
<p>This Pharisee is looking up to heaven, but all he sees is himself! On the other hand the tax collector <em>would not raise his eyes to heaven</em>, and yet it is as if the prayer is going on <em>within</em> him. The one guy is praying outside to himself, the other one is praying inside to God, a prime example of the famous line from the climax of St. Augustine's confessions where he says: <em>You were within me, but I was on the outside</em>. That's why the tax collector <em>has chosen the better part and it shall not be taken away from him</em>,<sup>2</sup> because prayer really is a kind of interior conversation. The problem is that quite often, if we must admit it, the only response we get to this interior conversation is silence. Maybe that's when prayer really becomes the path of self-knowledge, and the path of humility.</p>
<p>Once Herman Hesse was asked which one of the characters he saw himself in, in his famous novel <em>Narcissus</em> and <em>Goldmund</em>. Was he Narcissus, the studious monk who ever left the cloister or was he Goldmund, the young artist wandering the world in search of beauty and love? Hesse replied that he thought there was a little of each of them in him. And so I think at one level we could approach this story in the same way: there is a little of each of these guys in each one of us––part of us thinking we're the greatest thing since Velcro, and part of us feeling hopelessly inadequate.</p>
<p>I sometimes think that the interior life of the wounded ego is like a hall of mirrors in a funhouse at the carnival. At one moment I look in one mirror and I laugh out loud because I'm so tall. But in the next moment I'm looking in another mirror and suddenly I'm elfin and all squished down. Sometimes we go through our day like that: a moment of joy or a small success leads us to this great ego inflation; and the next moment someone doesn't say hello to me, and I'm spiraling down into the abyss of self-loathing. This is where the great teachers of the inner life, from Evagrius and Patanjali through Dogen and John of the Cross, come in handy: anyone who has spent any time practicing meditation, or periods in silence and solitude will recognize this right away. The psychologist Sam Keen, writing about the lessons he learned from Tibetan Buddhism, says that our feelings are always oscillating "between the extremes of grandiosity and debasement. We either think too much or too little of the self." But, he says, "To be enlightened we [have to] reject both extremes."<sup>3</sup></p>
<p>I remember so clearly once when I was a teenager, a prince of a man named Fr. Stempora was the rector of our seminary high school; he was also the Latin teacher. He used to call us all <em>domine</em> instead of "sir" or "mister." I was going down the hall and he complimented me on something I had done, and I dismissed his compliment with the usual, "Aw, shucks, it wasn't really that good... etc., etc." And he raised himself up on the balls of his feet, as was his wont when he was about to make a pronouncement during a teachable moment, and he said, "Humility is truth, <em>domine</em>. It comes from the Latin word <em>humus</em> for 'dirt.' There's nothing wrong with dirt. It's the ground we grow in." Humility is truth. If I may switch images for a second, in this hall of mirrors that is our inner emotional life, humility is like a plain clear undistorted mirror, in which we see ourselves as we truly are, with all our glory and all our weaknesses. But not only does the mirror have to be clear; so does our sight need to be clear, and that only comes after a long process of self-observation, rigorous honesty. To have a realistic and humble understanding of oneself actually requires a whole lot of courage, and a little bit of confidence, maybe a pinch of hope.</p>
<p>I think that we sometimes have the idea that spirituality, mysticism, religion in general are for the spiritual elite. The problem with what Ken Wilber calls seriously and I call somewhat jokingly, the "Atman Project," us dabbling in non-duality as it's expressed in other mystical traditions, is that it often leads to a kind of a spiritual ego inflation; the wrong part of us hears that we are divine. Our wounded ego hears that little whispered message, "You are God!" and it says, "<em>I knew it</em>!" And we put our <em>persona</em> on a pedestal and ask everyone else to worship around it. We don't realize that that which is divine in us is whatever's left after everything else dies. That may be why Jesus is always with the outcast instead, rather than with the elite. He's with those who don't fit into the world's categories––the weak, the oppressed, the orphan and widow we heard about in Sirach<sup>4</sup>. As Nathan Mitchell says, God doesn't come to those who have "the right stuff"; God comes to those who bottom out, "the disempowered, the inarticulate, the pushed-around." That's what we learn from John of the Cross's teaching about the Dark Night of the Soul, too (this is from Iain Matthews again), that the spiritual life "is taking us not to some soiree for a self-preoccupied elite, but to the heart of the world's suffering." Our wounds are the place "through which God may graciously enter,"<sup>5</sup> as Jesus showed by carrying his wounds even in his glorified body.</p>
