Daily Life and Prayer Life: A Form of Schizophrenia?

How do others do it? Combine a life of prayer and a life of activity? They seem to be diametrically opposite ways of being. My day usually starts and ends with prayer, but often the start gets a bit squeezed, depending upon how late I am in getting up. Or, sometimes work gets a little squeezed when I arrive a little late because of becoming "stuck" in contemplative prayer before leaving the house. (Hey, it's a lot better than getting stuck in early morning traffic, which does not happen when I leave late because rush hour, such as we have it, is over.)

I suppose one can define prayer somewhat more broadly, along the lines of Br. Lawrence's definition, in which he did everything in his life as if doing it for God (as described in The Practice of the Presence of God). If only I could remember that when I am in the throes of some kind of intense discussion with employees insurrecting against one of my junior managers or when the new senior assistant to my boss's boss is pontificating in a (usually unsuccessful) attempt to demean me, something that does not work well with a farm girl who grew up on the boy's side of the playground, took on seven boys on the bus in the seventh grade and would have won had we not all been kicked off the bus as the fisticuffs were reaching their zenith, and served in the Army while it still belonged mainly to men. Fortunately, there are whole days when I do remember to do everything as if I were doing it for God. Those are usually good days.

When I remember to send a quick request for help and guidance in the midst of the chaos and trauma, things go much better. When I forget, I usually end up afterward saying, "Oops, God, sorry! Could you fix the mess I made?" I usually get that help, but it would be more efficacious were I to remember to ask in advance and not in retrospect!

Wednesdays and Fridays are better days. There is a daily Mass at the chapel near my office at noon. My secretary knows not to schedule anything at those times. Once I overheard her say to someone begging for an appointment at that time, all other times for the week already being filled, "No, she will not give up her time with God for time with anyone here -- and, trust me, you want it that way!" Hm, I guess there is some residual peace and "connection" when I return that people notice. Now, if only I had that option every day!

I have a little sticker on my computer. It says "PG." Many people think I love Pacific Grove, a small beach town near here, or think I live there. Actually, PG is a reminder to myself to "pray to God" before pushing the send button on any email. Often, I do remember. Other times I rush past even that sign and the little moment it takes to ask God for a second opinion about what I have written -- and then, sigh, I sometimes have to go in and push the "recall" button because I did need that second opinion.

What I yearn for, though, is that which I generally get only in the evening when, as the sun begins to set and the air cools off, I can work down our hill and stroll about our sleepy neighborhood (or around the mission grounds) in prayer or in contemplation. (I know: the recommendation for contemplation is to sit upright quietly, but sitting quietly is not something I know how to do, and I can certainly "be still" while walking, and I can certainly "listen" while walking. It's just my nature, and it does not matter if I am not following man's "rules" since I am doing what God put into me to do naturally.) I love the "being still" part in the breeze, in our little town's sleepiness, in the occasional call of a bird or hawk or dove or owl, in the fading light that is still there enough to guide my steps. I love the being with God part that has no real time limit because even if the light goes away, the Light is still there!

Then comes the next day, and I once again become a schizophrenic. The Russians have an interesting verb, the translation for which I do not know: slit'sya. It means something along the lines of two or more things flowing together, coalescing, become one new, combined thing. I am looking for the moment when there will be a "sliyanie" of my daily life and my prayer life, and I will no longer feel schizophrenic.

Suggestions always welcomed!

P.S. Happy Fourth! (No work today -- sliyanie!)

Miracles

Last Friday, I had lunch with Fr. Terry who had come to town for that purpose, bless his heart. I had not seen him in months, and it was wonderful to catch up and share thoughts. He had not known about the spontaneous healing of my torn rotator cuff during Mass. I don't know why that particular event came up during lunch, but it did.

Afterward, I got to thinking about miracles. Why do I seem to get so many of them? Then I wondered if I really did get a disproportionate share of them, or have I just learned to recognize them. My conclusion? I think miracles happen more often than people know (or recognize).

