[Oe List ...] Spong and Prayer

[Terry Bergdall via OE]

The movie "Sully" opened in movie theaters around the US last week. I was
interested to see it because of an "earthrise" witness that I wrote on
prayer seven years ago. I was trying to illustrate the RS-1 practice of
grounding religious language in life experience. Given this dialogue
initiated by Susan in response to Bishop Spong, I thought I'd re-post it
again here. See below:

*PRAYER AND CAPTAIN SULLY*, 9 April 2009


    I just returned home from a trip to New York. As is typical when flying
from LaGuardia, we had a spectacular view of the city’s skyscrapers. This
time my fascination was greater than usual as I found myself looking for
the spot where, in January, a plane like mine crash-landed into the Hudson
River. You probably heard about Captain Sully and his plane’s encounter
with a flock of geese, how its engines stopped shortly after take-off, his
quick review of options, and his management of a crash from which every one
of the 150+ passengers survived.


As I looked down on the same river, I was reminded of an interview I heard
shortly after this occurred. Someone asked Captain Sully “Did you pray
while this was happening?” “No,” he said, “but I imagine there were some in
the back taking care of it for me while I did the flying.”


I may be overly presumptuous but both the question and answer seem to be
predicated on a popular image of prayer whereby one’s self is put in the
fore seeking favors from a supernatural entity and, in this case, pleading
for an escape from a life-threatening danger. I have no doubt that everyone
on that plane was experiencing a prayerful moment, but genuine prayer is
something far different from this counterfeit perception.


Prayer means acknowledging and bowing my head to the sheer awesomeness of a
prevailing mystery that is totally beyond myself. It is the mystery that I
first recognized in the questions of my childhood -- why I am here? why
must I die? what should I do? what is the purpose of life? I encounter
unmitigated mystery precisely because these questions are ultimately
unanswered. Genuine prayer allows us to grapple with the silence rather
than fill the void. Prayer is standing before that reality (the name that
we cannot know according to the ancient Israelites, i.e., “God”) and
framing everyday actions, as well as responses to extreme circumstances, in
a life-affirming comprehensive context. It is never an escape. “I don’t
pray to change God,” C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying, “I pray to change
myself.”


Captain Sully’s actions make me think that he was in a very profound state
of prayer as he landed that plane. He was intensely focused on
acknowledging the real situation while bringing all of his experience and
knowledge to bear, including extraordinary resources to remain calm in a
moment of extreme crisis. Given popular perceptions, I can also appreciate
his unwillingness to call it prayer.


Which raises questions for me. Most of the time, topics of an overt
religious nature, like prayer, never even come up in my daily encounters.
When they do, it seems that about half of the people I meet are
more-or-less content with the shallowness of popular religion while the
other considers it to be totally irrelevant. This, of course, is a gross
oversimplification and there is a lot of grey in between but it highlights
a quandary. How do I authentically engage everyone, religious and secular
alike, to celebrate and act upon both the possibilities of life and its
overwhelming limits? It is even more complex when different religious
traditions are thrown into the mix. No matter how much I work on resolving
this, there is no simple answer.


It is in wrestling with life’s questions that we make our prayers. Though
he’d probably be surprised to hear it, I’m grateful today for Captain Sully
calling me to mine. Amen.
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