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Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.

So Damian was right: it was a good prayer!

Sadness is something else that some people feel reluctant to share with God. Someone once told me of the experience of going to a movie with a close friend. Because the subject material intersected with his life, he began to sob at the end of the movie and was embarrassed. Later on, as the two sat together in a car in the parking lot, his friend sat silently and simply let him cry.

His friend wasn’t the only one showing love. The person weeping allowed another to enter into his life, giving the gift of intimacy. Can you share with God the intimate gift of your true self, your true emotions, even when you are grieving?

But when it comes to prayer, the most inappropriate emotion, at least in many minds, is sexual desire.

One of the best books on prayer is God, I Have Issues, by Mark Thibodeaux, one of the most lighthearted Jesuits I know. Each chapter addresses prayer during different moods. The moods are organized alphabetically so that you can thumb through the book when you are: Addicted, Afraid, Angry, Angry at You, and so on.

One chapter is titled “Sexually Aroused.” Mark begins his essay bluntly: “Good Christian people often worry about their sexual feelings. They are embarrassed and ashamed of them.”

Mark reminds us that sexuality and sexual activity are wondrous gifts from God to be celebrated. On a natural level they draw people together for the sake of companionship and creating new life. On a spiritual level those feelings remind us of the love that God has for us. Many spiritual writers use erotic love as a metaphor for God’s love for humanity. (Check out the Bible’s Song of Songs if you have any doubts.)

But like any gift, sexuality must be used wisely. If motivated by selfishness, it can turn into a desire for possessiveness. On a much more benign level, sexual thoughts during prayer can also be a distraction. So what do we do with those feelings in prayer?

Again, the solution is being honest. “Instead of hiding these experiences, we should share them with God,” says Mark, “and use them to remind us how great it is to be alive, how great it is to be a creature of God and how wondrously we are created.” If that doesn’t work, or if those feelings are troublesome because they are directed to a person with whom you cannot have a relationship, just be honest with God about your struggles.

Be honest with God about everything.

LISTENING

Friendship requires listening. You would scarcely consider yourself a good friend if all you did was talk and talk and talk. But that’s what happens in some relationships with God. People sometimes find their prayer is just a recitation of things they need (too much petitionary prayer) or an endless stream of letting God know how they are (too much talking). As in any friendship, we need to listen.

But what does it mean to “listen” to God? This baffled me in the novitiate. Does it mean hearing voices?

Few people say they have heard God’s voice in a physical way. (That is, few sane people.) But it does happen. Mysterious notations in Ignatius’s personal diaries, speaking about his prayer, refer to loquela, loosely translated as speech, discourse, or talking.

The most recent example may be Mother Teresa, who wrote that in 1946 she “heard” God ask her to work with the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Earlier, Mother Teresa had made a promise to God to never refuse anything that God asked of her. Then, years later, as she told her spiritual director, when she heard God’s voice asking her to leave behind her work in a girls’ school, she, not surprisingly, was reluctant to leave behind her work for something new and, it seemed, dangerous.

She reported that God, as if recalling her earlier promise, said to her, “Wilt thou refuse?” Mother Teresa accepted God’s invitation to work among the poor. (By the way, she could have said no. Our relationship with God does not obliterate free will.)

But the kinds of experiences