On a related topic, there has been some lively discussion on some blogs recently of distractions during prayer. This is, of course, not a recent or uncommon discussion. It's been a problem throughout the centuries, and I, of course, do experience such distractions. I try to follow the advice to ignore them and return to contemplation, but sometimes these distractions take on a life of their own.

Similarly, but with a happier result, sometimes while I am in the midst of work, particularly boring but important meetings, I become intensely aware of God's presence in the room. The result is that I become quite distracted from the business of hand, sometimes embarrassingly so. Nonetheless, if you had the choice of being present to your colleagues and supervisors or present to God, which would you choose? Is there a choice?

Perhaps God would talk more often to all of us if we took the time to listen more often, more intently, more openly. The signals are sometimes so slight that it is easy to miss them if we are not tuned in, don't pay close attention, or just dismiss the unusual as a curiosity. I might have dismissed the blue light that ran through my body while driving to the doctor for a pre-surgical examination had he not found upon arrival that I no longer needed surgery. I had temporarily stored the experience of the light as unusual, and only the doctor's near-immediate finding helped me to put two and two together. Similarly, the light touch on my torn-rotator-cuff shoulder during Mass might have seemed to be a figment of my imagination had not Doah, my mentally retarded son, not been with me and said "we no alone" and had not I been able to immediately move in all directions an until-then immovable arm (healing confirmed by MRI a few days later). And the warm hands and image of a male figure in sandals and robe I would have attributed to a dream except that I was wide awake, fell asleep only AFTER the warm hands lulled me to sleep, and found the urine infection that had been torturing me into the wee hours of the morning totally gone when I woke up. (See earlier post on these events, Healings, and other miracles in my life, Miracles in Real Life.)

I wonder how many miracles we miss through inattention, let alone through disbelief. I wonder why God would keep sending them to us when we treat them so cavalierly...

Double-posted on Modern Mysticism and 100th Lamb.

Darkness II

Indeed, it has been quite a while since I have posted on this site. It is not for lack of time (although I have had relatively little). It is not for lack of subject matter, interest, or awareness that time was passing without posting. No, it was for a very different reason, a first experience for me. It was for lack of a sense of that spirituality that underpins the posts on this blog.

For more than three weeks, until a few days ago, I have been experiencing what St. John of the Cross referred to as the dark night of the soul. Actually, and fortunately, I had a foretaste of this several years ago not long after my conversion. (That story, in detail, I shared earlier in this post: see here.)

The foretaste came when my friend, Tom, went through a dark night, and I ended up in more than 20 hours of prayer with and/or for him. At one point, I made the stupid request to feel what he was feeling in order to understand him better. That request was granted, thankfully, only briefly for part of an evening, during which I begged to be released from my request and the next morning, when all was back to normal, I begged never to go through that experience.

That latter request, I guess, God considered not in my best interest because that is precisely what I have just gone through and not for two weeks, like Tom, but for three weeks. What kept me going was knowing that Mother Theresa had gone through a dark night for YEARS. Why? That is a question that only God can answer.

Until this period, God had been spoiling me, to use the words of one of my Sufi friends. God has never let me down, never failed to answer a prayer, always filled my life with miracles, and always, always let me feel a Divine Presence wherever I happened to be if I just was still a bit and even, often, if I was not. For me, there were two parts to religion: spirituality and faith. A few people live with spirituality; many live with faith. I always thought that if I were required to live by faith alone, I would not be able to do it.

And now, here I was: no sense of God's presence for day after day. It would have been easy to think that all my previous experience with the Presence of God had been imagined. That's the way our human minds work at times. The past is gone, the present is where we live, the future we look forward to if we don't like the present. I realized somewhere in the early part of this experience that I really had a choice. I could choose to believe in spite of the absence of any spiritual sensations. I guess that is what faith is: choosing to believe.

Interestingly, during this period I came back into contact with Fr. Terry, who had been my de facto spiritual advisor but who had been transferred to another town more than an hour away last February. We began an old-fashioned letter-writing correspondence, and since we began with reminiscing, some of the spiritual experiences that I had had earlier but not shared served as the initial content. In writing of these things, I reinforced my choice to believe. I wonder if God handed me this cane for leaning on and for feeling my way through the dark period, for strengthening my walk in darkness, depending on God's support even though I could not sense that Divine Presence that I had come to, well, honestly speaking, take for granted.

