My talk!
So... I just spent some time on the phone with a friend who couldn't come to Search, who requested a copy of my talk on Prayer...
which means I spent the past 30 minutes or so re-writing it so that it was actually what I said this weekend... and, I figured, for the sake of posterity, I should post it on here for the same reasons.... so here you go everyone!
okay, so, this may not be word for word my talk, but it’s pretty close… so here goes…
When I first started writing this talk over Christmas, I got through about 2.5 pages of random notes, thoughts, and comments before realizing that I was going to have to start it all over. Why? Because I was writing a talk about how to pray. But, how I pray is different from how Father prays, Justin prays, Lauren prays, etc… so I thought that I would start at the beginning…
I went all the way back to the Old Testament, to the things that all these great historical figures from the O.T. did… Abram and Abraham and Moses and Aaron and Elijah and David and his Psalms… all these wonderful things that they wrote and prayed about… and I noticed a few things… a lot of what they prayer about were requests to God: please grant us this, protect us from this, watch over our people, or thanksgiving for the things that God has done, or prayers of lamentation or sorrow… so, I took note of that and kept going. I got to the Gospels, and the things that Christ had done when He was alive, and the three instances that stuck out the most at me were when He spent 40 days praying in the desert to better know the Father; the Lord’s Prayer; and in the Garden at Gethsemane the night before He died. Now, what always drove me nuts about this is that people always would tell me, “Look at how Christ prayed, do what He did, blah blah blah…”.
Um. Christ was divine. I’m not. OF COURSE HE COULD PRAY RIGHT! Of course He could reach a proper union with the Father! He’s part of the Father in a way that my mind can’t really understand and hurts when I think about it too much! I needed something tangible, something that I could understand… so I looked at the Apostles and the Saints and everyone that has come afterward… and I particularly keyed in on Pentecost… Christ told the Apostles, “Lo, I must leave you now, but I will send back one greater than I to guide you in the ways of the Father…”
So that’s where we stand, right? Christ has died, Christ has risen, and He has sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us all…
Something else I realized about prayer is that you have to understand why we are here… Why were we created? We were created in the image and likeness of God, endowed with Free Will, so that we may choose to love God… but no one asks that second question… now what? We choose to believe or not believe, to have faith or not have faith, and then what do we do? If that were the sole point of our existence, as soon as we chose to believe, we’d be instantly taken up into Heaven, right?! Game over, you win! Woo! But it’s not… Like when I was confirmed into the Church a little over a year and a half ago, … man, when you aren’t Catholic and join the Church… yeah, I thought I was Catholic Superman (jumps on a chair and imitates Superman flying). Fighting for Truth! Justice! And the Christian way! And then two weeks later, that wears off, and I found myself sitting somewhere, scratching my head… okay… I’m Catholic… now what?
So where do we find the answer to that? We look to why Christ came… look at the Gospel of John, chapters 13-15… you see the same words over and over, the same idea, the same thing… “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love”… Love, and caring, and friendship, over and over and over… Christ came to us because He loved us. God decided that he did not want to be an impersonal God, sitting on His throne in Heaven… He decided that He needed to come down, and that He wanted to redeem a people that He could call friend. He did that out of love… and He didn’t just come to redeem us, did He? He came down to make us perfect, to teach us how to live… He came to make us Saints! And I’m talking like, hard core, Padre Pio bilocating 30000 feet in the air to stop a fighter pilot from bombing his monastery type stuff… the things that happen that make your head hurt, THAT KIND OF SAINT!
So that’s where we are now… we have a Saviour that not only wants to save us all, but wants to be our friend and wants to perfect us… and how do we fulfill that? How do we accomplish that in prayer? We can start… by listening…
(begins speaking faster). So, imagine this, you haven’t seen your best friend in three years because you both went to different colleges after high school, and one summer you both go home and decide, “Hey, we should go out to lunch,” but you have to go to work at one, so you only have about 30-45 minutes to eat, and you get there, and you’re so excited to see your friend, and you start telling that about everything that is going on in your life, about your boyfriend or girlfriend and all the things that have gone on with them and your classes and they’re getting harder and all your friends and then 45 minutes later you realize you have to leave so you get done “Hey, great talking to you! We should do this again some time! Gotta run! Keep in touch!”
