In search of a ceaseless prayer

Thank you! I love you! Wow!

Sometime in the nineteenth century, a priest in Russia was sermonizing, doing his priestly thing, reading from the Pauline Epistles. He urged his congregation, as St. Paul urged the Thessalonians, to “pray without ceasing.”

One particular congregant was quite struck by this. Was it really possible to pray all the time? What about all the other things he was supposed to do? It must be achievable, otherwise the Bible wouldn’t instruct it. But why didn’t it also tell you how?

The instruction, and the question of how to follow it, got stuck in his head — so stuck that he devoted himself completely to finding an answer. For a year, he wandered from village to village, monastery to monastery, asking for spiritual guidance. He heard countless respected preachers at the most famous churches in Russia speak on prayer and its importance. But none could provide the specific directions he was looking for.

Until finally, he met a starets — an orthodox spiritual director — who assured him that not only was it possible to “pray without ceasing,” but the very fact that he desired to do so was an encouraging sign. The starets suggested that the man start by saying the Jesus prayer three thousand times a day. He was told to lower his head, shut his eyes, breathe gently, and direct his thoughts toward his heart. With every exhale, he should repeat the words: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”

At first, the man found it difficult and exhausting. His tongue was sore and his thumb ached from counting his rosary. But before too long, the prayer became habit. The starets upped the number from three thousand to six thousand. Then twelve. Finally, the starets instructed him: “Try to devote every moment you are awake to the prayer…without counting the number of times.”

The practice was transforming. If the man stopped for even a moment, he felt like something was missing. Eventually, he even started to dream about the prayer: “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” Though it had started as a spoken mantra, he ultimately felt as though the prayer had “passed from his lips to his heart.” So the prayer became about listening, rather than speaking — with every beat and every breath it was coming from inside of him, so ingrained in him as habit that it had become part of his body.

The man wrote an anonymous account of his journey called The Way of a Pilgrim, which followed his pilgrimage across Russia and Siberia. He never stopped repeating the Jesus prayer, embodying it and studying it. It was his way. In fact, it was his being.

A pilgrimage of sorts in Los Padres national forest (photo by my friend CeeCee)

I respect the pilgrim in his single-mindedness. I envy his discovery of the wise starets who instructed him so clearly. I love, too, his anonymity, his lack of self-importance. I bet if I asked him for some spiritual advice, he would tell me what he told so many on his journey: here is my way, but do as you wish.

The Jesus prayer, for probably obvious reasons, doesn’t sit quite right with this spiritual wanderer. Instead, the thing the pilgrim’s tale made me wonder is: what phrase would I choose? What would I want my body to absorb, my heart to beat?

I can imagine devoting a lifetime to this repetition: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Or maybe: I love you. I love you. I love you. 

Or maybe even: Wow! Wow! Wow! (This one might actually be my favorite.)

What different life paths would each of these phrases manifest? Would my heart beat each one uniquely, would they cause my soul to grow into different shapes? How would each of those transform me, and transform the world?

But the second — possibly more interesting — question is: what prayer is my heart already beating? What words run through my mind or cross my lips most often, and if I listen closely enough, will I hear my heart speaking them back to me? Would I like what I heard?

For the pilgrim, prayer’s highest form was deep listening, rather than speaking. It’s highly possible that I’m just being impatient and greedy, but I wonder if we need all that prologue. I think we might be able to just skip the sore tongue and go straight to the listening.

I thought for a long time that I shouldn’t be a writer, because writers are people who are certain about things, who have some authority that they feel compelled to share with the world. Writers write, and everyone else is supposed to listen.

That has never been why I write. I write out of curiosity, to figure out and discover. It is the best way I have of making sense of the world — I write toward understanding, rather than from it. (I know now that I’m not alone in this! And so I have to admit I am, in fact, a writer.)

The point is: writing, like the pilgrim’s ceaseless prayer, requires deep listening. To the world, to the people around you, to the tiny sparkle of an idea in the back of your mind that you can’t quite grasp yet but you know, if you just write it down and return to it later, it will assume some form all its own. We writers have a lot of practice listening.

The pilgrim had to wander the countryside for years to find the instructions he sought, but I think maybe it’s not as complicated as all that. Tuning in to your heart’s song is simple. What feels good? What makes your skin tingle, your heart leap, your stomach drop, your breath catch? What makes you say, Thank you! I love you! Wow! Take notes. Listen closely. It’s that simple.