I now understand much better what St. John of the Cross meant when he said that the dark night is a positive thing, an opportunity to grow spiritually, a cleansing and purification. Now that the Presence is palpably back in my life, I don't think I will ever again take it for granted. More than that, though, I know that I do have faith, and if it seems weak, I can choose to believe and to ask God to increase my faith, and God will do it.

As much as I do not want to go through another dark night, I am now grateful to God that I was gifted with it. Now, too, I will not fear another dark night should God want to so gift me again.

Presence II

I had planned to write this post right before Doah ran smack into his current tribulation, so it got shelved in the wake of that trauma. We are now coming back to life, and so I thought it was time to share this rather unique experience, unique for me, anyway. The experience is a couple of weeks old now, had never happened to me before, and is still as fresh in my memory as if it happened only last night. As for the meaning, reason, or purpose of what happened, I have absolutely no idea. I will let you judge that. Personally, I think it was just a gift. At least, I accepted it as a gift because it was such an especially pleasant experience.

A couple of weeks ago, Donnie and I decided to go to the theater -- a very infrequent activity for us -- to watch the raved-about Inception, which did turn out to be an interesting and entertaining movie. Donnie bought the typical snack foods; I picked up a hot dog because I had not had a chance to eat earlier that day. I added to that order an icee. That was my nourishment for the day -- perhaps not the best, but at least not the worst that I could have chosen.

We settled into our seats, which were the best in the house. That was not a surprise since there were only a handful of people there, an unfortunate sign of our difficult economic times. The trailers of upcoming movies played through, and Inception started. By then, I had already finished my meal. I had been hungry enough to gulp down the icee and finish the hot dogs in three bites. I put down the empty containers and prepared to watch the movie.

As the movie progressed, I realized that I was only half-watching. For some reason, the longer I sat there, the stronger the presence of God became until, in spite of all the ambient noise around me, the movie by that time fuzzing out and turning into semi-ambient noise although I was following the plot. It seemed like we had a third person in the theater with us, and it remained that way throughout. It was the loveliest, most comforting feeling.

Although movies of this type usually get my adrenaline rushing, as they are meant to do, I felt nothing of the sort with this one. The longer I sat there together with God, the calmer I became even as the suspense and action in the movie was reaching a crescendo.

When we left the theater, I was very relaxed and calm, almost in a stupor. Like in the case of contemplative prayer, with which this experience had much in common, I did not want to leave, but, of course, I had to. The emotion of the experience remains with me, though. It was as if I was in two places at the same time, doing two things at the same time. It was contemplation (this sitting together with God) and action (the thrills of the movie) at the same time.

For me, the experience underscored that God is always with me; just sometimes I can sense God's presence more than other times. Perhaps it was meant to be a lesson to always have that in mind and now that even in the busiest moment I can communicate with God if I want to. Or perhaps it was simply a gift. I like to think that God just wants to give me a present of Himself upon occasion.

What do you think? Have you had similar experiences?

Presence

The key to my conversion was God's presence, thrust upon me without warning, without any expectation that any Divine Power really existed, through a door that was not intentionally opened. I often wondered why God would do that. It seemed unbelievable to me that God would reveal Himself to an unholy person rather than exclusively to holy ones. Then I read Richard Rohr's book, Things Hidden. I love to listen to Fr. Richard's -- I have been blessed to attend two of his lectures and to meet him, briefly, in person once -- and I read everything of his that I can lay my hands on.

There, in Things Hidden, I found the long-elusive explanation. "Strangely enough," writes Fr. Richard, "it's often imperfect people and people in quite secular settings who encounter the Presence." Fr. Richard goes on to state that this pattern is clear throughout the Bible. Say what? I have some reading to do!

