PRAYER ... IN A CANOE
:Prayer
Praying may be thought of as mental reflection on who I am and how I fit into the universe. Tranquillity comes from "knowing my place" in the totality of being.
Aesthetic theology explores what prayer is and how it is best done. Praying is doing it. The two are often confused. Pablo Neruda:
I asked the others after,
the women and the men,
what they were doing with such confidence
and how they had learned their living.
They did not actually answer
they went on dancing and living.
But is not praying conversation between myself and God? The answer is less simple than many people assume. God is "the Unknown," our "ground of being". Those who do not regard God as other than themselves cannot be said to have a religion at all. On the other hand, those who think God separate from themselves in the same way that their fellows and the rest of the universe are separate from themselves are making "God" into an idol.
Recovering alcoholics in AA find a God for themselves, sometimes bizarrely. God could be a lamp shade. Recovering alcoholics realise their need for God. They know that it had been their spiritual isolation which caused their drinking problems. Most don't understand that their God is a idol, perhaps only necessary for now for their spiritual growth.
Most Christians don't realise that the same is true of them and the God they are worshipping. God comes to us through our needs, not our knowledge, and our constructs or images of God are always - and necessarily - ludicrously inadequate and always too meagre. That is why the mystic Meister Eckhart could say "I prayed God to rid me of God."
The highest truths are but half-truths.
Think not to settle down for ever in any truth.
Make use of it as a tent in which to pass a summer night
But build no house on it, or it will be your tomb.
When you have the first inkling of its insufficiency
And begin to descry a dim counter-truth coming up beyond
Then weep not, but give thanks -
It is the Lord's voice whispering: "Take up thy bed and walk". C. Raven
Overheard at a local church:
"Do you ever pray?"
"Sometimes I talk to myself. In my head, I mean".
"I know what you mean."
"Maybe that's praying. I don't know. Maybe I do it hoping someone is listening."
"Ah."
Another prayer overheard: "Thank you, God, for everything just as it is."
This is as close as I ever get to Aesthetic Theology. If you need either prayer or canoeing in a hurry, skip this.
People pray to communicate with God. A Christian prays as an individual or as a member of a community, to God, through his Son Jesus Christ. The community may be the family, the church, or others.
Christians pray together as the church in two ways:
Christians pray as families using informal Bible readings and prayers (see page 687 in the Anglican Book of Alternative Services). Grace is said before meals. Children are taught simple formal prayers by their parents. Family prayer has been much affected by the frantic pace of today's living, by the break-down of family units, changing value systems (for example, many parents believe sport is more important for their children to learn than morality or religion), and changing patterns of relationships. Many Christians pray little as a family, and some people feel very guilty about that.
Christians pray individually as loving communication between a child and parent. This may be conversation , (c olloquy) usually praising, thanking, confessing sins, or asking help from God our Father. Or it may mean contemplation, wordless communication which may flow from religious exercises (m editation) or from reflection on the meaning of life.
It is this last meaning - a form of contemplation based on the practise of recreational canoeing - with which this manuscript is concerned.
A Haida woman who radiated coherence, presence and dignity was asked: "What should a person do to achieve self-respect"? "Dress up and stay home" was the reply. The "home", of course, was what you know best, where you are comfortable, the sphere in which you belong.
I got my first canoe when I was fifteen, and went on my first long trip at seventeen. I have spent at least a month tripping each year since leaving High School. I have taught paddling, retraced fur-trade routes, and read dozens of books on the subject. Canoeing is what I do, part of who I am.
My marriage and my priesthood are more important parts of who I am today, but I paddled long before I met my wife and long before I became a Christian, and both of those more important parts of me would have been vastly different had I not been at home in a canoe.
Paddling is "home" to me. You have your own home. Dress up and be happy there!
A traditional part of prayer has been the practise of detachment . We must not become attached to possessions, because they distract us from knowing who we really are.
