praying with my eyes...

A year ago in November, I received a gift of this small candle at the close of our community retreat at L'Arche Ottawa. It has become the center of my small prayer altar on my home desk. Behind the candle is a picture of the L'Arche community taken in May 2018 after another retreat. A Russian theotokos, my prayer book and a wee pumpkin sit on a prayer cloth I found in Istanbul. Every day I return to this place for silence, reflection and prayer. Often I use the opening words for Morning Prayer taken from Psalm 51:

Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Give to me the joy of your saving help again, and sustain me wit your bountiful Spirit. All glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

On the other side of my prayer altar are icons including two paintings from Harry, a core member of L'Arche Ottawa, as well as a French icon showing Jesus celebrating the Eucharist and one by Tommie De Paola set in a Latin American context. The Serenity Prayer from a retreat house in Michigan shares wall space with the Prayer of St. Francis I found in a monastery in Tucson. I have added an Islamic call to prayer tile alongside an olive branch my daughter Jesse brought back to me from Assisi. 

These visual and physical "friends" are important to me because sometimes I find I don't have words when I sit for prayer. I may read the lessons and a few of the liturgical prayers, but there are times when all I can do is sit and rest in the beauty and grace of God. Jean Vanier has written that people with intellectual disabilities don't have a cerebral relationship with God. They just know when they are loved. I experience that most when words fail me and I just sit with my L'Arche candle lit in the presence of my icon friends. The late Henri Nouwen put it like this in his little book, Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons.

Acting, speaking and even reflective thinking may at times be too demanding (for us), but we are forever seeing. When we dream, we see. When we stare in front of us, we see. When we close our eyes to rest, we see. We see trees, houses, roads and cars, seas and mountains, animals and people, places and face, shapes and colors. We see clearly or vaguely, but always we find something to see. But what do we choose to see? It makes a great difference whether we see a flower or a snake, a gentle smile or menacing teeth, a dancing couple or a hostile crowd. We have a choice. Just aw we are responsible for what we eat, so we are responsible for what we see... and we do not have to be passive victims of a world that wants to entertain, distract (or disturb) us. 

Using icons to "pray with our eyes" in silence is a time-tested way of being prayerful. Nouwen writes that "gazing is probably the best word to touch the core of Eastern Orthodox spirituality. Whereas St. Benedict, who has set the tone for the spirituality of the West, calls us first to listen, the Byzantine fathers focus on gazing." This makes sense to me. It speaks to where my heart is on some days. So I choose to "behold" (there's that word again!) the beauty of the Lord. The goodness of God's grace. The rest and assurance that even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou, O Lord, art with me. Sitting quietly here is enough.