Praise and balance...

Today at midday Eucharist we read Psalm 67 together:

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us,
that your way may be known upon earth,
your saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you.
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth.
         
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase;
God, our God, has blessed us.
May God continue to bless us;
let all the ends of the earth revere him.

Before our gathering I had wondered, "will there really be anything to say about this simple little act of praise?"  But I am always blessed and surprised at what our small group of eucharistas come up with when we practice lectio over the noon hour.  "This is all about praise," said one participant, "not asking, not wondering, just praise - and sometimes in the middle of all I'm dealing with I forget to praise God."  Another spoke of all the incredible blessings that take place everyday in our ordinary lives that we so often forget to return thanks to God for - gratitude and praise are so easy to overlook - and how this Psalm urges us to bring a little balance back with an act of praise.

It got me thinking about the old tool I once learned years ago for a balanced style of prayer:

+ P = praise or gratitude

+ R = repentance or confession

+ A = ask or supplication

+ Y = yield or surrender

In Harvey Cox's gem, Feast of Fools, he notes that in his view "prayer and play are analogous" noting that Hugo Rahner once described play in a way that resonates with prayer:

To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic, to enact to oneself the

absolutely other, to pre-empt the future, to give the lie to the inconvenient world of fact. In play earthly realities becomes, of a sudden, things of the transient moment, presently left behind, then disposed of and buried in the past; the mind is prepared to accept the unimagined and incredible, to enter a world where different laws apply, to be relieved of all the weights that bear it down, to be free, kingly, unfettered and divine.

Cox goes on to summarize another holistic style of prayer that includes imagination, intercession, thanksgiving and penitence.  This week in worship we start a four-part series rethinking why it is we do what we do.  I think it will be rich and timely for all of us - old-timers and new friends - as we seek to find new/old ways to reclaim the sacred wisdom lost to a culture of bottom lines and utilitarianism.