Next Fr. Richard points out the answer to the question I pose in my book, Blest Atheist: Why would God use an atheist to accomplish the good He wished for others? One answer I suggested in my book is quite convincing (for me) in its simplicity and comes from one of my two favorite books, The Cloud of Unknowing (the other being very similar in content, The Book of Privy Counseling). The answer posed there to the question why God uses sinners to carry out His work overpoweringly simple: "because He can." Fr. Richard points out that as with God's revelation of Himself to unbelievers, God has used the most unlikely and sinful people to do His bidding. The Bible tells of these, too: Samson the seductee, Paul the killer of Christians, and a host of others we could all name.

Let's see: imperfect, sinner, secular, unbeliever, a straying sheep delighting in cavorting in bramble bushes... I am starting to understand. I was a pretty good candidate for God to show up and say, "Whoa, there! Here I am! Follow Me!"

Who can say "no" to that? Now, instead of gaily cavorting in the bramble bushes, I find myself scrambling over difficult terrain along a very narrow path, trying to keep up with those giant-sized footsteps I agreed to follow. Although I no longer determine my own direction, the journey is somehow far more meaningful and pleasurable. I especially like the part about not running about alone: "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of time [Matthew 28:20]."

Contemplation IV

I marvel at how contemplation, practiced faithfully, can, like nearly anything that is practiced faithfully, become routine. It used to be that each morning I would try to remain is a state of quiet prayer for 20-30 minutes before going to work. The hardest part was leaving that perfect moment to go busily about preparing to depart for work.

Not that God wasn't with me in the preparation. Of course, He was, and I felt His presence. It was just somehow different and somewhat less satisfying than spending lazy minutes together with Him. Being lazy with God is my favorite activity, yet one that find myself doing less often than more active activities. I do believe that God likes just as well those active activities that minister to His children and their needs as well as those moments of intense companionship for they glorify Him as well.

So, every morning I would try to allow enough time between waking and leaving to begin my day being lazy with God, and every evening before returning I would do the same. Day after day, even when traveling, although I have to admit that, especially when in travel status, there were days I would miss. ("Miss" I mean in all senses of that word.)

Then something extraordinary happened. I don't know when the change came, I just noticed it rather recently. I no longer had to plan this time or to remind myself to take the time. It just happened. It had become habit. At least, that's what my detail-oblivious mind first thought. Then I paid closer attention to what was happening.

The contemplative periods had moved away from my control. They were more than habitualized, autonomous responses to the ticking of a clock or the perception of a biorhythm. They were -- and are -- out of my control and under the control of God. For weeks now, I have been waking up a half-hour or more before the alarm is set to ring in a contemplative state, in the presence of God, and I have no real idea how long we have been being lazy together as morning takes over what might have been an all-night joint adventure for I do not remember my dreams or even the sense of having any since the night several years ago after being attacked by evil nightmares I begged God to stay with me as I slept and drive away all evil and protect me from these nightmares.

I still spend time in contemplation before retiring, but I have moved from chair to bed. I know the common wisdom is to stay in the chair so as not to fall asleep, but since I can fall asleep in any position, even standing, if tired, that advice helps me little. So, I go to bed while not tired so that I can spend time in contemplation and then fall asleep in the arms of God. I like to think those arms hold me all night, protecting me from the nightmares that have never returned and gently rock me awake in the morning to the joy of being in the presence of God. If so, to spend the entire night with a fraidy cat -- what remarkable patience, what incredible love!

Whatever the explanation -- I don't need to know why things happen anymore -- such a marvelous beginning to the day brings light and happiness to the rest of my day -- well, until some highly stressful, distressing event over which I have no control sends me to the nearest prayer place, i.e. any place I can be alone again with God, not to be lazy (I wish!) but to turn over matters I cannot manage to his control.

This condition I find myself in -- this walking with God, relaxing with God, and desperately looking for God when I stray -- became clear to me during a recent retreat. We were given specific instructions and time for contemplation, early morning and late evening not being among them, but God maintained the routine that He has established of greeting me in the morning and tucking me into bed at night. How much more blessed can anyone be, I wonder with gratitude so deep I don't know how to express it. The thing that makes the gratitude even sweeter and deeper is that I don't have to know how to express it. I don't have to be able to find all the right words and actions. God knows fully that which I can express only in part. Ah, yes, that is how much more one can be blessed. God's blessings are depthless, boundless, and, oh, so fortunately, endless. And they do not even have to be deserved.