… and your friend hasn’t gotten a word in edgewise, have they? They’ve been sitting there, smiling and nodding, and they still love you, but… isn’t this what we do to God sometimes? We go in during the middle of a bad week, and we just tell God everything, “God, I’ve had a terrible week, and I have a test tomorrow that I haven’t studied for, and two more that I’ve already taken, and my girlfriend’s mad at me, and my parents are sick…” and you get done telling Him everything… and you leave. Or you come in those 5-10 minutes before mass, and start praying about everything “Please bless Mommy and Daddy and little Timmy and my sister Suzie and Grandma and Grandpa, and all my friends, and grant me strength this week…” and then mass starts, and you go through mass, and then leave and get dinner with your friends…
and God hasn’t gotten a word in edgewise…
We all know the story about Elijah, right? God told Elijah, “Go to the mountain, and I will come to you there…” so Elijah went, and there was a massive earthquake and boulders went crashing down, and Elijah was afraid for his life… but God was not in the earthquake. Then, a great storm cloud appeared, and lighting struck only a few feet away from Elijah, and he was terrified… but God was not in the storm cloud… and then there was a great gust of wind that knocked Elijah down, and stirred up the dust and the dirt and blinded him…. but God was not in the wind. And then, after all of that, came a still, small voice… and that was God…
We have a God that dwells within our hearts, and within the hearts of everyone that we know… He is present everywhere, we just have to learn to listen to Him, and see Him where He is found… You know, in high school, I was looking into college, and began thinking about all the places that I should go, all the places that would be great for getting a job in the working world, like Georgia Tech and Floride and other places… but no matter what, a little voice in my heart said “Go here..” so I did. And since I have gotten to Alabama, my faith has deepened to a point that, before I had it, didn’t know was possible… I’m here now, giving this talk, and am someone completely different and so much better than I ever thought that I could be… all because I was listening to what was going on in my heart… we always talk about how we are seeking His will in our lives, but… we never let Him tell us! And sometimes, yes, it takes patience… we ask for something, and sometimes it takes a day… two days… a week… a month… a year, two years, whatever, before we get that answer… but, we still get that answer! And we get it by listening!
And that’s why I wrote this talk that way that I did… I realized that how you pray doesn’t really matter… I get a lot out of praying the Rosary… like… wow, sometimes when I pray the Rosary, and put all of myself into it… I literally feel like I have wings… like, I can feel something pulling right here (points to the backs of his shoulder blades) … it’s one of those things that should be impossible and makes no sense whatsoever, but… proves to me the … union that you can achieve with God… now, do I expect everyone to get that from the Rosary? No… because for a lot of people, that doesn’t happen… some people can go sit in the chapel for 30, 45 minutes, an hour, and meditate on the meaning of God, the Eucharist… if so, awesome! Fantastic! Dive into it! Others like to go walking in the middle of the night, to be in the midst of nature, and find God in the peace and quiet there… great! Others sing, some dance, paint, whatever… the point is that you listen… How you do that is up to you! But the point is, to remember to listen…
Our God came down to have an intimate relationship with us… even though He knows and loves us all, He still wants to know us for who we are… He wants to be our friend. It’s why He came! And more than that, He knows everything that He has planned for us, and wants to tell it all to us…
Back in January, Justin and I headed to the regional FOCUS conference in Chicago, and while I was there, I listened to a talk called “King Kong of King God: Who’s your daddy?” The talk was about how to be a proper Christian male, and the guy giving it used an analogy that really, really struck me… he said, “God is ambiguous when in gender… we call Him a He, but really, He’s both… or neither… however you want to consider it… in one aspect, He is the masculine, the warrior, ready and willing to do anything to win our love and our trust and our faith… and that’s already been done (points to the rather large cross overhead). Christ came and made the ultimate sacrifice to win us! The battle is over, the war has been won, there’s nothing left to do in that aspect! But… at the same time, God is also the feminine, the lady-in-waiting, madly and passionately in love with us, waiting patiently for us to come and find her…
So I guess that’s the final question that I leave you with here… will you seek her? Will you seek God in your heart? Will you look for Him, and listen to what He wants to tell you?
