In Between Prayer and Poetry

When we pray we open ourselves up to the power and presence of the creator.  In the moments of prayer when we are using words we stretch them to try to describe in finite language an experience of the infinite. We try to express in those words a longing for the indescribable power of the creator to move and act and guide, the power that formed mountains with words and brought humanity to life with a breath.

All of that is my experience of poetry. Far beyond mere description, the poet marshals the full force of the human experience to stretch language beyond what it seemed capable of before. As they mix words like paint, they are able to not only help us see through the eyes of the poet, but see ourselves and our world with fresh eyes.

But poetry is not always in the words. There are times when the power of a poem comes from what is left unsaid, from the fragmenting of sentences and the subtle silence between phrases. There are times that the truth emerges in a poem between the lines in the empty spaces.

And that, too, is prayer.  We can get confused and enamored by our own words in prayer.  We can begin to think that our prayers consist of all the words we speak between “dear God” and “Amen.”  But when you read the ancient mothers and fathers of faith you find that the opposite is often true. Many streams of spirituality (Christian and otherwise) have realized that there is real power in the wordless prayer.  There is communion and revelation and enlightenment that can only be realized when the words stop and we unite with God.  Like the unwritten words of the poet our prayers emerge between the lines of what we have felt like we needed to “say” to God.

It is in that spirit that I share one of my favorite poems that is as much about prayer as it is about creation itself.  The first time I encountered the poem I was sitting on the lawn of the small liberal arts college I was attending.  Some grant had allowed us to bring the author to campus and I was in a circle with a handful of other college writers leaning back and allowing her words to transport us to the worlds she had created within her poems.  After I heard her speak, I never prayed the same way again.  The poem is entitled “Eagle Poem” and it is in Joy Harjo’s book In Mad Love and War.

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

May we open our whole selves in prayer, every time.  May our prayers stretch out beyond our words as we encounter the truth that we have known from the beginning:  there is more that we can’t see and hear.  May we soar like the eagle in our prayers gliding in and out of words as we experience the presence of God.

Let us pray.