Many define themselves by their possessions. One person owns a $4,000.00 canoe, kevlar, with cherry-wood gunwales and brass fittings, and a crowd may gather to admire it upside down on the roof of a BMW, but if its owner doesn't paddle it, it doesn't mean a thing. Canoeists admire the person who owns a battered old wood and canvass canoe and paddles it superbly well. If they have any sense, that is.
Teresa of Avila said: "It doesn't matter whether you tie a bird with a thread or with a cart rope - it still can't fly!" We are told by those who sell things to us that our possessions define us and tell others who we are. What they really do is limit us and confine us to some marketer's image of who we are as a consumer.
When you paddle you must put all your possessions in the canoe, and you must carry the whole lot over the portages. You quickly come to see the value in not carrying too much. A good canoeist's motto is Omnia mea mecum porto, "All I have I carry with me".
When we think of wilderness we think of remote places, maybe those designated as "wilderness parks". The truth is that there has been no wilderness on earth without some kind of human presence for several thousand years. Nature is not a place to visit, it is our home, all there is.
Civilisation has been attempting to subdue wild nature for a long time now. We have witlessly destroyed whole species, whole processes, of the earth. We need a way of living that can co-exist with wildness.
Wilderness may temporarily dwindle, but wildness won't go away. Millions of tiny seeds of the original vegetation are sticking to the wet mud on the underside of my canoe.
In the end, though, as my Spiritual Director of nearly forty years ago wrote:
Most people's wilderness is inside them, not outside. Thinking of it as outside is generally a trick we play on ourselves - a trick to hide from us who we really are, not comfortingly wicked, but incapable, for the time being, of establishing communion. Our wilderness, then, is an inferior isolation. It's an absence of contact.
Canoeing reminds me that the wild is us, is part of who I am, and can neither be evaded nor destroyed without destroying me.
My life is not just about me. It is about relationships between me and every other being in the universe. Michael Crichton:
One difference between classic science and religion has been the point of view. Since Galileo scientists had adopted the view that they were objective observers of the natural world, and not, like religious observers, inextricably mixed up in the results observed. But in the twentieth century that difference had vanished. Physicists now knew that you couldn't even measure a single subatomic particle without effecting it totally. If you stuck your instruments in to measure a particle's position, you changed its velocity. If you measured its velocity, you changed its position. That basic truth became the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you studied you also changed. In the end it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer.
I glance back over my shoulder as Beve and I hurtle down the Athabasca River. Tucked neatly into a gap in the bushes watching us go by is a small deer, ears erect, curious. On the Yukon River a young male moose is so interested in our eight canoes that he swims the turbulent river to get a better look at us going past. He thrills us. No doubt we thrill him too!
The wild is watching: one cannot paddle across a pond without a ripple of reports spreading out from one's passage. The geese honk and blast and leave in droves. The duck hides in the cattails, the blackbird chatters, fish dart off from under the bow. A coyote peers out from behind a bush. We are not alone, nor are we the only observers.
The world is listening. Therefore we ought to live mannerly, mindfully, and with style. A Dene mother tells her little girl "Don't point at the mountain - it's rude!"
Canoeing teaches me to shut up and observe that I am being observed by the wild.
Benedictine monks say that the full life is a matter of work and prayer - hard physical labour and reflection. I need exercise, the kind farmers and monks used to get automatically but I need to seek out.
I am easily dismayed by big tasks, and it is hard for me to grasp that a thing is much easier when it is broken down into tiny repetitive fragments. On last summer's South Saskatchewan canoe trip I was anxious about whether I would be able to complete the trip in the time available. Each day's paddle was daunting, and the whole distance looked impossible. Broken down into paddle strokes, though, it was not difficult. The alcoholic need only stay sober today. One day at a time.
The rosary is a prayer method that works on that same principle. It teaches patience and calms anxiety. Repeating many similar simple prayers sets up a pulse which frees us and allows us to soar. Robin Fedden on climbing:
The quiet rush, rush of our skis over the snow was like the sound of running water, and indeed had the same tranquillity. Motion - the small repeated effort - became spontaneous. Yet we were given, as if for nothing, the sense of well-being that prolonged action brings. The pleasure of climbing derives from its rhythm...
