Prayer Bridges
Being the change we pray for
Prayer is a bridge. Through prayer, we traverse the distance between desire and fulfillment, actuality and possibility, reality and imagination. In our busyness and distraction, we often neglect the journey of prayer. Perhaps we think of prayer as a burden; one more thing on our to-do list. But prayer is not just one among other things on our to-do list. It is the key that unlocks the door of the prison of routine and opens the way to creative life. Prayer makes everything else possible, because it reveals our heart’s desire and the power to embrace it. Prayer is about freedom and the power to exercise it in alignment with God’s dream for the world.
Prayer bridges the landscape of the phenomenal world and the inner landscape of the soul, what Martin Laird calls the “silent land.” “Silent land” is a bit misleading. When we first cross the bridge of prayer, it is anything but quiet. The continual conversation we have with our self is incessant, insistent, and a little insane! It is like entering a dense forest: the air doesn’t move, little light gets in, and our thoughts are like boisterous wild animals constantly circling us.
Eventually, if we persevere, the forest opens out onto a wide open space, filled with light and immense quiet. This is the silent land, a spacious, peaceful, and timeless space. Here, we touch into the current of mercy that flows through all things, experience its healing balm, and intuit the prayer that God is always praying beneath our anxious internal conversation. The bridge of prayer allows us to move between the phenomenal world and the silent land, between time and eternity, bringing back with us the riches of wisdom, insight, compassion, and joy. This movement between the realms changes us. And it changes the world.
It certainly changed our ancestor, Jacob.1 In the bible, Jacob is a trickster figure, a mischievous character, who gets what he wants through subterfuge and deceit. He steals his twin brother, Esau’s, birthright and blessing. Then, when he flees for his life to escape Esau’s wrath, he ends up meeting his match in his uncle, Laban, who then tricks the trickster into marrying both his daughters. In the end, Jacob becomes a wealthy man despite his uncle’s manipulative scheming. But he is not content. Happiness eludes him. He has yet to bridge the distance between his longing and his belonging.
But he knows such a bridge exists. Earlier in the Jacob narrative, right after he has run away from home, Jacob dreams of a ladder between heaven and earth, upon which angels descend and ascend bearing messages. In the dream, God renews the promise first made to Jacob’s father and grandfather. Even though Jacob has embezzled and abandoned his family, God has not abandoned Jacob.
I think many of us are like Jacob. We dream there is something more to life, more than the harms we have caused or suffered, more than the empty promises of bread and circuses. But we remain imprisoned in our guilt, and fear, and the burdens of responsibility we carry. We know the bridge is there, but we are too afraid or too distracted to cross it.
Jacob, caught between his fear of the past and his hope for the future, finally crosses the bridge of prayer. He feels the full weight of his estrangement from his brother. He longs to go home. He determines to do so, trusting that God desires something even better for him than what he can imagine.
He is still Jacob, though, and he sends wagon-loads of gifts ahead of him with messages to try to placate Esau. He doesn’t know how their reunion will turn out. He could be walking into his death. Jacob remains behind, and wrestles alone with God in prayer all night long. He holds his own until just before dawn, when the divine being pulls a fast one and throws Jacob’s hip out of joint. But Jacob clings to God for a blessing. He is relentless.
Jacob had to let go of the life he had built on deception and manipulation, he had to die to his trickster identity, to experience the blessing of coming face to face with God in the silent land. Jacob, “the supplanter,” become Israel, “God rules.” Prayer changed Jacob. Jacob is humbler and wiser, but also a more vulnerable man, as he goes limping to meet his brother.
When Jacob finally meets his brother, he comes alone and bows down seven times. Esau runs to greet him, and they fall into each other’s arms weeping. Both Jacob and Esau realized that what they longed for was reconciliation, the love that transfigures longing into belonging. Jacob says to his brother, “truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God.”2 Through prayer, Jacob learned to see the face of God in his estranged brother’s face, and that changed everything. That was the true blessing.
This is what prayer does to us. It reveals our wounds, opens our hearts, and empowers us to see new possibilities and to take previously unimaginable risks. Jacob bet everything he had on love. Vulnerability became his superpower. Esau might still have rejected Jacob. He might even have killed him. In a sense, it didn’t matter. Jacob had no control over Esau’s response. The forgiveness he received was just icing on the cake. Jacob had already become Israel.
But the change in Jacob did make reconciliation possible. Prayer not only changes those of us who pray, it leverages the flow of mercy to change the world as well. Not always or all at once. This is the lesson of Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow.3 Change takes time. Not because God is slow to help or to grant justice, but because of the cynicism and indifference of people like the corrupt judge who block the flow of mercy, and because too many of us are unwilling to take risks for the change that the widow demanded.
John O’Donohue reminds us that
It is so important that prayer happens in the world, every day and every night . . . Prayer is the presence that holds harmony in the midst of chaos. Every time you pray, you add to the light and harmony of creation. If you do not pray, if you do not believe in prayer, then you are living off the prayers of other people . . . You can pray anytime and anywhere . . . You do not have to sort out your life so that you can be real with God . . . You can pray now, where you are and from whatever state of heart you are in. This is the most simple and honest prayer . . . We always seem to be able to find the most worthy reasons for not just being quite ready to pray yet; this means that we never get to prayer. Prayer is so vital and transformative that the crucial thing is to pray now. Regardless of what situation you are in, your heart is always ready to whisper a prayer.4
Pray always, and do not lose heart.
Genesis 27:1 - 33:11.
Genesis 33:10b.
Luke 18:1-8.
John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on our Yearning to Belong (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1999), p. 212-213.