John Young: What would a day in the office, and in your chapel, look like?
Rowan Williams: The day always starts in the chapel: 7.30 is morning prayer and holy communion — every day, apart from Saturdays. And I try to get down a bit earlier and be quiet for a bit before that.
Do you view prayer as a duty or as a joy? And where does it fit into your incredibly busy life?
I think I’d say in one way neither a duty nor a joy in itself, but a necessity. And just as eating is a necessity and can be a joy, so prayer is a necessity and can be a joy. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to let God in, for a part of the day with nothing else going on.
If you don’t do that, well, you suffer. The work suffers, and your own humanity and your witness suffers; so it’s got to be done, even if you don’t feel like it sometimes.
There are times when I realise, in the middle of a very busy day, maybe I didn’t give enough time to it today. And very important for me has been what Desmond Tutu once said about prayer. He said: “I’m far too busy to pray for less than two hours a day.”
Do you?
I wish. But it’s a very good principle. The busier you are, the more important it is to make the time.
Surveys suggest that people in the pews want help with prayer. How can we get started? And how can we grow and develop?
The first thing I’d want to say about prayer is it’s a mistake to think it’s just something I do. It’s something God does, and it’s something the body of Christ does. God wants to communicate with me. God wants to live in me, and make a difference through me. So I’ve got to try and let him.
One of the ways we do that is by shutting down some of the other systems and letting God be God. Letting him in. The body of Christ prays. Whenever I pray “Our Father”, I’m echoing the words of Jesus, and so I’m taking part in that worldwide enterprise.
Now, if you start with those two things, it may take a bit of the pressure off thinking: “I’ve got to do it as an individual. I’ve somehow got to get myself up this great ladder to heaven. I’ve got to make a good job of it. I’ve got to get effective results from it.” No, you enter into this environment in which God is acting, God is drawing you. And you, as part of Christ’s body, are growing into God.
So there’s a big place for silence, there’s a big place for trust — and just letting yourself be with God. I once compared it to being under a sun lamp. You know it’s making a difference — you’ve just got to lie there.
People quite often ask clergy — and others, no doubt — to pray for them. And I often end up with a long list of people and things to pray for. Is that a valid prayer?
Of course it is. It’s connecting other people’s concerns with your concern, in the presence of God. It’s saying: “I’m alongside you. I want to carry your hopes and your concerns to God with me.” And if God allows that to make a difference — wonderful! God be praised. But I’ll probably never know that. But I’ve been asked, as a fellow human being, and a fellow member of Christ’s body, to share that burden; so I do it. I present it to God.
My sense is that your heart is with the person who puts a note into your hand saying, “Hi! Lots of prayers”. You know, right at grass-roots level.
And that’s the life-giving thing. It’s the Sunday mornings in a parish in Kent. Or, for that matter, a parish in south London, sometimes. It’s the extraordinary way in which people write in to Lambeth, out of the blue, just asking for prayers. Or, a couple of weeks ago, a letter from someone saying: “Why is my friend dying of cancer?” And knowing that it is at least as important to sit down and answer that, as it is to sit down and answer a letter from a Secretary of State for something or other — or the Archbishop of wherever.
And those letters always get a reply, do they?
They get a reply.
And do the people always get prayed for?
Yes, there’s a fairly long list in chapel.
This is the second of three edited extracts from Rowan Revealed, a wide-ranging conversation on CD (running time 65 mins) between Canon Young and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
A free copy of the CD will be sent to all Church Times postal subscribers on 2 October. Any Church Times reader can obtain a free copy (visit www.yorkcourses.co.uk or phone 01904 466516 for terms of the offer).