Spoiled

(Note: This post follows on from the previous post, Arrogance.)
Looking back on that awful day and what I had done and felt, I should have been punished. Instead, a loving God brought me home to San Ignatio, back to Him in every meaning of that phrase, back to where I belong, where nothing of the material world matters. Now, too, I could look forward to being on time two days later for the retreat being led by Fr. Kevin, who also leads a contemplative-prayer-for-busy-people group in San Jose that I have participated in for nearly two years now. I would have had to arrive late because of returning from out of state.

I took the next day off from work -- I was owed comp time -- to be with God now that I was back in a spiritual environment. What a marvelous day that turned out to be!

The first thing after I arose (later than normal, yes!) I checked my email. Astonished, I read one note twice. It was the cancellation of a mandatory meeting on Friday, the second day of the retreat. I had worked it out with Fr. Kevin that it would be okay to miss Friday because of that meeting. Now I would have no distractions during the retreat!

A short while later, I attended noon Mass in the little chapel, celebrated by Fr. Paul on his last day in our community before returning home to Nigeria. Still reeling perhaps from my out-of-control behavior on Monday, I felt so very unworthy to be there and at the same time so loved. As I stood in line for communion, I could not keep the tears from pooling in my eyes, and I did not care if anyone saw them; we are all friends and all God's children.

Following Mass, two friends (one of them the person who assisted the priest in my RCIA class) asked me to join them for the rosary, after which we went out for cookies and milk. (I admit it; milk has always been my favorite drink.)

During our milk-and-cookie fest, I told my friends about my plaintive prayer, in which I bemoaned my separation from San Ignatio and loss of a sense of God's presence in the past few day's tumult, and how everything had suddenly worked out for me to spend the entire rest of the week with Him. One of my friends reiterated what a Sufi friend told me several years ago, word for word: "God spoils you."

Indeed, He does! And I am so very grateful!

Humility III

God comes to me most frequently in the humble moments of my life. In the early morning and late evening when I take some moments (far too few) for contemplation. In the early evening, when I take a walk around my beloved San Ignatio or on Old Mission grounds (those times are too few, too). Sometimes, more often than not, actually, when I am driving, especially when I am thinking about Him but just as often when I am not, when I am simply trying to drive within the lines, a skill I extrapolated from learning to color within the lines when I was in kindergarten and not one that comes naturally to someone who learned first to drive a tractor in the wide open farm fields.

He comes to me even at meetings when I let my mind focus on Him. I have been blessed with the ability to multi-task although once when I was called upon by my boss's boss to explain something at very important high-level meeting, I had to admit to not being present in his, the boss's moment. I probably could have admitted that I was present, instead, in His moment because that individual had strong faith, but, a coward at the moment, I simply said that I had been "distant" for a moment. The "big boss" could have become angry but instead he laughed and said, "clearly, very distant." Another time I drove this same boss to prayer when he misunderstand something that had happened and truly was angry with me but did not want to show it; he entered the meeting room, sat down, and while everyone waited, prayed himself into calmness. Would that more do the same! Oh, yes, I love it when God attends meetings with me, when I can feel His presence in the room with me, whether I am leading them or attending them. There was even a time that a prayer resulted in intercession in what could have been a very awkward and uncomfortable meeting.

At the proud moments, though, I find God missing. Actually, I don't find God at all in them because I am not looking for Him. I am looking at myself. Those are empty moments. The fulfilling ones are when I look for -- and find -- God right there with me.

Contemplation II

For the past year or more, I have been attending a contemplative prayer group in San Jose, directed by Fr. Kevin Joyce. It is a considerable drive (nearly an hour one way) but well worth the time and effort. I take a friend with me from our local Old Mission prayer group, so the to-and-fro time is pleasantly passed.

