the poem requires of the writer not society or instruction,
but a patch of profound and unbroken solitude.
– Mary Oliver
I return to poetry often, not out of compulsion but out of necessity.
One of my favourite poets is Mary Oliver. I recently read her book A Poetry Handbook. In A Handbook, she outlines how to read, write, and listen to poetry. Using some of the greats as guides - Dickinson, Keats, Frost - Oliver writes on the craft of poetry. She notes that the mark of a great poet is their ability to move “beyond the margins of the self.”1 Reading Oliver’s handbook I was stricken with the parallels between prayer and poetry.
I return to poetry because it trains me in honest prayer. That is poetry helps cultivate a stillness and silence necessary for contemplative prayer. Prayer not as a grocery list or anxious rant but prayer as a “possible love affair” between my heart and God.
Yes, the practice of prayer can be a time to contend, intercede, and rant. But in the end, prayer is union and communion. Prayer is the place where our heart’s deepest longings are met and seen. Prayer is an exchange between two lovers. And love is not self-seeking.
Oliver argues that good and honest poetry – poetry that moves beyond the self - is a combination of consistency and attentiveness to the still, cautious voice of inspiration that arises from solitude.
She writes:
If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet… in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet - there would be no romance, no passion….
Writing a poem is not so different….
Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine.
It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself - soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.2
The “It” Oliver describes is a still, small voice that inspires the poet. Or put differently, it is the voice of Love. It is the voice of Romeo calling for Juliet.
I do not mean that God is a swooning and moody lover but that prayer is the initiator. Prayer begins with God you see.
God has the first word. God woos, invites, and waits to be wanted. And as Mary Oliver reminds us, if we fail to show up there can be no possibility of romance.
Many of us long for the ever-present love and voice of God. To live in a state of constant harmony and rhythm with the Still Small Voice. But the reason we often fail to hear and recognize God’s voice is not because we lack fervour or sentiment or even a desire but because we lack the discipline of consistency and solitude.
This image of prayer is perhaps most wonderfully described in the poem “They Sit Together on the Porch,” by Wendell Berry. Berry describes two aged lovers, seasoned by time sitting together on the porch one night after dinner. It goes like this:
They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe.
They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows.
They have One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.3
The meal is over, the dishes have been washed, and now they sit. No words are exchanged, they are simply comfortable and at home in silence. Alive yet still and basking in the presence of the other.
I deeply long for a love like this. A love that is deep and wide and mature. Unhurried and non-anxious. A love that has traversed years, sorrows, pains, hell and high water and has remained.
Yet this love is not found in accomplishments, a partner, a career or money. All of these have their place. But this quiet, faithful love is cultivated in and through prayer. A particular kind of prayer - what the ancients call silent or contemplative prayer.
Silent Prayer
Jacques Philippe describes silent prayer as “prayer that consists of facing God in solitude and silence for a time in order to enter into intimate loving communion with him.”4
Silent prayer moves beyond talking at or to God toward being with God.5 Like two aged lovers, we need not ask or exchange words but simply delight in the presence of the other. Silent prayer is not about mustering up religious words or supernatural experiences but cultivating a quiet intimacy.
Simply put, “to pray contemplatively means to gently move towards quieter, simpler, less cluttered prayer gently.” Contemplative prayer is about befriending stillness and silence for the sake of love and transformation. For if we can grow “to hear God in the silence, then we can, “hear and see and taste and smell and touch God in everything.”6
Where do we go from here?
We go to Jesus.
Jesus is the master pray-er and is himself prayer. Again, prayer is communion and union – a possible love affair. It is walking in the cool of the day with our Creator.
Jesus was the embodiment of complete unbridled intimacy with God. Jesus was Eden incarnate. This is what Saint John is getting at in the opening lines of his gospel:
The Word became flesh and blood and moved
into the neighbourhood with us.7
Jesus the great and living poem that “moves with great skill” from the role of Creator to “the role of neighbour and friend.”8 In his incarnation Jesus walks, talks, and teaches us to pray.
We learn to pray as he did in hopes that we might come to know Him. The aim of prayer, like romance, is to know the other, and to move beyond the sphere of the self.
By following Jesus in his prayers, day after day, year after year, we cultivate a seasoned romance like two seasoned lovers at home and ease in each other’s presence.
How? We show up and shut up, as Eugene Peterson once said. Then we get comfortable in the discomfort of silence. First, in fits and spurts then over time the Spirit speaks and the romance grows deeper and wider.
As in poetry so in prayer
Poetry helps cultivate the practice of silent prayer. Poetry also helps nurture a grander vision of prayer and love.
In two weeks I’ll be twenty-eight and in my younger years, I wanted a fiery quick passion. Now I long for a steady love.
And as I think about the end of my life, I hope to come to know God as Lover. To know myself as His beloved. And to have been shaped into a person capable of loving others. Or as Mary Oliver puts it:
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.9
When it’s over I want to sit on the porch basking in the presence of the God, the Wholly Other.
Helpful Guides for Silent Prayer
Armchair Mystic by Mark E. Thibodeaux
Time for God by Jacques Philippe
Prayer by Richard Foster
___
Recent Reads
Completed this month:
A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
Paul by N.T. Wright
In Progress:
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry, New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994, 9.
Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, 7; 117 – 118.
Wendell Berry, “They Sit Together on the Porch,” from A Timbered Choir, Berkley, CA: Counterpoint, 1998.
Jacques Philippe, Time for God: A guide to mental prayer, Burtin, FR: Scepter, 1992, 7.
See Mark E. Thibodeaux, Armchair Mystic: How Contemplative Prayer Can Lead You Closer to God (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2001).
Thibodeaux, Armchair Mystic, 169;48.
John 1:14 THE MESSAGE
Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, 79.
Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes,” Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, NY: Penguin Press 2019.