"Stutters Before the Holy"

What we have to say to dig out what we need to say

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

From Renita Weems, Listening for God:

Twenty years ago my journals consisted of reams and reams of longing and lust—boredom, restlessness, unfulfilled dreams, broken promises, haunting nightmares, books I wanted to write, money I wanted to make, friendships that kept me on edge, men I wanted to love me. Twenty years later I am absorbed with pretty much the same things (except it’s only one man, my husband, whom I’m trying to help learn how to love me). Admittedly, I’m not always proud of my prayers and private conversations with God. Nonetheless I am grateful to be able to look back over some of the longest prayers imaginable. They are my stutters before the holy. I shudder to think of my journals falling into the wrong hands—say, someone who might mistake them for truth.

Still, I’ve learned some things from this long affair with written prayers. For one thing, sometimes you have to pray the prayers you can until you can pray the prayer you want. Second, prayer is not so much learning to write or talk to someone or some presence outside yourself as it as becoming mindful of a conversation already taking place deep inside.

This is some gold, right here. I think of my own journaling in this way: stutters before the holy. I go in and out of conversation with God in them. And I’ve learned to let myself sound stupid. Because sometimes I am, and God already knows it. But I am trying to get to the truth. Trying to get to that conversation already taking place inside. And in order to do that, you have to get the other stuff out. Whatever thoughts are tapping me on the shoulder, be it annoyances, fears, to do lists, unmet desires, or stresses. Then there are all the stupid things we ask for to distract us from the fear of the big things we need to ask for. The ones God has created us to launch into. And there are the theological questions we try to solve to deceive ourselves into certainty about him. That maybe even, with this information, we can manage him. Or at least distract us from that ever-looming question about his goodness towards us. We are too busy trying to be it than to behold it. All the prayers we have to pray until we can pray the prayer we want.

Weems is channeling Teresa of Avila here at the end. That conversation already taking place deep inside, if only we can find it, is what Teresa calls the interior castle. Where our Spirit experiences our unity with Christ. The inner chambers in our soul. And all these prayers we pray to get to the prayers we need to pray are “like the fool who cannot find his assigned seat.” The mind restraining itself.

Journaling helps me find that place. Or, I should say, get closer to it. My best prayers come out on the page. I don’t even know it sometimes until I look back and see all those prayers I had to pray. The thoughts that needed to find their assigned seats and be quiet. The prayers I had to pray help me to shed the faux parts of me. The parts I’ve been hustling all this time and didn’t even know it. The page pulls them out. With the work of the Spirit. And this process awakens me to the presence of God. A God who understands my stuttering and patiently waits for me to find clarity to get to my true desires. For me to quiet and listen to that conversation already taking place deep inside.

No wonder Jesus encourages us to pray in private and shut the door.