Last year, when Fr. Kevin was at Santa Clara University, there were only a handful of us. This year, though, he has become parish priest at St. Lucy's in Campbell, and that has yielded an attendance at times of 60-100 people. Once, there were so many of us, we had to use the church instead of one of the religious education rooms. What amazes me is Fr. Kevin's ability to create silence and reverence in such a large group of people. He combines prayer itself with study. (Yes, it is possible to be contemplative in a very large group; after all, God, who is stranger than we can possibly imagine and whom we are not required, fortunately, to understand fully, is quite able to interact with individuals individually throughout the whole world simultaneously. Now, there's something that is very difficult to get a human mind wrapped around!) What we study with Fr. Kevin are the mystics and the history of mysticism. All of this has been very educational for me, yet there is much I still do not understand, seemingly really important things that, in my personal experience, stray from the historical path as we know it.

Perhaps it might help to understand my mindset if I were to share that the very first spiritual book I read (even before getting involved in Bible reading and study) was a one-volume combined set of The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling. I loved those two books, the second even more than the first. I carried the volume with me. I read and re-read it. It explained so much of what had been happening to me. It also let me know that it was okay not to understand everything; in fact, that there was no need to seek to understand everything. For someone with a Ph.D., not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. For someone with a flair for foreign languages -- I have studied 17, but I can communicate in (or at least understand) a far larger number than that, my life's focus having been on understanding foreign cultures, foreign words, foreign behaviors -- not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. As a former teacher, where my goal was to teach others to understand, not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. Having been raised in the West, where the emphasis is on reason (maybe even I should write that with a capital R, since we seem to worship Reason), not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. So, it was very difficult for me to push aside my attachment to logic and accept the idea that it is okay not to understand. I carried around The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling as a security blanket for more than a year after my conversion. They are still my favorite spiritual books, especially the latter, although I have now read many more and realize that I probably chose those among the most difficult as my entré to spiritual reading. (The volume just fell under my hand, as the Russians say, so it could be that the books chose me and not the other way around.)

In any event, the experiences that led me to conversion and those that followed me during the immediate weeks and months after conversion reflected in the most minute detail those experiences described in The Book of Privy Counseling. Over time, I have come to realize that my experiences are not common among my peers (at least, the local ones) in the 21st century, and I have begun seeking out others who do have them. (Actually, that search prompted this blog site.) With time, I have been rewarded in that search, finding others who share those experiences and a priest, my beloved Fr. Barry (unfortunately, recently transferred to an assignment 100 miles away), who can help me interpret what I consider unusual experiences but which he, at the age of 82, has seen more than once. (There is no question in my mind that God plunked me down at Old Mission Church in part precisely because I would need Fr. Barry.)

Now, back to Fr. Kevin. As a mechanism for initiating a contemplative state, Fr. Keving taught us the Jesus prayer. Up until that time, I had not used (or needed) any "mantra" for connecting to God. It just happened. God made it happen. In The Cloud of Unknowing and especially in The Book of Privy Counseling, the unknown author (I love the fact that the author is also "unknown") tells that the old mystics, the Egyptian desert fathers, would sometimes repeat "God," "Lord," or a similar word to initiate contemplation, so I understood why Fr. Kevin taught us the Jesus prayer. However, for me it felt odd because I had never needed to call. (My friend, Omar, poet of spiritual and philosophical verse in Arabic and English, professor of political science, and Sufi mystic, has repeatedly told me, "God spoils you." Usually, he is referring to some problem that God has whisked away, but in the case of contemplation, I think God also spoils me. In any moment of quiet, there I have nearly always found God in an overwhelmingly present way.)

However "odd" it might have been for me personally, I dutifully followed Fr. Kevin's instructions the next morning, which I began with some time in contemplation as I begin every morning. Contemplation is less a choice for me than something that just happens seemingly often without deliberate volition. So, I began the Jesus prayer and was immediately startled (locutions never fail to startle me) by the words, "Why do you call me? I am here."

Oh, my, yes, I know that God is with me. I feel it throughout the day from morning to night -- more deeply when I take time for prayer or contemplation, but always at least peripherally in my senses as a comfortable companion and guide, except for those times that I focus intently on some activity that excludes God. (Sometimes, admittedly, I exclude God deliberately, at least subconsciously so, because I want to do what I am doing and don't want to think that maybe God would want me to do something else or do it differently -- that kind of behavior keeps me going to confession!)

