Kent’s Recommended Listen:
John Coltrane:
A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition)
Playing right now: A Love Supreme is the album John Coltrane wrote for God. It shows. I just got the newly digitally remastered version, which fixed that glitch in track 1 and includes the live 1964 performace of A Love Supreme. (True jazz fans appreciate the difference.)
My public prayers were turning into performances, so I stopped doing that for now.
Today the campus has its 24-hour prayer thingy. I am all for prayer. I always need to pray more often. Gotta listen to God.
I am, on the other hand, getting more self-conscious about my public prayers. I’m reminded of that time my Rabbi prayed, “Abba, thank You for hearing me—I know, you always hear me, but I said this because of the crowd standing here so they’d believe you sent me.” [Jn 11.41-42] I’ve come to recognize that most public prayers are actually mini-sermons disguised as prayers. Most of the time the pray-ers do legitimately have some stuff to say to God, but since everyone’s listening, they figure they’ll pitch their two cents. At that point they’re no longer talking to God. I caught myself doing it and felt like an utter hypocrite. So I stopped praying in public for about a year, figuring if I can’t do it right, I won’t do it. I want to be authentic to God—after all, I’m not fooling him. Jesus had the right idea. If you’re gonna do the mini-sermon thing, admit it.
So in this 24-hour thing, which I’m not doing for 24 hours (I have prior obligations and God understands this; lots of them are his idea anyway) I am there to pray and not to offer performance art. Other people—well, they have to work that stuff out with God themselves.
MAN, Elvin Jones can thump on those drums. (See, I am actually listening to Coltrane right now.)