The Welcome Prayer

Be angry but do not sin;
do not let the sun go down on your anger,
and do not make room for the devil.
Ephesians 4:26-27

Some of us are brought up in homes in which it is considered inappropriate to express anger. In contrast to what some of us learned at home, Jesus expressed anger on more than one occasion. When Peter said to Jesus in regard to the cross, "This must happen to you!" Jesus responded in what I imagine was an angry tone of voice: "Get behind me, Satan." Another time Jesus was angry at the money changers in the temple. In his anger he threw stuff around in the temple. Of course, there are good theological reasons that Jesus acted this way, but these do not dismiss the reality of his anger. And with Jesus, when the situation is over, so is the emotional response. His emotions were appropriate responses to the present moment with its particular contents. Jesus practiced the seemingly impossible admonition we read in our text today, "Be angry but do not sin." Jesus did that and so can we.

Welcome anger. Welcome anger. Welcome anger. I never thought I would be saying it but that is what I'm saying these days. Don't get me wrong. I'm not welcoming anger. The "welcome" is an invitation the presence of God within me. When I say "anger" in the welcome prayer, I am naming of an emotion that I am experiencing in the present moment. So when I say, "Welcome, anger," I am welcoming God, welcoming the Holy Spirit, inside my body to mix with my feelings of anger until the feelings are transformed into energy for spiritual renewal.

Cynthia Bourgeault describes how the welcoming prayer works in her book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. First we focus and sink in. To focus means to feel an emotion as a sensation in your body. We know how to feel a pain in our bodies such a sore tooth. We can also learn to feel anger in our body. We feel our jaw clench. Our stomach is in knots. Our breath gets shorter. Stay present to these feelings as they happen. You've got to pay attention here because if you've been brought up in a family where it was inappropriate to express anger, you may be able to whisk it away into your unconscious so quickly you never even register that you are angry. Then the unrecognized anger goes right back down into your body, where it becomes more sludge in the pipes blocking the free flow of your being. Keep a firm grounding in physical sensation, feel your anger, focus on the feelings and sink into them.

Now comes the strange advice. Sitting there, stewing in the upset of your anger, begin to say, ever so gently, "Welcome, anger." Common sense tells us to get rid of feelings of anger. But by welcoming it instead, you create an atmosphere of inner hospitality.
There is a wonderful fantasy novel by Ursula LeGuin called A Wizard of Earthsea. A young wizard named Ged is training to become a sorcerer. One day, horsing around with his friends, he inadvertently conjures up a minor demon. The demon proceeds to haunt him throughout the book. As he grows in power and influence, it grows right along with him. Gradually it turns very dark and begins to stalk him; he flees in terror. He runs to a city by the sea, but it follows him there. He hires a boat and rows out into the sea, but it follows him there. Finally he jumps into the water, but the thing is till right on his back. Finally, with all escape routes blocked, he does the only thing left to him: He turns to the demon and embraces it. At which point it vanishes, integrated back inside him as the shadow he is finally willing to own.

Ged's experience of liberation illustrates the power in the Welcoming process. By embracing the thing you once defended yourself against or ran from, you are actually disarming it, removing its power to hurt you.

A couple of important qualifications are in order here. First of all, what you are welcoming is the physical or psychological content of the moment only, not a general blanket condoning of a situation. For instance, a woman who just learned she had colon cancer said, "I tried to work with Welcoming Prayer but colon cancer is a hard thing to welcome." Again, you can spot her error. What was on her plate in that moment was not cancer, but the fear of cancer. That was the situation she needed to be working with. It was not "Welcome, cancer," but "Welcome, fear." Welcoming a feeling is the second movement in the welcoming prayer. We feel an emotion rising. We sink in and focus on the feeling. We welcome God into the feeling. And then we let go.

Letting go is the third step in the welcome prayer but don't get to this step too quickly. The real work in the Welcoming Prayer is actually accomplished in the first two steps. Stay with them--sort of life kneading a charley horse in your leg--going back and forth between "focusing" and "welcoming" until the knot begins to dissolve of its own accord. When you are ready to let go, you simply say something like "I let go of my anger," or, if you prefer, "I give my anger to God."

Mary Mrozowski is the founding genius behind the Welcoming Prayer. Mary was a New Yorker with an "in your face" kind of pizzazz. Mary practiced the welcoming prayer in her own life with emotions ranging from anger to pain. For instance, on her long-awaited first trip to Italy, her expectations were suddenly turned completely upside down when a car hurtling out of control ran up on the sidewalk, slammed into her, and pinned her against a wall. In the midst of intense pain and a madhouse of confusion, she was able to keep saying, "Welcome, pain, welcome pain, welcome pain," and to recite the litany, "I let go my desire to change the situation." Her calm was not only amazing but actually contagious; the crowd began to calm down. The Welcome Prayer helped Mary to survive that terrible accident.

The welcome prayer provides opportunities for quantum spiritual growth by working with common emotions such as anger, fear, pride or pain. Again, there are three steps to the Welcome Prayer. First, we become aware of an emotion rising within us and we focus on the feeling it brings. We determine which emotion we are feeling. Name it. Now welcome God into the feeling. If the feeling is anger, say, "Welcome anger. Welcome anger. Welcome anger." Stay with the emotion you are feeling--sort of life kneading a charley horse in your leg--going back and forth between "focusing" and "welcoming" until the knot begins to dissolve of its own accord. When you are ready to let go of the feeling, say something like "I let go of my anger," or, if you prefer, "I give my anger to God." The Welcome Prayer is a spiritual technique that helps us fulfill Paul's admonition: "Be angry but do not sin."

For more information see "The Welcoming Prayer" written by Cynthia Bourgeault in the book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 2004, pg. 135-152.