So, following the locution that morning, I am back to being confused. If I know that God is with me, if I can feel His presence in every fiber of my being and the expansive atmosphere around me, why, indeed, do I need to call Him? Well, there's a question for Fr. Kevin after our next meeting, with whom I have not before sought personal contact because he lives too far away for me to "drop by." I could bring up the question during our sessions but cannot bring myself to share publicly with a group of 60 people, most of whom I do not know or barely know. I hope that Fr. Kevin will not be mobbed by people (my country girl origins make me instinctively shy away from crowds) or have to serve Mass after our next meeting since the last four months have been that way, and the last four months I have remained in a state of confusion. On the other hand, confusion is becoming a comfortable state for me -- I don't know whether that is good or bad; it just is.

So, folks, what do you think? Any answers or thoughts for me before May 2, which is the next time I will see Fr. Kevin?

Darkness

One day my friend, Tom, who works near where I do rushed into my office at the end of the day. With wide eyes and rushed breath, he exclaimed, "Beth, I think the Evil One is after me!"

He went on to explain that he found himself doing things, bad things, that he would never accept from others and had never thought he would even be tempted to do, for example, hitting on women in whom he had no real interest and in spite of the fact that he had a beautiful and loving wife whom he loved and admired. Yet, he was doing these things and could not seem to stop. He also talked about nightmares and feeling alone. To my response as to whether he had prayed for help, he said, "I have not been able to pray for weeks. The words just don't come, and I don't feel like praying, anyway. I guess prayer is simply now something in my past, not in my present or future."

He really was in a lot of trouble! So, although it was difficult for him, I would not let him leave my office until we had prayed together about this problem. Once we started, the words came to him just fine, and we spent nearly a half-hour in heartfelt prayer. When he left, I could see that he was relieved but at the same time still troubled, worried that what he called "the Evil One" was waiting outside my door to pounce on him.

I was a recent convert at the time and had no idea what I was getting into or what to do about it. After Tom left, I asked God to help me understand what was happening to Tom. "Please let me feel what he feels," I begged. "If possible, give me his struggle for I am stronger."

How naive that request was! How arrogant to think I could "handle" it! Immediately, that Presence, which I had begun to take for granted as it had been with me day and night since my conversion, disappeared. If what I had been sensing all around me for months on a 24/7 basis was the Presence of God, then what I was feeling now was the Absence of God. It was a cold, lonely, empty feeling. It was highly disconcerting, and it created incredible yearning. No matter how much I yearned, no matter how much I prayed, no matter how much I begged, the only thing that came to me was Absence. Black, dark, cold, impersonal Absence. Absence in the office. Absence in the hallway. Absence in the parking lot. Absence in the car. Absence at home. Absence!

That night, I fell into bed and immediately nodded off to sleep. Fortunately, I can always fall asleep; that is how I have treated my inability to take painkiller throughout my life: go to sleep in the dentist's chair during no-painkiller root canals, go to sleep during grin-and-bear it biopsies, go to sleep during childbirth. So, in the tormenting presence of the Absence, I fell asleep.

In the morning, I awoke to the Presence again. Yes!

"Where were you last night?" I demanded to know. (Sometimes I wonder why God puts up with me.)

"You asked to feel what Tom was feeling," came the response.

I admitted that I had overestimated my strength. "Please don't ever do that again," I begged. "Don't ever go away. I don't want to be without You." So far, that request has been honored.

A few days later, I happened across a copy of St. John of the Cross's The dark Night of the Soul and read every word eagerly, finding many parallels in this experience but not a complete fit. Nonetheless, I have to wonder if that is what was happening to my friend or if instead he was indeed in the clutches of something evil. I suppose I will never know. I just know two things:

(1) After 20 hours of prayer, together and separately, Tom emerged back into a life dedicated to God; and, most important,

(2) I want the Presence, not the Absence, every day of the rest of my life!