Saying For Today: The style of worship is not priority, the spirit of worship is.
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A continuation of the series "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
Adonai [the Lord] visited the mystic master Baal Shem Tov. Adonai said, "There is one among the congregation that prays the most lovely and meaningful prayers of all the others." The Baal Shem Tov inquired as to this one's name. Adonai told him the name.
The Baal Shem Tov visited this man, in a little hut back in the wood. The sage said, "My friend, Adonai tells me you have the most lovely and meaningful prayers of all in the congregation. I never see you even join in the prayers. What does Adonai mean?"
"Master," began the man, "I'm just a simple, illiterate man. I know only ten letters of the alphabet. When I enter prayers, I see others praying, and the beauty of it arises into my Heart so that I can barely contain the feeling for Adonai. So, I bow my head and say to Adonai, my Love, 'Adonai, you know I am illiterate and cannot say the prayers.'" Next, I speak for Adonai the ten letters I know. Afterward, I say, “Adonai, you know my Heart, you know how much I love and adore you. I ask humbly for you to take these ten letters and form them however you wish to most please you. Amen."
The Baal Shem Tov was immediately struck with Awe at the Love and Faith of this illiterate man. He understood what Adonai had meant in saying, "There is one among the congregation that prays the most lovely and meaningful prayers of all the others."
The sage said to the man, "Friend, thank you, today you have reminded me of what I most want also to give to Adonai, my Love." From that time on the Baal Shem Tov often told of the illiterate man who gave him the most important lesson he had ever received in the practice of prayer.
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Sometimes, persons I'm around say that they don't know how to pray. Seems this man knew sincerity is the most important matter in prayer.
Yes, and interesting it is that the word "sincerity" comes from the Latin, where among its meanings is "to be pure, clean, whole." The idea of truthful and candid was related to that in a figurative sense. So, yes, pure meaning wholehearted, without fabrication, is a key to prayer. Inner purity is not a matter of morality, it is a matter of being undivided in heart. Better one word in prayer with all your heart, than many words heartlessly or only half-hearted. The spirit of the prayer is what matters most, not the length or kind of prayer.
Hence, the how is not very important.
For the man of ten letters, and us, the how is important, yet not any particular how. His how, a simple means, was an expression of absolute love. The simple in worship can be the profound. We cannot ignore means. If you say you love someone, your heart will seek means to love that someone. The very feeling of love leads you to want to give it form, that is how Spirit becomes Word. Word is the expression of inner Grace. So, with prayer. While the inner posture of devotion is of first priority, the natural flow of love for the Beloved, Life, is to express that in some how. Then, the inner Grace is united with the form Love takes in graceful prayer. Really, all worship is prayer, and prayers impure, such as rote prayers that do not arise from the heart-of-admiration, these may be prayers, but they are not prayer. So, Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu in Hinduism, says in the Bhagavad Gita that God-the-Unmanifest, Brahman, receives all acts of worship, regardless of the how.
I recall as a young boy I was taken to a holiness meeting in a nearby community, a Church of God congregation. There, persons would lift hands to God, shout, undergo what they called being slain in the spirit, so just dropping to the floor unconscious, dance in the spirit, and speak in unknown tongues. A slender, frail, elderly man came out of his seat during the worship meeting. He began shouting ecstatically and running up the aisle toward the altar. On his way, he ran into the side of one pew, rather forcefully, bounced off and kept running. He got to the front, and he began to dance more wildly. I was from a quieter form of worship, in my Baptist church. This man's behavior alarmed me. I was stunned at the display. Yet, that was worship. He was giving his ten letters. The style of worship is not priority, the spirit of worship is.
Jewish and Christian scriptures speak to this need to unite the heart of love and worship as act of love. An example is Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, quoting from the Jewish Scripture, from the Book of Isaiah...
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is useless, for they teach human-made rules as if they were my teachings.
Seems love is the motivation for prayer.
The most exalted motivation is love, for love is the foundational quality of Life. One of the most beautiful prayers regarding this is from Rabindranath Tagore...
When all the strings of my life will be tuned, then at every touch of Yours will come out the music of love.
We pray in love, so to become love.
Does one have to believe in a personal God to express this love?
No, but in some Reality that is at core loving and is Love. How else could one express love intentionally in worship, unless one believes in something we can call Love? Yet, we cannot exclude that nontheists can express loving devotion in prayer and worship, as we see in the nontheism of Buddhism.
That makes sense to me. You say there are varied means of prayer and devotion. Please share some of these traditional means.
Let us do that soon. I will draw upon ways of worship in Eastern religions, which have parallels in Western faiths. For today, please reflect on the story of the ten letters. Inquire about the posture of your heart, and consider how you express love in the ways you worship, even how you feel and express this silently in the Silence.
One final matter of interest for today, please. You often stress silence beyond emotion, seeming to downplay emotion.
We return to silence, there to detach from emotionalism, or attachment to feelings. Then, we can welcome emotion arising from the deep feeling of the Silence. We are feeling beings, feelings inspires us to create means to express that prior to feelings, Love before all sensations of love. True, much worship is emotionalism, but, again, Love welcomes all, including what you may see as less evolved ways of prayer and worship. The giver receives all gifts, whatever the wrapping. The giftedness of the gift is what most matters, in love with Love.
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*The theme of "Lotus of the Heart" is 'Living in Love beyond Beliefs.' This work is presented by Brian K. Wilcox, of Maine, USA. You can order Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, through major online booksellers.
*Quote from Rabindranath Tagore from Heart of God.
