THE RADICAL PRAYER [T, 10-9-18]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter… 

Holy Spirit, if this is right for me, let if become more firmly rooted and established in my life. If this is wrong for me, let it become less important to me, and let it become increasingly removed from my life.

Flora Slosson Wuellner calls this “the radical prayer.” [1]

When I first read it, I thought, “Well, that’s not radical.” In fact, it’s rather prosaic. It certainly does not have the beauty of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” or St. Francis of Assisi’s “Instrument of Peace” prayer.

Wuellner means it mostly for addicts, and it seems incredibly insipid for an addict. I mean, if you are praying about an addiction, to say “If this is right for me…” Well, you already know it’s not right for you. Why give God the option of getting it more firmly rooted in your life when it is already too firmly rooted?

Because the first and last job of life—the same job for the first and last stages of human development--is trust. If we don’t learn to trust at first, in the womb and in infancy, we’ll have a hard problem trusting all the way through life. But then at the end, whether because we have “aged out” or been given a terminal diagnosis, trust becomes a factor again. Can we trust God for what will come?

That doesn’t mean “believing” certain things, like what “heaven” is like, or who we’ll see there, etc. Trust and belief are very different.

Wuellner’s “radical” prayer really is, because trust is the most radical thing we can ever do. “Radical” comes from the Latin word for “root.” Trust is the root; it goes all the way down into the soul. Wuellner’s prayer is saying to God: I trust in You. So…

Holy Spirit, if this is right for me, let if become more firmly rooted and established in my life. If this is wrong for me, let it become less important to me, and let it become increasingly removed from my life.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

1] P. 78,   PRAYER, STRESS, AND OUR INNER WOUNDS [1985, The Upper Room]

“All we ask [in old age] is to be allowed to remain the authors of our own story.” Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 140.

“Evil is a soul hiding from itself.” Wm. Sloane Coffin

Katie Kennedy is the rising star in YA lit. [She is also our daughter.] She is published by Bloomsbury, which also publishes lesser authors, like JK Rowling. Her latest book is, What Goes Up. It’s published in hardback, paperback, audio, and electronic, from B&N, Amazon, etc.