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[Back to index of June articles] Praying with beads By Meg Bryant
Anglican prayer beads, an amalgamation of the Roman Catholic rosary and the Orthodox prayer rope, consist of 28 beads divided into four groups of seven - a number in Judeo-Christian tradition that connotes perfection and completion. Each group of seven beads -referred to as a week - is separated by a single bead called a Cruciform bead. The four Cruciform beads represent the cross. Linking the ring of beads to an actual cross is the final Invitatory bead, for a total of 33, the number of years that Jesus lived on earth. By contrast, the Roman Catholic rosary employs 59 beads and is made up of five parts, called decades, that represent mysteries in Jesus' life. Other religious traditions also use prayer beads, including Hindus, with their "mala" beads, and Greek Orthodox Christians, who pray with "chotki." Christian rosaries first became popular in medieval times when most people were illiterate and the rosaries, learned by heart, helped them to focus on their devotions. While growing numbers of Episcopalians attest to the value of praying with beads - the idea first caught hold in the 1980s - the practice is less doctrinaire than its Catholic counterpart, Sutton said. "Like so much in Anglican spirituality, it's sort of a middle way - structure, but [with] freedom," he said. "Develop a form of prayer that works for you." The key to praying with beads is repetition and simplicity, Sutton explained. Repetitious devotions lead to divine immediacy. "You can't make yourself get close to God, but in the action of praying you open yourself to intimacy," he said. The process "involves ritual, discipline and something that's repetitive and continuing," he added. The idea is to make the experience simple and repetitive enough that one can finger their way through the beads while praying almost anywhere they happen to be - on the bus, at work, while out walking, at home, or in church. How one chooses to pray with the beads also is open to personal expression. You can pray as quickly or as slowly as you want, Sutton observed, adding that some people pray while fingering through the beads one direction, and then pray back the other way around. "Don't just do it once," Sutton exhorted those gathered for the afternoon seminar. "Do it for a season and let it get into your bones." Sutton recommends a simple centering prayer - a deep thought of love or Jesus, for example, that is just brought to consciousness - as an excellent way to prepare for using the beads. After that, a typical sequence might include the Trisagion - the "thrice holy" prayer - and the Jesus prayer, the Lord's Prayer, or others from the Book of Common Prayer, the Hymnal, or the Psalms. Or make up your own prayer, and recite it over and over as you finger the beads, Sutton said. Rather than reading something from a book, Sutton prefers to memorize the prayers and then go through them with the beads with his eyes closed. To begin the prayer cycle, hold the cross and recite a prayer you have chosen for it, then move your fingers to the Invitatory bead and say another prayer. From there, enter the bead wheel, praying as you move in a counter-clockwise direction from the cross through the Weeks and Cruciform beads. After completing the circle of beads, exit through the Invitatory bead and the cross, again saying the prayers you assigned to them. The Anglican method suggests praying round the beads three times to signify the Holy Trinity. The beads come in all the colors of the rainbow, from blues and purples to reds and amber, black and white. They offer a range of tactile experiences as well: some are glass, while others are wood, stone and even pearl. The crosses, too, may be wood or metal, simple or ornate. In short, there is plenty of room for personal expression. Fingering ones way through the beads, while reciting a selection of prayers, either silently or aloud, enhances feelings of connectedness and devotion to God. Didi Smith, who organized the seminar, started praying with beads about a year ago after a friend approached her about designing prayer beads for his son. Smith, who does bead work, had to turn to the Internet to find information on Anglican prayer beads and, in doing so, discovered that there were "a lot of people" using them. After she made the set for her friend, she began praying with beads herself and found the experience "very powerful." Believing that others could also be turned on to the power of prayer beads, she helped to launch a spiritual ministry that promotes the use of prayer beads and channels profits from sales of the beads into outreach activities. "There is nothing magic about the beads," Smith said, "but something magical can happen when one uses them." "You don't always have to put your prayers into words," said Sutton, coming back to the power of silence. Prayer, he noted, is simply a conduit for God's energy, focused in a particular way. "To act, feel, talk, and receive all at once" - that, he said, is the power of praying with beads. [Back to index of June articles]
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Speaking of the "immense power of silence," the Rev. Canon Eugene Sutton, head of the National Cathedral's Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage and co-founder of Contemplative Outreach of Metropolitan Washington, told a group of St. Alban's parishioners that prayer beads can bring people into closer communication with God by focusing their energy in meditative prayer that involves the body as well as the mind and spirit.