Written by Mary Rearick Paul
From her column Dwelling with God
Quite a few years ago, I was introduced to the practice of praying as you walk a prayer path. While prayer paths can be found in a variety of areas today, in their classic form they are most often found in the tiled floors of European cathedrals. My favorite of these can be found at the Cathedral in Chartres, France. During my visit to this historic house of worship, a choir happened to provide an impromptu concert of sacred songs as I, along with other fortunate tourists, entered the majestic sanctuary. The echoes of their voices singing in different languages formed a sacred cacophony representing an international longing for God. As I walked the prayer path there, I was reminded of the myriad feet that have trod that path over a thousand years. The beauty of the breadth of God’s grace and presence lifted me from the close concerns of my own life to the larger story of God’s faithfulness.
The basic concept of the prayer walk is that you, as you reach a turn in the path, consider the unexpected turns that have marked your own life’s journey, and reflect on how God was made known to you, be those times of loss or of celebration. I have found that if others are also walking near me, I often feel prompted to reflect on my relationship with others, naming honestly the places of strained relationship while giving thanks for those that have been reconciled. Often at the center spot of the path, one is invited to pray that God would speak anew in your life, directing the path ahead.
We are in the season of Lent, which I have come to appreciate more and more over the years. I didn’t grow up with a Lenten practice. I basically considered it something for people from other Christian faith traditions. My childhood friends often talked about giving up chocolate or gum for Lent, but not necessarily about their spiritual renewal. To be fair, I wasn’t talking about my encounters with God around the school lunch room either!
Lent began to carry new meaning to me as I encountered the richness of the path this season invites the church family to take together. In essence, we walk a prayer path that calls us to deep honesty and confession from which new life in Christ can be received both individually and corporately. What sin that so easily entangles has entwined its way around our church? Where have we allowed fear to drive us or divide us rather than hope in the power of the resurrection? Is Jesus truly Lord of our lives?
While I do consider Lent a life-giving invitation, I must admit my own occasional trepidation with the season. It can be a bit like entering a tunnel knowing there are some hard, even scary, truths we might need to face; things we may have been purposely ignoring or avoiding. And yet as we step into that seasonal tunnel, it is with a prayer of trust in the God who leads us. It is a trust that we will come out the other end not just alive but more alive.
Lent invites us into the scriptural narrative from Luke (4:1-13) describing Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. Sometimes Lent seems foisted on us just when we feel we are moving along quite well at the moment, thank you very much. But it is in this very interruption that God often does the work most needed in our lives through the call to slow down and go deep. This holy interruption allows us to create quiet spaces in our lives where we might hear what we need to release, what we need to embrace, what we need to confess and what we need to receive.
At other times, Lent comes along and joins us where we already are dwelling in a valley time of life. But even here, Lent can bless us and encourage us, and perhaps give us greater permission to pay attention to what is hidden within us and among us — verbalizing our grief with all its emotions of lament, sadness, anger, numbness and activation.
At its heart, Lent is a journey to wholeness, and an opportunity to receive anew God’s redeeming work. The Lenten invitation is for all of us, both as individuals and as God’s people, to walk the prayer path of this season with a renewed expectation and celebration that “the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6 NRSV).
It is the Lenten path, after all, that leads us to Easter.
Dr. Mary Rearick Paul is vice president of spiritual development at Point Loma Nazarene University.