<p>So you might consider this for a second:</p>
<p>What is the prayer you say when you think the plane is going to crash?<br />What is the prayer you say when you lose or think you have lost or are about to lose the person you love the most in the world?<br />What is the prayer you say when your child is in danger?<br />Or when you think you're going to have a heart attack?</p>
<p>I think that's the closest thing to authentic prayer. No matter what prayers we have received from the outside it's the ones that come from the inside that count.</p>
<p>What are the first words that come to your mouth when you come around the corner over the hill and you notice that the landscape you've been living in for years is suddenly shrouded with light and color, and you realize just how incredibly beautiful it is and you get to live here?<br />Or when you're overwhelmed with gratitude for an act of kindness or blown away by someone's generosity?</p>
<p>(If those moments never happen to us or if there's no response at all we had better have a look at that too.) Dr. Freud (and Fr. Michael Fish) are always reminding us that our little child will always be a part of us, and I think that there is something childlike about authentic prayer. Again, this is why someone like Evagrius is considered the great psychotherapist of the desert, because in prayer, like in psychotherapy, we dig deep to recover, uncover that innocent, primal voice in us that puts words to the most primal stirrings: fear, need, abandonment, grief, pain, confusion. Just listen to the psalms! Prayer is the voice that utters those deepest stirrings. It will always be there in us, the voice of that child; we only need to find it,<sup>6</sup> and in doing so we find our true selves.</p>
<p>That to me is when prayer becomes a mirror. That's the prayer of humility, because it's the prayer of truth, the prayer of dirt, unfiltered and raw. When we reach the crisis of our limitations and honestly say, "This is it, I've done my absolute best; I can't do any more," that can actually be a moment of real strength and courage, a moment of truth. The same thing when we stand before God and acknowledge our limitations as well as our strengths: that takes courage, and that's humility. Unfortunately, it usually takes some kind of a crisis to get us there, but it doesn't have to be a moment of groveling and self-hatred, any more than Saint Benedict's steps of humility (RB 7) are. It's a moment of courage, a moment of self-knowledge, but also a moment of recognition––that I am part of something greater than me. I'm dependent on, yes, but more importantly I'm a part of, and the moment I say, "I am not worthy" the voice of God through Jesus swoops in and says, "Yes, you are. <em>I have made you little less than gods</em>." As soon as we say, "Lord, have mercy," God invites us to<em> participate in the divine nature</em>. As soon as we admit how far we feel from God, God says through Jesus <em>I am the vine you are the branches</em>. As soon as I say, <em>I am a worm and no man</em>, God says, <em>Blessed are the poor in spirit</em>."</p>
<p>Now back to that silence I mentioned at the beginning. There's a line from a song called "The Pearl" by Emmylou Harris that my friend John and I like to sing:</p>
<p>          The path is worn, our feet are poorly shod.<br />          We lift up our prayers against the odds<br />          and fear the silence is the voice of God.</p>
<p>When we sing that song I always want to say, "That silence is the voice of God!" But we don't have to fear it. It's the golden silence underneath our groanings, and the great saints and mystics tell us that the truest, purest prayer leads us to that place, that silence. It's the silence of humility, and it's a mirror too, a pure clean undistorted mirror, in which we know ourselves as we truly are, an image of God, a vine on a branch, part of something Greater. That's the moment when the boundary between the fine point of my soul and the Holy Spirit seems to disappear, and I discover that the Other who I have been addressing is actually the Ground of my being and consciousness, and we are entwined beyond any possibility of separation. That's the place of real humility, when self is forgotten and God is remembered––<em>no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me</em>. That's also the silence out of which God speaks the Word in which all of creation is contained, and all of creation is––and I myself am––brought into existence, and any and every moment we can start all over again, our whole being flooded with the light, wind, breath of that Spirit.</p>
<p><em>Those who humble themselves will be exalted, and the prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds</em><sup>7</sup>. As soon as we say, <em>Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter into my house, but only say the word</em>... God says, in Jesus, "Come and eat of my flesh, and drink of my blood. Come to the feast I've prepared for you, the wedding banquet of the Lamb.</p>
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<p>1 The NRSV, "standing by himself."<br />2 Lk 10:42.<br />3 Sam Keen, In the Absence of God, 127.<br />4 Sir 35: 12-14, 16-18.<br />5 Iain Matthews, The Impact of God, 57.<br />6 Keen, Absense, 135.<br />7 Sir 35:16</p>