Time and Despondency: Regaining the Present in Faith and Life by Roccas Nicole

Author:Roccas , Nicole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ancient Faith Press
Published: 2018-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centered monologue to a God-centered dialogue. To pray unceasingly is to lead all our thoughts out of their fearful isolation into a fearless conversation with God.95

In prayer, as in any relationship, monologuing is easier and emotionally safer than truly dialoguing. It also protects us from the uncertainty in our relationship with God: do we have the courage to “count up the sum of” ourselves before God, in the words of Rilke, and let Him “spend” us as He sees fit?96 If we avail ourselves of the presence of God, who knows what He’ll be like or what He’ll ask of us—or even if He’ll be there at all.

turning toward god

Sometimes when I start reading about prayer, I get a surge of energy (pride?) and start making Big Plans to overhaul my so-called prayer life. Whether or not I follow through on such plans, these spurts of grandiose thinking are exhausting. Burnout soon follows, and I grow more despondent than ever. For me, at least, inviting prayer into my life happens best on a small scale. There’s no need to make a show of it, for God or for myself. All that’s needed, most of the time, is to show up—regularly, mundanely, hopefully. The slow, steady art of relationship is something we’re all trying to learn in this life. Whether with our fellowman or with God, learning to love is not a sprint but a marathon.

Marriage is teaching me a little bit about prayer and what it means to be in relationship with God. Several months before our wedding, my husband and I were given an article by Dr. Philip Mamalakis on Orthodox pastoral approaches to marriage.97 Mamalakis depicts the mystery of marriage as a long process of learning to “turn toward” your partner in the small exchanges of everyday life. This term was originally coined by the Gottman Institute, which has isolated causes of marital breakdown through proven, research-based strategies. The Institute has determined that in strong marriages, both partners continuously “turn toward” each other by acknowledging one another all the time in small ways, rather than just once in a while in big, showy gestures:

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