Tower and Town, July 2018

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Clergy Letter: Waste Time With God

The summer season is already with us, whatever the weather. A time to be going away on holiday, a time to break up from school, college, university, a time to stay home, a time to contemplate where we are, a time of prayer too.

"What do you feel when you pray?" When this question was put to the late Cardinal Hume during an interview with a journalist, Hume replied: "Oh, I just keep plugging away.  At best it's like being in a dark room with someone you love.  You can't see them but you know they're there". The mystical text of  The Cloud of the Unknowing put it this way:

In the beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were a cloud of unknowing.  You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp Him, and your heart will not relish the delight of His love.  But learn to be at home in the darkness. Return to it as often as you can, letting your spirit cry out to Him whom you love.

Prayer is not so much me talking to God as God being present to me - as a child once remarked "I think God gave us two ears and only one mouth so we can do twice as much listening!" or like that of a young adult slowly recovering from drug and alcohol addiction: "God, I can't concentrate on You, so You'll just have to concentrate on me!"

May each month and each moment of each month, be a contemplation-time, to try to waste time with God,  for we are never too old to learn of the ways of a loving God.

John Blacker