Silence

'The perfect never say anything of themselves.... They only say what the Spirit suffers them to say.'
- The Monk of Mount Athos, Archimandrite Sophrony (his biography of Father Silouan, quoted by Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, 250.

In occasional better moments, I seek to discern what God's Spirit is doing through the day, seeking to follow Christ's example. But often I wonder where God is at work, or whether I have lost the plot of faith. No doubt I often have, but perhaps sometimes it is because I need to trust to the silence: those moments of waiting for God's words or acts, like Jesus waited when confronted by the woman taken in adultery.

Sometimes perhaps I need simply to wait. "The meaning is in the waiting" - R S Thomas: Kneeling

I sometimes worry how this links to prayer. Despite what I write and read and find in the scriptures, I find within myself a sense that I ought to be asking, or at least, ought to be asking more. I think of verses such as Paul's 'pray all the time' (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I guess there is a balance here, but Stephen Cottrell (our Bishop) is helpful. I quote from CPAS's Church Leadership for Summer 2011: "In that slightly irritating way of hi, St Paul says 'pray all the time'... I don't think he means 'do that activity we call prayer all the time'. I think he means 'make your life a prayer' - arrive at that point where you are so inhabited by the Spirit that your life is translucent of the gospel."

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray 'Your kingdom come'. This is a request, but it is also very general. I must say, I find that God 'answers prayer' much more when somehow I am in that state of being alert, prayerful in myself, to God's kingdom coming. Especially I learnt of this when I was visiting my mother in her final illness in hospital. There would every day be some sort of 'God moment', if I may put it that way' which came out of the blue.

Jesus spoke of 'watching and praying'. This is probably very similar, if not the same. C S Lewis, in Letters to Malcolm,, Ch 14, writes: "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake" (- emphasis his.)