My own heart
Is a mystery to me,
But you know me inside and out, Yahweh.
Nothing is hidden from your eyes.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 139, page 313)
I get lost. Often.
I’ll be listening to an audiobook only to discover that my mind has wandered and I’ve lost some significant detail of the story. I’m lost.
I’ll be listening to someone telling me about her life when I realize I’ve missed the connections between the stories she’s telling me and the whole purpose of the narratives. I’m lost.
I’ll be working on my car after watching a YouTube video that walked me through the repair when I realize I no longer know what I’m doing. I’m lost.
I’ll start the day with purpose and determination only to find myself scrolling through social media posts or reading news items or looking for a new record to buy. I’m lost.
I’ll look back over the past few weeks or months or years and wonder what I’ve accomplished and where my happiness has got to. I’m lost.
I’ll be praying and then realize I’m not praying and haven’t been for most of the time I sat there, daydreaming about a TV show I’d watched the previous night, and wondering how long it’s been since I last truly prayed. I’m lost.
If prayer is a country, it’s often a mystery to me, an undiscovered country. It can feel daunting to venture into. What do I say? What do I do? Who is this God I’m supposed to be praying to? And who am I who prays?
Before I utter a word or even orient myself toward God, I have to deal with myself. And what I discover is as undiscovered and mysterious as prayer and God. As Pascal wrote, “The heart has reasons reason know nothing of.” There is a vast interiority to myself that I’ve yet to explore. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins referred to this sprawling landscape of the soul as “inscape.” The movie Garden State envisioned it as a dark and bottomless pit.
Prayer isn’t just an opportunity to connect with God, it’s an opportunity to connect with myself, to discover who I am and precisely who God created me to be.
Psalm 139 is our best articulation of the unknown self in relationship with the God who knows us completely. While the psalm begins with a request to “search me and know me,” that’s not where the psalmist starts out. As is often the case in the Psalms, we discover the psalmist’s current state toward the end of the psalm, since that’s where the psalm is pointing. And in Psalm 139, the psalmist is angry, furious with those who deny and denigrate our Lord. These people mistreat God and the psalmist wants them mistreated too (vs. 19-22). But then he realizes how little he knows himself and how possible it is that evil lurks within himself as well. It’s in this state of recognized lack of self-knowledge that he turns in the beginning of the psalm to the God who knows him completely (vs. 2-18). It’s in the completeness of God’s knowledge and in this anger at the evil outside of him that the psalmist gets to the much loved prayer at the end of the psalm:
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting (vs. 23-24 NIV).
St. Augustine wrote, “Let me know Thee, O Lord, who knowest me: let me know Thee, as I am known” (Confessions, Book X). And his his prayer of illumination, he prays, “Lord Jesus, let me know myself and know You ….” Since God knows me fully, the way to come to know myself is in conversation with God in prayer. As I come to know God, I come to know myself.
There is a sense that the greatest limit to my understanding of myself is my lack of knowing God. And similarly, lack of self-knowledge limits my understanding of God. Knowledge of self and knowledge of God go hand in hand.
To explore this country of prayer is to explore the tangled wilds of my own self.
That most basic of Hebrew prayers, “Here I am” (hineni), is both a presentation of myself to God and to myself. Not only is God worthy to be known, but so am I. How do I know this? Because God knows me and has found me worthy to be known.
Prayer: Here I am, my Lord. I want to know you and also know myself. Take me deeper into the vast and trackless wastes of my own soul and discover this land where you have taken up residence by your Spirit. May I now get lost there. But may I find you even there for you have found me. In Jesus. Amen.
For further reading: St. Augustin, Confessions. Many publishers.