Decentering Yourself to Live in a Larger Story

Decentering Yourself to Live in a Larger Story

(The Phenomenology of Prayer)

September 8, 2015

There is something innate in human beings that inclines us to be part of something beyond ourselves. We have a need to be part of a cause bigger than ourselves. I was reminded of this on Saturday, through my suite mate Daniel, who plays football for CNU. This Saturday was CNU’s first home football game of the season. All the grueling hours in the weight room and laborious afternoon practices in the sweltering summer humidity was done with this day in the back of his mind. Though I myself am not part of the football team, I felt a certain excitement that morning because of my relationship with Daniel and his connection to the football team. All the passion, excitement, and expectation that people invest into a football team makes everyone interested feel as if they are part of something greater than themselves. 

One of the big, overarching lessons that was instilled in me, working at Camp Rockmont this summer, was that our personal stories are small. The purpose of Rockmont is to develop young boys, teaching them to stop living in their small stories and live in the bigger story that God has invited them to participate in. On the other hand, even our small little stories are vast and extraordinary in their own right. My roommate Matthew loves to make videos. Last week he made a video, documenting all the events he went through in a single day, including classes, meals, meetings, and everything in between. While watching the finished product, I was struck by how much one person can do in a single day. In the present moment the events in our lives appear monotonous; yet even one day, when taken as a whole and undergirded by narrative, can be retold as an epic story. 

Our meaning and purpose in life is inextricably bound up in the cause that we choose to devote ourselves to. In the early 20th century, leading up to World War I, an intense, unquenchable wave of nationalism swept across the continent. People became consumed with an irrational pride in their nation. Later on in the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of third world country citizens became gave their lives to the spread of communism, wholeheartedly devoting their efforts to indoctrination and revolution. In all of these cases we may say that people “lost themselves” in a certain cause. They became so devoted to a cause that, eventually, the cause itself controlled their every thought and action. Those who serve a cause always speak of how great and noble their cause is, while those who find themselves without a cause in life always seem to be living a life devoid of meaning, purpose, and direction. Whichever camp you find yourself in, the starting point is to recognize your desire, and perhaps need, to be part of something bigger than yourself. Why do we feel the urge to be a part of something greater than us? Where does this desire come from?

From birth, we begin to distinguish that there are things outside of us, which exist independently from us. We soon realize that there is more to life than our own story; that we are not at the center of the universe and not everything revolves round us. Nevertheless, we still struggle to accept this reality. Time and time again, we place ourselves in the middle of the world, deceiving and flattering ourselves into thinking that the cosmos revolves around us. In the center we become easily offended and defensive against anything that could threaten to disrupt our project in the world, whatever cause that may be tied to. When we place ourselves at the center of the cosmos all of our consciousness is directed at ourselves and our egos become inflated. 

Prayer is the great act of decentering oneself. Through prayer we take on the “posture of belonging and disposability,” becoming conscious of something other than us; something that transcends us in every way. It is in this sacred act that we see ourselves as the intended one rather than the intending one. Absorbed with self-consciousness, we were unconscious of the reality that God has been conscious of us all along. Prayer detaches us, thus giving us a true self-knowledge and making us fully human. Yet as Thomas Merton reminds us, “we do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all thins in and for God.” Unless we turn to God, the world remains defined by our own agenda. Only when we come to the one who has been conscious of us all along do we realize that God sits enthroned in the center of the cosmos, waiting for us to wake up to His agenda.