which means I spent the past 30 minutes or so re-writing it so that it was actually what I said this weekend... and, I figured, for the sake of posterity, I should post it on here for the same reasons.... so here you go everyone!
okay, so, this may not be word for word my talk, but it’s pretty close… so here goes…
When I first started writing this talk over Christmas, I got through about 2.5 pages of random notes, thoughts, and comments before realizing that I was going to have to start it all over. Why? Because I was writing a talk about how to pray. But, how I pray is different from how Father prays, Justin prays, Lauren prays, etc… so I thought that I would start at the beginning…
I went all the way back to the Old Testament, to the things that all these great historical figures from the O.T. did… Abram and Abraham and Moses and Aaron and Elijah and David and his Psalms… all these wonderful things that they wrote and prayed about… and I noticed a few things… a lot of what they prayer about were requests to God: please grant us this, protect us from this, watch over our people, or thanksgiving for the things that God has done, or prayers of lamentation or sorrow… so, I took note of that and kept going. I got to the Gospels, and the things that Christ had done when He was alive, and the three instances that stuck out the most at me were when He spent 40 days praying in the desert to better know the Father; the Lord’s Prayer; and in the Garden at Gethsemane the night before He died. Now, what always drove me nuts about this is that people always would tell me, “Look at how Christ prayed, do what He did, blah blah blah…”.
Um. Christ was divine. I’m not. OF COURSE HE COULD PRAY RIGHT! Of course He could reach a proper union with the Father! He’s part of the Father in a way that my mind can’t really understand and hurts when I think about it too much! I needed something tangible, something that I could understand… so I looked at the Apostles and the Saints and everyone that has come afterward… and I particularly keyed in on Pentecost… Christ told the Apostles, “Lo, I must leave you now, but I will send back one greater than I to guide you in the ways of the Father…”
So that’s where we stand, right? Christ has died, Christ has risen, and He has sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us all…
Something else I realized about prayer is that you have to understand why we are here… Why were we created? We were created in the image and likeness of God, endowed with Free Will, so that we may choose to love God… but no one asks that second question… now what? We choose to believe or not believe, to have faith or not have faith, and then what do we do? If that were the sole point of our existence, as soon as we chose to believe, we’d be instantly taken up into Heaven, right?! Game over, you win! Woo! But it’s not… Like when I was confirmed into the Church a little over a year and a half ago, … man, when you aren’t Catholic and join the Church… yeah, I thought I was Catholic Superman (jumps on a chair and imitates Superman flying). Fighting for Truth! Justice! And the Christian way! And then two weeks later, that wears off, and I found myself sitting somewhere, scratching my head… okay… I’m Catholic… now what?
So where do we find the answer to that? We look to why Christ came… look at the Gospel of John, chapters 13-15… you see the same words over and over, the same idea, the same thing… “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love”… Love, and caring, and friendship, over and over and over… Christ came to us because He loved us. God decided that he did not want to be an impersonal God, sitting on His throne in Heaven… He decided that He needed to come down, and that He wanted to redeem a people that He could call friend. He did that out of love… and He didn’t just come to redeem us, did He? He came down to make us perfect, to teach us how to live… He came to make us Saints! And I’m talking like, hard core, Padre Pio bilocating 30000 feet in the air to stop a fighter pilot from bombing his monastery type stuff… the things that happen that make your head hurt, THAT KIND OF SAINT!
So that’s where we are now… we have a Saviour that not only wants to save us all, but wants to be our friend and wants to perfect us… and how do we fulfill that? How do we accomplish that in prayer? We can start… by listening…
(begins speaking faster). So, imagine this, you haven’t seen your best friend in three years because you both went to different colleges after high school, and one summer you both go home and decide, “Hey, we should go out to lunch,” but you have to go to work at one, so you only have about 30-45 minutes to eat, and you get there, and you’re so excited to see your friend, and you start telling that about everything that is going on in your life, about your boyfriend or girlfriend and all the things that have gone on with them and your classes and they’re getting harder and all your friends and then 45 minutes later you realize you have to leave so you get done “Hey, great talking to you! We should do this again some time! Gotta run! Keep in touch!”
