Dialogue 3: The Pilgrim Learns to Pray

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:07)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season nine of Turning to the Mystics, where we've been turning to The Way of a Pilgrim by an anonymous author.

And I'm grateful to be here with Jim, and we're going to dialogue about Jim's third talk. Welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:40)

Yes, thank you. Yeah, got to be together again. It's nice, good.

Kirsten Oates (0:44)

So we're following the journey of this pilgrim, and it's been wonderful to follow along with your talks. And in this latest one, the pilgrim finally gets a little bit of what he's been looking for on the how to pray without ceasing.

And so just a little recap, our pilgrim was touched in church or quickened in church when he heard the verse, pray without ceasing, and he's been on a quest to discover how to do it.

And he's visited preachers and an abbot and someone known for being a holy man and someone who prays. And then he kind of stumbles across the starret who's going to, who's become his teacher now and has some ideas for him about how to pray in this way. And so that's where we're at so far. And Jim, one thing you've made clear in this session of the podcast, and it reminds me of what became clear with all the mystics we've studied is that the contemplative path arises with a deep sense of longing and the longing asks something out of us. And that seems consistent with every mystic we've looked at.

James Finley (2:11)

I think for all of us, there's moments where we're graced with moments of sensing God's presence in our life from time to time in all kinds of ways.

But what starts to happen with some people is the desire to abide there. That is, so the longing is to live in an habituated sensitivity to that oneness, God's oneness with us. It's always there, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat. And so the path is how to consummate that longing or how to be healed from what hinders us from living in that habitual state of God's oneness with us. It's always there and that's the path.

Kirsten Oates (2:50)

And for the Pilgrim, the path opened up, the longing was to praise ceaselessly. So does the longing kind of transform into that desire for the habituated state?

James Finley (3:04)

Yes, see, because it's interesting how it takes, this is why the teacher is so helpful.

For a while, we could tell something's going on and we're drawn to follow it. But we don't yet understand what's going on. So for quite some time, he's thinking how to pray constantly, literally.

Kirsten Oates (3:25)

Yes.

James Finley (3:26)

And only little by little, he gains clarity over the nature of the quickening that sends him on this, like really kind of a deepened understanding of what even pilgrimage is. He's a pilgrim. Now he's on this interior pilgrim. We always say it's the interior pilgrim that we're all on, a kind of a pilgrimage searching for this fulfillment in God, a longing for God. And so it's only later, little by little, that he sees that the habitual prayer is really a prayer that embodies the habitual longing that echoes with God's habitual longing for us.

So it's in that resonance where the longing of God awakens us to a longing, and it's in the deepening of the mutuality of the longing. It's where the intimacy happens.

Kirsten Oates (4:11)

And one of the consistent pieces that goes with this longing, as you were saying, is that we can't consummate it. That we're longing for something, and ultimately we're not capable of attaining what we're looking for.

James Finley (4:26)

Yes. That we, there are certain things we are capable of attaining to our finite powers and abilities, and that's the grace of our life. We have self-efficacy in different ways. But anything that we're capable, from a spiritual point of view, anything we're capable of attaining by our powers, because our powers are finite, we can only attain finite things.

But since this is infinite, it's really, we're quickened by God with a desire for an infinite union with God. So it's a God-given longing for an infinite union with God that we, by our own finite powers, are powerless to attain. So what it does really, it radicalizes our dependence on God, who is mysteriously leading us in this way that we still don't understand.