Dear People of Christ Church:

What is your prayer for our parish?

It's not a rhetorical question. For our upcoming Quarterly on prayer, our hope is to assemble a collection of people's prayers-prayers of request, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of ..? what? We hope to take each one of our petitions and put them together in one psalm, our many voices becoming one voice.



What is my prayer? I've had many different prayers over the years that I've been at Christ Church. When I first arrived in 2005, I prayed to know what to do; I was 26, and had been ordained for just a little more than a year. Now, I pray not to get too comfortable; my large desk and comfortable habits have a nice way of lulling me into complacence that I know what I'm doing and what comes next.



In the past year, I've noticed that one recurring prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving for belief. Somehow since Holy Week this year, I've found myself witnessing the story of our faith in a different way; I could always explain in the abstract what it meant and why, and how I believed or didn't. This year, I find myself thankful both for the substance of the belief- God's creation of the world, Christ's ministry, death, and resurrection-but also the experience of belief in the first place. To believe-credo-to give one's heart to something-is an amazing gift.



The apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Rome, "The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words (Romans 8:26). God came to us before we came to God, and at the same time God prays in us with God's own voice. At the same time, on a psychological level, we are awfully prone to get in God's way. The philosopher William James (1984-1910) gave a lecture called "The Will to Believe," in which, basically, he says it's worse to be so afraid of being duped that we are unable to believe anything than it is to be wrong. Not deciding, in effect, is deciding. "It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. . . Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things." (The Will to Believe, Section VII).



Belief is something of a dance; part us, part God, part mystery. Belief is a gift, but that not everyone believes is hardly a sign that God has withheld this from them. What I find helpful about James' insight is that it helps us to see belief as a mutual process. We choose, but we are also chosen. (How that happens is the part where mystery comes in). What is life-giving for one must not be life-giving for all. But the One who gives life gives it freely.



So this year, I've been feeling particularly thankful for my faith, and so my prayer for Christ Church is something like this:

For belief, O Christ, for belief in you and celebration of your gifts. That we all may know your love and share it with others, within these walls and without.



Blessings,

Sara+