… and your friend hasn’t gotten a word in edgewise, have they? They’ve been sitting there, smiling and nodding, and they still love you, but… isn’t this what we do to God sometimes? We go in during the middle of a bad week, and we just tell God everything, “God, I’ve had a terrible week, and I have a test tomorrow that I haven’t studied for, and two more that I’ve already taken, and my girlfriend’s mad at me, and my parents are sick…” and you get done telling Him everything… and you leave. Or you come in those 5-10 minutes before mass, and start praying about everything “Please bless Mommy and Daddy and little Timmy and my sister Suzie and Grandma and Grandpa, and all my friends, and grant me strength this week…” and then mass starts, and you go through mass, and then leave and get dinner with your friends…
and God hasn’t gotten a word in edgewise…
We all know the story about Elijah, right? God told Elijah, “Go to the mountain, and I will come to you there…” so Elijah went, and there was a massive earthquake and boulders went crashing down, and Elijah was afraid for his life… but God was not in the earthquake. Then, a great storm cloud appeared, and lighting struck only a few feet away from Elijah, and he was terrified… but God was not in the storm cloud… and then there was a great gust of wind that knocked Elijah down, and stirred up the dust and the dirt and blinded him…. but God was not in the wind. And then, after all of that, came a still, small voice… and that was God…
We have a God that dwells within our hearts, and within the hearts of everyone that we know… He is present everywhere, we just have to learn to listen to Him, and see Him where He is found… You know, in high school, I was looking into college, and began thinking about all the places that I should go, all the places that would be great for getting a job in the working world, like Georgia Tech and Floride and other places… but no matter what, a little voice in my heart said “Go here..” so I did. And since I have gotten to Alabama, my faith has deepened to a point that, before I had it, didn’t know was possible… I’m here now, giving this talk, and am someone completely different and so much better than I ever thought that I could be… all because I was listening to what was going on in my heart… we always talk about how we are seeking His will in our lives, but… we never let Him tell us! And sometimes, yes, it takes patience… we ask for something, and sometimes it takes a day… two days… a week… a month… a year, two years, whatever, before we get that answer… but, we still get that answer! And we get it by listening!
And that’s why I wrote this talk that way that I did… I realized that how you pray doesn’t really matter… I get a lot out of praying the Rosary… like… wow, sometimes when I pray the Rosary, and put all of myself into it… I literally feel like I have wings… like, I can feel something pulling right here (points to the backs of his shoulder blades) … it’s one of those things that should be impossible and makes no sense whatsoever, but… proves to me the … union that you can achieve with God… now, do I expect everyone to get that from the Rosary? No… because for a lot of people, that doesn’t happen… some people can go sit in the chapel for 30, 45 minutes, an hour, and meditate on the meaning of God, the Eucharist… if so, awesome! Fantastic! Dive into it! Others like to go walking in the middle of the night, to be in the midst of nature, and find God in the peace and quiet there… great! Others sing, some dance, paint, whatever… the point is that you listen… How you do that is up to you! But the point is, to remember to listen…
Our God came down to have an intimate relationship with us… even though He knows and loves us all, He still wants to know us for who we are… He wants to be our friend. It’s why He came! And more than that, He knows everything that He has planned for us, and wants to tell it all to us…
Back in January, Justin and I headed to the regional FOCUS conference in Chicago, and while I was there, I listened to a talk called “King Kong of King God: Who’s your daddy?” The talk was about how to be a proper Christian male, and the guy giving it used an analogy that really, really struck me… he said, “God is ambiguous when in gender… we call Him a He, but really, He’s both… or neither… however you want to consider it… in one aspect, He is the masculine, the warrior, ready and willing to do anything to win our love and our trust and our faith… and that’s already been done (points to the rather large cross overhead). Christ came and made the ultimate sacrifice to win us! The battle is over, the war has been won, there’s nothing left to do in that aspect! But… at the same time, God is also the feminine, the lady-in-waiting, madly and passionately in love with us, waiting patiently for us to come and find her…
So I guess that’s the final question that I leave you with here… will you seek her? Will you seek God in your heart? Will you look for Him, and listen to what He wants to tell you?