Seeking is as Good as Seeing
My prayer life is pretty sporadic. I want to be one of those Christians for whom prayer is a regular daily habit – but I’ve never managed to keep a streak going for very long. Prayer, for me, has been a lot like flossing. I’ll do really good for a while (like right after I see the dentist, and they scold me for the thousandth time about not flossing every day), but eventually, I let it slip, and I’m back to praying here and there – in fits and starts.
And because of this, I’ve spent a good amount of time wondering: “Why am I the way that I am?”
It’s not that I don’t know how to pray.
Along the way, I’ve been introduced to all kinds of prayer. I’ve done lectio divina, examen, and breath prayer. And I’ve been blessed to learn from an incredibly gifted and wise spiritual director.
It’s also not from a lack of interest in prayer.
In fact, I love reading about prayer. It’s one of my favorite topics, actually. I could read Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila, and Richard Foster all day long.
With all of that going for me, I’ve begun to wonder whether my lack of consistency in prayer has less to do with ignorance or interest, and more to do with impatience.
I’ve come to the realization that, often, I neglect prayer simply because I’m not convinced that anything is happening when I do.
To be clear, I don’t mean that I’m frustrated that my prayers go unanswered. I’m not bitter that God didn’t do what I asked God to do. When I say, “jump!” I don’t expect God to ask, “How high?”
When I pray, I’m not chasing results or answers or even insight. I’m trying to attend to a mystery. I want to quiet my own thoughts about God, so that I can encounter God himself. (See, I told you I read a lot about prayer…)
But as eloquently as we talk about silence and solitude – often it just feels like, well, silence and solitude.
Early in her book, Showings, Julian of Norwich describes a vision of Jesus in which what she saw “came to me as though through darkness and clouds. I longed to be able to see more clearly…”[1]
I take some comfort in knowing that even Julian of Norwich got frustrated with her prayer life at times. She wanted to see. She longed to connect with God and behold his face – but found that prayer didn’t always deliver that.
And it’s her response to that reality that is most helpful to me.
Later in the same chapter she writes, “Seeking is as good as seeing.” That is, showing up and sitting in the silence and the nothingness is good for the soul. That God is there, when it seems like nothing is happening. As the popular song, “Waymaker,” puts it: “Even when I don’t see it, You’re working.”
And if that’s true, I’m afraid I’m just going to have to learn to be patient.
Because most days, when I go to pray, I’m doing exactly what Karl Rahner describes in his book Encounters with Silence:
“And since that’s so, the prayer that You require of me must be ultimately just a patient waiting for You, a silent standing by until You, who are ever present in the inmost center of my being, open the gate to me from within… But I must stand ever ready and waiting, so that when You open the door to the decisive moment of my life – and maybe you’ll do it very quietly and inconspicuously – I shall not be so taken up with the affairs of this world that I miss the one great opportunity to enter into myself and into You.”[2]
I’m learning to wait. And watch. And trying to trust that seeking really is as good as seeing.
