy the art of prayer when the art is available; helping us put old rhymes to our cries when the art of life seems cruel (Tuama, x).

Joining in the Lord's Prayer together we join in this hidden grace, this shared prayer to this merciful God.

In Christ,
Taylor