Bodies

We’re headed into the home stretch of our Pascha to Pentecost Road Trip.

We’re running down the highway because we want everyone who reads this Substack to become a Liturgical Long Hauler. An LLH is someone who can pray persistently, and the reason that kind of prayer is so important is because it’s how this entire world is going to be transfigured—and it’s also how we are going to raise enough money for our new temple.

To help you acquire this skill set, throughout this Pascha-to-Pentecost Tour, we’ve been sharing Persistence Pointers. And here’s the one for today: You have to use your body.

Now when it comes to the physical aspects of public worship, most American Christians fall into one of two groups.

One group includes the old mainline Protestant denominations and all those middle of the road Roman Catholics. For them, getting physical during prayer means quietly reading the responses from the bulletin and bowing your head during the pastoral prayer and kneeling during communion.

The other group includes the Pentecostals and the charismatics and all the Protestants and Roman Catholics who have adopted that style of worship. For them, worship just isn’t worship unless you’ve got your eyes closed and your hands in the air and you’re singing along with the praise band.

As is often the case, we Orthodox just really don’t fit into either of those groups. On the one hand, we can be every bit as subdued and formal as the mainline/middle of the road folks; on the other hand, we can be way more physically demonstrative than the Pentecostal/charismatics.

But, when you get right down to it, what makes the physical component of our worship so unique is the fact that we use our entire bodies—all of our limbs, all of our energies, all of our senses.

And that’s an approach that should carry over into our personal prayers.

Let’s start with our posture.

If at all possible, when we offer our daily prayers, we should be standing. We’ve talked about how important this is in our public services, but it’s every bit as important when we’re praying at home. So, even if our Rule of Prayer only takes nine minutes, we should be on our feet—because that’s when we are most attentive and that’s how we can best express our respect for the Most Holy Trinity.

But we should also bow and make the sign of the cross; if it is a Lenten season, and we are up to it, we should go ahead and make a prostration. Again, depending on where you offer your prayers at home, that kind of activity simply may not be feasible, but the more we get our body to line up with our prayers, the more personal our intercessions are going to be.

Let’s talk about our voice.

It’s really best to pray out loud. We don’t ever have to actually raise our voice; in fact, we can keep the volume low enough so as not to disturb anyone around us. However, we need to move our lips and our tongue. Rather than think our prayers, we need to actually say our prayers. When we simply think through out intercessions, we just about always end up thinking about other things.

Of course, if we are offering the same basic prayers and the same list of intercessions day after day, we can also end up thinking about other things, even if we are speaking in a soft voice. Nevertheless, if we are also standing and making the sign of the cross and bowing, we will stand a much better chance of staying focused throughout our prayers.

Now we’ll talk about our sense of smell.

Most of us just really don’t realize how powerful that part of our sensorium is, but a particular scent can call up all sorts of associations and connections. When folks first start using a little incense at home, it’s generally because it’s cool and new and kind of exotic. But if we discipline ourselves to use it whenever we pray, that offering will not only help us be more attentive, it will also delight the angels and be pleasing to the Most Holy Trinity.

Then there’s our sight.

When we Orthodox pray, we’re just about always looking at someone. And notice: I didn’t say we’re looking at something. We’re looking at someone because we’re gazing upon the icon of our patron saint or our guardian angel or the Mother of God or our Lord and Master. And that means these images are not, primarily, aids to our concentration. These images connect us, in a very tangible way, with the Holy Ones with whom we are praying and to the Holy One to Whom we pray.

We can’t forget our hearing.

We’ve already talked about saying our prayers out loud. We should also read the Holy Scriptures out loud.

Again, this doesn’t—in fact, it shouldn’t—take a long time. A workable time of prayer can include a few verses from the Holy Gospels or a section from the Psalter. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit speak to us through those texts, but we will stand a much better chance of hearing what the Most Holy Trinity is saying to us if we read the words aloud.

Then there’s our sense of taste.

You probably didn’t see that coming, but in traditional Orthodox cultures, it’s very common for folks to take just a sip of Holy Water every day. That presupposes that you’ve planned ahead and have a suitable container for Holy Water, but not only will that act of devotion connect you with all the sanctifying power of the Holy Mysteries, but it will also literally whet your spiritual appetite for partaking of the Holy Gifts at the Divine Liturgy on Sunday.

We’ll have additional Persistence Pointers in these final days of our road trip, but as we sign off today, we’ll remind you of all the different ways you can support our community as we work to raise money for our temple.

You can join us in offering the Akathist for a New Temple (PDF/video). You can upgrade your subscription to paid. You can purchase a Come See Something Beautiful sweatshirt or commission an image for the Calming Room in our new temple. And you can always make a direct donation to our Building Fund.

We hope that you take advantage of every single one of those opportunities, and we’ll leave you with some vintage road music by The Allman Brothers.