"O Lord our God, teach us, we pray, to ask you in the right way for the right blessings. Steer the vessel of our life towards yourself, the tranquil haven of all storm-tossed souls. Show us the course in which we should go. Renew a willing spirit within us. Let your Spirit curb our wayward senses, and guide and enable us towards that which is our true good, to keep your laws, and in all we do to rejoice always in your glorious and gladdening presence. For yours is the glory and praise from all your saints, for ever and ever. Amen."
That's a prayer of Basil the Great, bishop of a Cappadocian part of the Eastern church in the 370s. By that time, Christians were embroiled in bitter controversies about everything from the personhood of Jesus to the canon of Scripture. I am certain they had a meeting or two about whether to put a kitchen in the fellowship hall. But before Basil went into church politics, he was a hermit on the bank of the River Iris. It was a kind of laid back monasticism, not nearly as strict as some of his counterparts. I hear in his prayers a desire to please God that is devoid of anxiety, and instead simply seeks to be in God's presence.
Last week my son and I were on the way home from playing racquetball. We got to talking about our spiritual lives. He said something about sin. I asked him what distracts him from God. He said, "Electronics." He described how they are everywhere. TVs. Computers. Games. We let them demand so much of our attention. Even now, O faithful bloggerland reader, what might happen if you shut off your computer this very minute and devoted ten minutes to quiet prayer? (Who am I to talk, right?) And while we cannot join Basil on the river bank, I believe an "off the grid" vacation might be a good way to practice a contemporary form of fasting. I wonder what it would be like to fast from email and facebook and blogging and television for ten days?
Let's see... move the cursor to the upper left hand corner... Apple Menu... Shut Down...
