ken wilson online

As a younger believing pray-er I got it into my skull that sensory input during prayer was somehow verboten. Even though I read the Bible through my eyes, uttered words that I could hear with my ears, nevertheless, somehow the use of the senses was restricted, or so I assumed. But life beats you up, and it either softens or hardens you, and either way it tends to wear you out, until you’re ready to loose your grip on some unexamined assumptions. So several years ago, I began to “cheat” in prayer by using my senses more intentionally. Lighting a candle, and, looking at the flame. Playing some background music that lifted my heart or calmed my nerves. Don’t make fun of me, but I found a bar of soap with myrhh and some of the other biblical oils in it. And kept it nearby for prayer. Because we’re permitted to be human while praying.

We’re permitted to be human while praying, what a concept! And the senses are part of being human. The praying brain is the receiving and integrating and perceiving center for the data streaming in through the senses. Smell, in particular, is associated closely with the memory function of the brain, as well as the limbic system, the emotional center. Music stimulates a part of the brain that God is very much interested in touching. Don’t you think? Don’t you think there’s something mystical about fire? That fire (the flame of a candle) evokes something in the human brain that makes it more open to God?

Be careful though. I lit a candle in prayer, and then took some time afterward to write something in my laptop. And the phone rang, and I set the laptop down on the table in front of my chair. And came back ot the acrid smell of flame on plastic. Burned a hole in the back of my powerbook. Turned upside down, it did look a little like one of those images of mary that appears from time to time on a church wall or a tree….or maybe Jesus….or probably not. There’s a part of my brain that wasn’t functioning that day, obviously.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 7:37 am and is filed under the praying brain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.