Dear People Whom God Loves,
Prayer and Our Image of God
The poem below struck me as deeply insightful. I have difficulty understanding poetry and am totally incapable of writing poetry. I invite you to read and ponder over it. When you have done that, then read what it says to me.
The poem is by C. S. Lewis, I found it on p. 205 of the book The Mystical Mind by Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg.
The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou, And dream of Phoedian fancies and embrace in heart Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art. Thus, always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme Worshiping with frail images of folk-lore dream, And all in their praying, self-deceived, address The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless Thou in magnetic mercy toThyself divert Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert; And all are idolators, crying unheard To a deaf idol, if thou take them at their word. Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great, Unspoken speech our limping metaphor translate.
When I pray humbly to God, I am praying to what I think and believe is God. God is not what I believe God is. I may have-and indeed we do have-some shadowy notion of what God is. However, God is really different from and way beyond what I know.
I could even say that I am praying to an idol because when I pray, what I have in my mind is something other than what God is.
I must remember that all the images of God and even the most hallowed formulations of our creed are symbols, metaphors pointing to the inexpressible mystery to which we give the name God. They are essential and extremely valuable to help me focus on the incomprehensible mystery and help me be in touch with the experiences of the early disciples of Jesus and other followers through the ages.
My simple, halting, and infantile prayer reaches to the heart of this loving mystery. Loving mystery is moved-not because my prayer is so good, but-because of the love that this mystery is.
I use a simple but poignant example. A little child draws some incoherent and unrecognizable lines and scribbles on a piece of paper. The child says, “Here, mommy. I drew a picture of a flower for you.” That touches a mother’s heart more deeply than any bouquet of beautiful roses.
I think that thatgives us a hint of the reaction God has when she listens to our halting and infantile prayers.
I encourage you to pray. Don’t worry about how you pray or how good it is. Mysterious Love doesn’t listen to our words or thoughts. Love listens to our hearts.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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