My body needs work. My canoe gives that to me.
I can easily be overwhelmed by size or distance or the difficulty to accomplishing a big project. My canoe teaches me to accomplish big things in little repeated steps.
When I use many small repeated steps they become a ritual which allows me, both alone, and even more as part of a group, to accomplish wonders.
Humility is understanding that the universe is not mainly about me.
Canoeing can be uncomfortable because of dirt, rain, bugs, smelly clothes and unkempt hair. One great value of canoeing is in teaching me to accept unavoidable discomfort. If I get hungry on a canoe trip, there is no refrigerator for a between-meals snack. If my sleeping bag gets wet, I still sleep in it - or go without. If mosquitoes are biting me, there are some things I can do, but in the end I am going to get bitten. I don't get conditions of my own choosing. This displaces me from the centre stage, reminds me that there are other claims on my world than mine, and won't let me avoid experiencing fullness of life because I fear discomfort.
Of course, even unavoidable discomforts can weigh us down. Thomas Merton pointed out:
Too many think they can become holy by talking about their trials. The awful fuss we sometimes make over the unavoidable tribulations of life robs them of their fruitfulness. It turns them into occasions for self-pity or self-display and thus makes them useless.
The "fruitfulness" comes from cheerfully tolerating discomfort. Humility leads also to an appreciation and acceptance of the weakness of others, though humility is certainly not incompatible with excellence. Putting oneself down is another way of being self-centred, another sort of pride.
Canoeing, then, teaches me to accept and use unavoidable discomfort, and by that teaches me true humility. Humility is the acceptance that I am not alone in my universe, but am living in a whole chorus of competing beings.
I am a creature that needs to take risks in order to experience fullness of life. I'm not sure why, but as I look about me I know that I am not alone in this. Humans are animals who solve problems by making tools, perfecting skills and taking risks.
Sport is one way we do this. Perhaps participation sports and even spectator sports are the main manifestations of this need in a world that appears relatively problem-free and risk-free. Tepid souls follow with devotion the exploits of their sports heroes as if they were vicariously risking all to win.
Bored executives begin affairs with their secretaries; adolescents start smoking. Our society's headlong crazed plunge into addictions may also manifest our need for risk, though of course our government leaders promote them because they need the money, which seems a sufficient excuse for anything in our time.
Maybe recreational canoeing is no more logical than gambling, but it is certainly less dangerous for the soul, and for me it has far greater rewards.
Then there is something in what our most popular consequence-free risk-taker James Bond wrote in his attempt at a haiku poem:
You only live twice:
Once when you are born,
and once when you look death in the face.
One of the most horrific images in our western society is a prayer breakfast at MacDonalds. Guilt-free consumption packaged as godly virtuousness!
I have taken many risks, large and small, in a canoe, and I regret none of them. I seem to need to do this, and therefore I have learned skills and acquired information that will minimise without eliminating them.
Life is a progress towards a destination. This idea separates Christianity from other religions which maintain that life is cyclical, and the idea that after death you came back again and again. In other religions people search to extinguish desire and break out of that cycle of reincarnation. Not so with us - Christians are creating themselves, and accepting what they have creating even when it is seriously imperfect. We only get one shot at it.
Perhaps the best of all good canoeist's mottoes is the Reverend George Munro Grant's 1875 suggestion: Nulla Vestigia Retrorsum. "We do not go back for anything we left behind."
We keep moving. We are either moving, or we are dead. (A little like sin - you may sin, or you may be tempted but not sin, or you are dead. So never feel guilty about being tempted!)
I am a being who is constantly changing, whether I want to or not. I can be dragged along kicking and screaming (and grow eventually into a cranky curmudgeon), or I can embrace change. I can "go with the flow", adapting myself to the river, or I can ignore the rocks, refuse to adapt, and slam into them.
John Henry Newman said: "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often".