Do Not Be Afraid

A dear friend and great teacher of prayer Fr. Martin Laird O.S.A. wrote the following in his most recent book An Ocean of Light [New York:Oxford University Press, 2018].
“St. Augustine, the great teacher of love that knows and knowledge that loves, reflects on his own experience of looking for God as an external object, a thing —just huge— that could be located and fixed in space and time. In his Confessions, he relates how this all changed when he at last forgot himself. ‘But when unknown to me you caressed my head, and when you closed my eyes lest they see things that would seduce me, I began for a little while to forget about myself, and my madness was lulled to sleep. When I awoke in you, I saw you very differently, infinite in a very different sense. But what I saw was not seen with the eye of the body.’” pp xv-xvi

The great St. Augustine was foolish, as I expect many of us are, about God. He had envisioned God as wholly other and far, far away from himself. This is actually a very safe way of acknowledging God. It provides distance and a sense of safety from God. It also can lead to concepts of God that are conflated with a stern parent, a judge, and Zeus-like thrower of lightening bolts that unsettle our comfy existence.

However, notice how Augustine experiences God in this passage. God is not distant. Rather God becomes known to Augustine by caressing his head. This is a different kind of parent who is gentle and loving, more mother than father in the traditional sense. God also closes Augustine’s eyes to protect him from things that seduce. Augustine does not say what those are, and I expect that is so we can imagine for ourselves what it is that would seduce us away from God.

In these actions of gentle caresses and the closing of eyes Augustine is able to forget himself. He becomes still and at peace. His “madness,” that is the monkey brain and constant chatter of the mind, is “lulled to sleep.” It is not the sleep of rest, but a sleep of awakening. That is, when all of the noise and images that interfere with his perception of God are put to sleep, he can actually be awake to the reality of the Divine.

That is what prayer can be for us. When we use the act of prayer to clear our heads and our hearts, not as a list of wants to God, we are able to let go of preconceptions of God and of ourselves. When the preconceptions, whether from art, culture, cartoons, or theology, are stripped away we find that we are in the presence of the one who loves us without condition. This same one does not love us from on high, but from within ourselves. The act of prayer becomes wordless as we gaze on the Divine and our gaze is returned it overwhelming gentleness and love.

Too often we have been taught to fear that gaze. Because God is wholly other and more disciplinarian than loving creator, we are afraid of what will happen when we come face to face. Instead, of love we will encounter disappointment, punishment, and a new set of rules that we need to live up to. Wherever this image comes from it is not the God of love that creates, sustains, and redeems all things. God created in goodness and we are good, very good. These words of God’s are not conditional.

The most frequent phrase in the Bible is “Do not be afraid.” It is often said by angelic messengers when they approach a human. May those words be your mantra as you allow yourself, through prayer, to be lulled into a sleeping wakefulness that promises so much joy and great relief from the changes and chances of this life. “Do not be afraid” for it is God welcoming you home.