Lists I

We’re steaming on down the road towards Pentecost.

We started this trip back on Pascha because we want each and every one of you to become an LLH.

That’s Liturgical Long Hauler.

That’s someone who can pray long and pray persistently, because that’s the kind of prayer that is not only going to get us into our beautiful new temple but also transfigure this entire world.

To ramp up your spiritual stamina, we’ve been sharing Persistence Pointers; we’ve been talking about things you can do to increase your noetic endurance. And today’s pointer (it’s #5, for all of you playing the Home Version) is something you just have to do if you’re ever going to be serious about the work of intercession.

You gotta have a list.

And, right away, folks start asking about the Logistics of List-Keeping: Should I use my phone? Would a little notebook be better? If I choose a notebook, what would be the best place to keep it? Should I just use abbreviations and initials in case someone else ends up seeing my list?

It’s not that those considerations don’t matter, but they are hardly the main issue. So, let’s focus on why it’s important to use a list, and then we can talk about all those other questions.

There are two reasons why you need to use a list.

First of all, it makes our prayers more efficient. Prayer and efficient are not words that you often see together in the same sentence, but if you want to persevere in your prayers, then it’s important to use your time well and wisely.

So those four minutes that you spend each and every morning trying to call to mind the names of the folks that you want to remember in your prayers is going to add up—and the cost won’t just be in wasted time, but in frustration and stress.

However, if you have all those names in a list, you can offer your prayers smoothly day after day, and your time of intercession before the Most Holy Trinity will be a refuge from, rather than one more source of, exasperation.

But the second reason why you need to use a list is because it expands the focus of our prayers.

In our parish, after the conclusion of each of the Divine Services, when it’s time to greet the assembled community and make announcements, the priest in charge always starts by saying, “Thank you for being here today; thank you for your prayers on behalf of the world.”

We put it that way because, in the Church, when we pray, we are always interceding for the world. We never, ever simply focus on ourselves and our own needs.

And that should also be the case in our private devotions. So, if you have a list of folks for whom you are praying, then, no matter what may be going on in your own life, your time of intercession before the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will also contribute to the redemption of the whole world.

That brings us back to the List Logistics. Honestly, though, what most folks discover is that different methods work for them at different times in their lives.

So, for a few years, you have a notebook that you keep in your icon corner by your nightstand. Then your schedule changes due to caregiving responsibilities, and you find that it’s more convenient to use your phone.

It’s just a matter of being flexible and making sure that, despite whatever else may be going on in our lives, prayer is something that we do no matter what.

But what—or who—should be on that list?

The Divine Services can provide us with some guidance here.

At the conclusion of Small Compline and the Midnight Office, we pray “for those who love us and those who hate us”—and that’s a good way to structure our list of intercessions.

‘Those who love us’ is going to be obvious. We just write down the names of our family and friends, and, when we pray, we read those names in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity. Notice, though, we don’t tell the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit what to do. We’ve talked about this before, but the Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity have a much, much better idea of what our friends and family members need.

There’s also not going to be any doubt about ‘Those who hate us’. That portion of the list should include anyone with whom we have a broken or distant relationship. Those are the folks that we can’t think about without clenching our fist and grinding our teeth and obsessing over exactly what we’re going to say to them the next time we see them—and we keep saying those names in the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit until those symptoms have disappeared completely.

There are a couple of other sections we should have in our intercessory list, and we’ll talk about those in our next post. But there’s no reason why you can’t go ahead and start putting together your own list—your prayers, and the whole world, will be the better for it.

Of course, that includes our temple project. In addition to becoming an LLH, you can join us in offering the Akathist for a New Temple (PDF/video). You can also commission an image in the Calming Room of our temple, purchase a CSSB sweatshirt, upgrade your subscription to paid, or donate to our Building Fund.

And have we got some traveling music for you: Ike and Tina Turner breakin’ it down on the old Sullivan Show.

Now that’s some energy that will get you all the way to the next rest stop.