All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Holy One,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
as from the Holy One who is the Spirit.
2 Cor. 3:18

Years ago, when I worked at The Center for Spiritual Development in sunny southern California, I had the daily good fortune of being in the presence of formative guides and models of prayer. Yes, this included the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, my colleagues, guest speakers, and retreat leaders, such as Joan Chittister, Michael Crosby, James Finley, Barbara Fiand, Tilden Edwards, Jim Forest, Marcus Borg, and Greg Boyle. And the retreatants and participants in our programs as well. But it is not these folks I have in mind.

Every day I had cause to walk from the building where my office was located across the well-manicured campus to where we held our staff meetings, offered courses, and gathered for community prayer and reflection. Walking this same path every day took me past a generous plot of orange flowers, perhaps African Daisies. Honestly, if it had been just one flower by itself I’m not sure I would have paid it much attention. Alone, it looked a bit like something a grade schooler cut out of construction paper. Each flower with its simple orange hula skirt seemed functional but by comparison lacked the rich elegance of the rose or the simple beauty of the tulip. Tucking in early for the night, its bedclothes were an unalluring inside-out-looking ochre. It’s not a flower we’re likely to see walking the runway except perhaps as a last-minute alternate because the calla lily broke its spadix.

The lowly flowers spread out over forty by twenty feet or so did make for good ground cover though, and—despite orange being a bottom fish on my list of favorite colors—all together they were as wondrously eye-catching as an assembly of bright saffron-robed monks crossing Main Street in Elk Horn, Iowa. These were my wise guides offering a simple lesson on prayer.

Some mornings, when we had meetings before the sun showed up or after a rare night of rain, the flowers were a colony of muddy orange tents still zipped up tight. But on the way back to my office at mid-morning or high noon, it was as if miniature versions of the saffron monks had made their way in the middle of the night from Elk Horn, Iowa to Orange, California for a retreat and now were lounging in the sun, their faces open wide and turned skyward.

Slow learner and slumberous human that I can be, it took me many trips before I realized that these flowers were praying, wholly hushed in holy silence, their faces open and radiant, receiving and reflecting the light. They were a picture of adoration. On my way back from a meeting one day I stopped in their presence and took them all in. It dawned on me that prayer is nothing more and nothing less than being still, being rooted in what Merton called “the hidden ground of love,” opening, and turning toward the light. Just that. Think of the fisted hand slowly, deliberately giving way and unfolding into spread-fingered freedom or into two reverent cupped hands that signal to the heart which messages the face—BE OPEN TO THE LIGHT. Just that.

And yet, there is a slight but important difference. The flowers do not so much unfold under their own power like the fist opening as they allow the sunlight to act on them, drawing forth from within the flowers’ innate impulse to unfold and to desire efflorescence. As the flowers surrender themselves to the light and let the sun have its way with them, so the pray-er does the same by surrendering to the alluring heat of God’s love. Prayer is a conscious relinquishment and opening of the heart to the Light of Light. The simple unrushed stillness of the human face exposing itself to the effulgence of Divine Love evokes our natural impulse for gratefulness which is so genuine that it moves us, transfigures us so that we want to radiate that love-light toward others. If you’ve ever had the awestruck pleasure and quiet exhilaration of beholding a Wisconsin field filled with heaven-tilted sunflowers for as far as the eye can see, can you imagine what it would be like if we all walked around—as Thomas Merton said of the faces of the pedestrians in his well-known epiphany in Louisville in 1958—”shining like the sun”?

In a time of contagion, perhaps we can start a counter-movement comprised of robust and radiant spreaders of this prayerful openness, gratefulness, wonder, and light. I have a memory etched on the walls of my heart of a time forty-eight years ago when I went home from college one weekend to see my mother who was dying a gruesome death. As soon as she heard me come into the house, she called in a surprisingly strong voice, “Is that my Dan? Come in here.” I dropped my bag and went into her bedroom. She was unexpectedly sitting up tall in her bed, her pillowed back against the wall. I don’t remember the specifics of what she said, though I remember it was a flurry of questions expressing her complete attention, excitement, and interest in me and my life at school.

What I do remember and will never forget is her face. It was so radiant it made it hard for me to concentrate on what she was asking and what I was saying. I wanted to say, “What happened to your face, mom?” but I didn’t dare. I wonder if she even knew what I saw. Her face was bright red and the entirety of it—not just under her eyes—had a wet sheen. It was open, smiling, alive, and expressive. Whether her shining came from tears of sorrow at the thought of leaving her husband and six children or from tears of unspeakable gratitude and the sheer awe and joy awakened by her realization of the incomprehensible gift of her life I can’t say. But I suspect what I interrupted when I came in the door was her opening her face and exposing her heart to the Light. It was clear she was on the front stoop of death, but as I beheld her incandescent face beholding mine I caught a glimpse of what Peter, James, and John saw up on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured, his face and clothing becoming dazzlingly bright. It’s hard to unsee or forget.

To this day I believe that if I could see, really see with radical amazement, the sacred gratuity of nature and my family and friends and strangers and what Kathleen Norris called the “quotidian mysteries”—a maple leaf, a lighted candle, hot soup on the stove, bread broken and passed—my face would look the way my mom’s face looked on that day from whatever she saw with the prayerful eyes of her heart. It would look like the faces of Peter, James, and John when they beheld the face of Jesus and like the faces of those Merton saw on Fourth and Walnut receiving and reflecting the light from the sun. What a wonderful world this would be.

In her 1992 book Return to Love, Marianne Williamson penned the provocative words below often misattributed to Nelson Mandela. Because they have been posterized, I suspect they are underappreciated. Having sat for decades with people in spiritual direction and listened to the story of their lives, Williamson’s words ring true to me as a spiritual diagnosis of so many, including myself.

It is interesting that these words were greatly appreciated when people believed they were spoken by Mandela in his Presidential inaugural address. It is revealing that the words sounded to so many people like something the liberated man whose sage status came by way of struggle and suffering would say. It is, then, not surprising that they fell into disfavor with some, maybe many—mainly intellectual sophisticates and macho men who complain trophies are given out in youth sports simply for participating not for starring—once it was confirmed Marianne Williamson was the source, not Mandela. Decide for yourselves whether they are poignant and true, if not for you for someone you know and love.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves,
“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people will not feel insecure around you.

We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us: It is in everyone.

And, as we let our light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
Automatically liberates others.

In closing, a simple prayer practice anyone can do anywhere at any time is to stop what you are doing from time to time throughout the day or while you are doing something else—waiting in the doctor’s office, sitting in a meeting, watching your granddaughter or daughter play soccer, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting in traffic—to make a fist, and then consciously and slowly open and close your hands as many times as you’d like as a gestured prayer, as a prayer of gratefulness for all the gifts you have received, as a prayer of trust for whatever is, as a reminder to allow God to open your heart and face to the effulgent Light and Divine Love, and as a prompt to reflect this Light and Love wherever your heart goes and whatever or whomever your eyes see.

ARTWORK: “Face and Hand,” Oswald Guayasamin; “Sun” mua.

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