Spiritual practices like prayer are seen as essential in relating to God as a Christian or religious person. Prayer is foundational to having a personal relationship with God. Many of the seniors in my congregation talk often of praying to God when they struggle in life or when their family or friends are going through a tough time. For my seniors, prayer makes total sense to them. They talk about how God has answered their prayers. But as I relate to younger generations, prayer makes less and less sense to them. They question this relationship to God and how praying to God can actually make any difference in their life. In this blog, I want to explore how the dynamic of emergence actually helps us understand this relationship with God and how prayer works. As I noted in my last blog, the term “emergence” has been one term that I have found helpful in seeing the role of Spirit in human experience. I first began aware of this term in 2007 when I learned about Theory U developed by Otto Scharmer, a theory used to work at organizational transformation. In this theory, Scharmer highlighted the steps of surrender that an organization must go through before an organization can enter a place of “presencing”, a place where insights and new experiences “emerge” causing the organization to re-organize around this new vision and experience of itself. As a spiritual director learning about Theory U, it seemed that Scharmer was essentially teaching an organization how to pray. This form of prayer involved 3 steps, three different forms of surrender. These steps also highlight three levels of relationships we can have with God. Let me apply these 3 steps to the practice of personal prayer for I think they are very instructive in teaching a person to pray. First, personal prayer involves practicing surrender with our mind, that is, suspending all our judgments to thoughts that enter our mind so that our mind is fully open to all thoughts that come. As we pray in this way with God, our minds receive insights and truths from Divine that shape and guide our experience in life. Through surrendering in this way, we develop a dynamic mental relationship with the Divine. Many people who possess rigid belief systems struggle in opening their mind in this way for they are so used to managing their thoughts only allowing acceptable thoughts in. All “bad” thoughts are suppressed away. For our prayer experience to deepen, the person can practice a second form of surrender, that is, a letting go of our protective, cynical, hardened, heart so that our heart can become softened and sensitized to the many different feelings that can arise in the heart. Due to this more open heart, we are able to experience moments of God’s compassion, grace, love, strength, etc. in our life which transform our lives in bigger ways. When this deepening happens, our relationship with the Divine contains both mental and emotional aspects to it. Again, many people manage their feelings only allowing acceptable feelings in. All other “bad” feelings are repressed and go underground. This emotional management really limits how much people can experience the emotional fruits of God’s spirit. Our personal prayer experience can deeper even further through a third form of surrender. This involves a surrendering of our fears and aspects of our structured self so that our will and soul can open up more fully into a free state where larger emergent experiences can happen. When our relationship with the Divine deepens in this way, not only are we in touch with the mind and heart of the Divine, but we begin to trust the Divine implicitly in guiding our life. Our human will opens and seeks to follow the ways of God’s will. Again, since all people wrestle with an egoic structured self and its need for control, we all manage our lives constantly so that we avoid this fear and anxiety and having to trust the Divine in this way. Only the brave, faithful and courageous are able to open their will and soul in this significant way. But, when we are able to move into this open state of mind, heart, and soul, Scharmer claims that we enter a profound state of “presencing”. While it is posible to experience smaller moments of emergence when our mind or heart is open, it is here when all aspects of our soul are free and unemcumbered that deep emergence happens. Here, we receive insights, realizations, and experiences that profoundly transform our soul, heart, and mind and future life. Using psychotherapeutic language, these would be called the corrective emotional experiences that result in significant changes in our client’s lives. Using religious language, these would be called mystical or conversion experiences that have major impact on our present and future life. When we see prayer through this lens of Theory U, prayer is really the spiritual practice of nurturing emergence. This means that prayer has little to do with getting God to listen to our prayers and is more about surrendering our mind, heart, and soul so that God can act in our lives through the process of emergence. This past week a senior shared with me how God had answered her prayer by helping her grandson get a job. As I explored her prayer experience, I came to see how her prayers had helped her surrender her grandson’s future into God’s hand. Her prayer had released her anxiety a little and allowed her to have more trust in God and the goodness of life. I suspect also that her prayer life also helped her encourage her grandson in a supportive, less anxious way so when he had his interview, he was able to be in a more open, hopeful space. Due to both the grandmother and her grandson being in a more surrendered space, the dynamic of emergence was able to bring about the possibility of her grandson getting a job offer. You can imagine the grandmother’s excitement when she learned that her grandson got the job. No wonder she said, “God had answered her prayer.” I remember a powerful moment of emergence happened in a church I pastored over 20 years ago. Early in the pastorate at Hagerman Mennonite Church, a church of about 60 active members, it became apparent that there were two visions in the church. One vision was to be a church at Hagerman Corners in Markham. Another vision was to start a church in Stouffville, a town 10 minutes to the north of Markham. As we processed these two visions, it became evident that half the membership supported one vision, the other half supported the other vision. To work through this conflict, the church decided to setup a prayerful process group of four made up of 2 people from both visions. In their wisdom, they chose to keep me outside the group although they referenced with me often. Over the next 6 months, this process group led monthly congregational meetings prayerfully focused on key questions with the hope that a common solution would emerge that both groups could support. They brought in a consultant for one important congregational meeting so that we could hear everyone’s position/interests within the congregation. It appeared that fall that our congregation was at stalemate when a shift happened early December and openness arose around giving permission for two churches to emerge, a new church in Stouffville and a church continuing at Hagerman, albeit a new church for this church would be very different than the current Hagerman Church. The whole congregation met and discussed this new joint vision and amazingly the whole group decided by modified consensus to support it. I found myself pastoring a two-point pastoral charge. I marvelled as the congregation spontaneously sung together, “We are one in the spirit.” Both these examples highlight the process of emergence and prayer. Through the spiritual practice of prayer, we nurture the conditions of surrender that allow the dynamic of emergence to happen.
Questions to ponder:
Gord Alton
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