ITEMS OF INTEREST September 20, 2010 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

with contributions from Peter W. Marty, Tim Hornyak

IN ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS sermons ever delivered, John Donne described the challenge of retaining concentration during prayer. The year was 1626. The occasion was the funeral sermon for Sir William Cockayne:

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither; and when they are there, I ignore God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whinning of a door; I talk on ... sometimes I find that I forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an any thing, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer.

I've never thought of myself as an "as though" pray-er before, but if I take Donne's experience to heart, I know I am. I can talk on in prayer with eyes closed and all the time-tested postures of devotion in place. I can behave as though I were praying to God, yet I cannot remember where the prayer began. Even worse, I find that I'm capable of forgetting what I am about. This is not a good situation, nor a spiritually admirable one.

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