No- this is not my terminology. Cos you can't really lose a secret place whose address is "neither lo here nor lo there"...but I know what he means. IKarios writes and I put a potted version of some of what I have learned post -Brother Lawrence. Has BL come into your life yet?
Loss of a Secret Place
Some people can carry their secret place -- the space in which they are free to pray and be alone with the Father -- everywhere with them. I never got the hang of this. In fact, since the actual, physical space I'd been using for prayer got turned from very-private to no-hope-of-privacy, I've been pretty well lost to prayer.My secret place, before it got annexed by a new living area (formerly a storage space never frequented, now our bedroom), used to be my refuge. I could go in, close the door, lose myself and be neither self-conscious nor subject to being snuck up on and surprised. If I were ambushed mid-prayer or Bible reading, even by a well-meaning spouse, I'm not sure I'd be able to pray again. That's how self-conscious I still am about it; that's how enormous the risk of starting to pray again in an openly-ambushable area.The only space I have now (the space vacated) is a loft, which isn't like a room with walls and a door; it's just an open space with stairs leading up to it. It's a place, but it's not private. It's not even close to a secret place.I miss that secret place terribly. I've been trying to keep surrounding myself with things of the Spirit (but not too much -- not too loudly, as if I were tiptoeing around someone sound asleep -- lest I awaken to how much I want to pick up and move to a certain faraway place), but I miss my one-on-one time with Him. I listen to sermons about it, as recently in a message about the Holy Spirit being the force that brings the Word to life: "Yeah, I remember that. Right on! Good times. Can't have those anymore. Damn."These recurrent, ultimate arrivals at "Damn" take their toll on the soul. Too much "Damn" is salt in the gears. Too much "Damn" is lemon juice in the eye. Too much "Damn" snaps its sneaky fingers and hope is nothing more than a thing with feathers, flitting quickly out the window and away.The absence of hope reduces my potential to a storehouse of dusty holographic plates that haven't tasted the pleasure of a laser in what feels like an eternity. You can walk around and look at the two-dimensional plates but, since your mind isn't made of math, the patterns don't make spatial sense. There really is a person in here, but there is a catch: needs Light.I need a secret place again, so that I might return to the secret place, alone with Him. I'm living under a huge deception and my eyes need to be opened. Prayers welcome.
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Posted by Karyos on 6/20/2009 10:24:00 PM
2 comments:
Brian Anthony said...
hello, found your blog and thought i would post a comment. I used to really need a physcial spot to pray. Then i read practicing the presence of God by Brother Lawrence. It really challenged me to use all of my alone time (i know, if your married with kids, this doesn't really exist) as my prayer closet. Sometimes I just go for a walk alone, or i know many churches will allow you to come in and use their prayer rooms as well. praying for you !
July 10, 2009 5:19 PM
Chris Welch - 07000INTUNE said...
We started with Brother Lawrence in 1973 or so.Remember one notable bus journey where we kept asking each other if we were still praying!seems crazy now! But you know God sees all that stuff. Then we were led to a church in Emsworth which had input from Ed Miller and Jorge Pradas See bottom of my blog for more details. And this led to a. learning to enter the Presence of God in praise and worship and b. to learn to be still before God and listen. Really, with hindsight this is just learning to shift our Christianity sideways, from the articulate chatter of the left-brain frontal lobe, to the more artistic, inspirational side of us. This is what Buddhists do. But we are tuned to a different frequency....God FM...so it's different...and it's connected to The New Covenant in jesus blood.After a while of this...several years of livng and meeting together in community...God increases the pressure..to squeeze out all the hidden puss of generations of curses,of bad habits...of why we do those bad habits...of attitudes to other people...both superiorities and inferiorities....Then finally the crashing truth penetrates our being "WHO DO YOU think you are?" Then the revelation of what went wrong in Genesis 3:5 (Read Yes I Am link on my blog)...and this , believe me is the last thing we as humans want to hear....then Bob's your uncle...or Jesus is your Lord maybe better....you learn what it means to live Christ as you in your form. By this time any luxury such as having a secret place (geographical) is blown out the window....so like Paul you can be on a sinking ship and still be in the Presence of God...commanding the whole vessel by the way....It's all a supernaturally natural process...that just as when a baby is born you cannot think how you are going to get from one of these to a job-holding, tax-paying, family-running one of these....Yup you've guessed it...God knows how to do it! If it was dependant on us and our "secret place" schedule...forget it!. Luckily it isn't...cos the Holy Spirit happens to be real and pretty good at getting us there!Appreciate your blog and trying to get something similar out of Jon Sidnell. he's just got married...so he'll be a bit caught up!!
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