If I Die Before I Pray...

This morning, as the warm light of day began to lift the darkness and the hunters spilled out of trucks across the field, I sat cozy in my spot and took a little gem of counsel from Spiritual Classics, Richard Foster, ed. 

photo by Dave Pearson

It was the strangest thing I've read on prayer, written by an anonymous in The Cloud of Unknowing centuries past.  He wrote,

"Let me start by saying that the best thing you can do when you start to pray, however long or short your time of prayer is to be, is to tell yourself, and mean it, that you are going to die at the end of your prayer."

What?  That's not very affirming.  Some weird monk must have thought of this.  

But you know what, I tried it.  I took the posture of reflecting on my own demise.  Immediately, tears sprang to my eyes.  "God, thank you for all of this..." I choked.  "God, I can die now, because you are good and I am forgiven and the universe will not stop spinning without me.  You are the power and the glory."

Many have looked death in the face and trembled.  The rest of us can let our imaginations lead us to that small and humble place where we glimpse a purer, wider, broader, deeper vision of God.