Prayer 101
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It is eleven o’clock in the evening. The children are in bed. I am sitting on the couch in my living room attempting to read. My eyes have tracked one page three times without connecting. My mind is wandering.It covers a little ground then circles back, half-attentive, locked in fresh ruts. Or it stops somewhere and spins. Vagrant images, many painful, steal into my consciousness. “I should have said…. I wish I had…. Of course, he didn’t give me half a chance… but even so I should have said….” Nothing earthshaking, just the old, familiar, ever-unfinished machinations of the mind.
Just think of the number of times you have been reading a book only to find yourself, as I did, lost in self-absorption. On the other hand, have you not also lost yourself in a book, lost all track of time and place, submerged yourself in its world, characters, setting, and plot, and emerged completely refreshed?
Admittedly, the voice of a human soul is devilishly hard to keep in tune. With its interlocking registers of sensation, memory, emotion, and thought, it is the most complex of instruments. Sensitive and therefore temperamental, it jams easily and at best is slightly out of kilter. Difficult to play well, it is impossible to play to perfection.
To keep ourselves halfway decently in tune, we must tinker all the time: here on our anger, there on our bitterness, lethargy, pettiness, or pride. Fully to love we must mute our fears; fully to serve, tone down our piping little egos. In order to produce anything like beautiful music, we must join in the band of our brothers and sisters, be an instrument of their peace, a humble instrument of justice and mercy, a dedicated instrument of truth.
To move from distraction to attention, there is no better gambit than prayer.
In prayer we sing by listening first. Prayer shapes and colors our melody, helping us keep in tune with ourselves. It also brings us into harmony with others. Finally, prayer tunes us to the cosmos, to the overarching and all-sustaining hymn of life. It recalls us to the symphony.
Prayer is the art of listening. Reverent attention to something unites us with it. Distraction divides, fragmenting us. Salvation and sin are much the same. Salvation: wholeness, health, healing — all words stemming from the same root — occurs in this lifetime when we are at peace with ourselves, united with one another, and at one with God. Sin is a state of brokenness. It exists when we are consumed by preoccupations and distractions, inattentive to the needs of others, at war with ourselves and the world.
The divisions within us spring from negative self-attitude based upon experience. We have done things we wish we had not done and left undone things that begged our doing. We have hurt others, letting them down and ourselves as well. All of us have a weight on our shoulders that needs unburdening.
This leads us to the first of three kinds of prayer: confession. Jesus teaches us to love our enemy. How difficult this is if the enemy is another. Even more so if the enemy is ourself. Standing sentry at the portal of our minds, this enemy is ever ready to fend off the influx of better thoughts. How quick we are to remind ourselves that we have done wrong or been wronged, given or received pain, failed or been thwarted in our endeavors, missed out on some happiness or had it snatched cruelly away. The problem is, none of this does any good. Worst of all, we do not change, for the enemy within is a fatalist: “That’s life. A pretty rotten business. Go ahead, Stew. Given the circumstances, what else is there to do?”
The promise of confession is integrity. Confession is an honest confrontation with ourselves as we are. This, coupled with a faith in forgiveness, can heal us. If we dare to delve into our brokenness, confess and beg forgiveness, the healing process will begin. Through confession, coupled with the will to change, we gain in strength and dedication. Having known what it is to be broken, we begin to discover what it is to be whole. Confession is a pledge toward wholeness. It cannot change the past, but it can help to bring the present out from under the shadow of the past. In this alone there is power.
A second kind of prayer links self to other, whether a person or a thing. At its most primitive, such prayer amounts to little more than begging for something we cannot have. Pray all we want for wealth or fame or happiness, in selfish prayer there is no power save the power of illusion. But by keeping ourselves mindful of others, of their needs and the ways in which our lives intersect with theirs, any number of good things may happen. First, we are taken outside of our own narrow precincts. This is true of the simplest of prayers, “God bless Mommy. God bless Daddy.” And grandparents and friends and pets and the moon! Such a prayer is a basic expression of connectedness. We become part of all we pray for, and it a part of us. Distances are bridged, our relationship to others becomes more organic, and thereby our wholeness is enhanced.
A more difficult example. We are estranged from a loved one. This estrangement has ever so many consequences which mar the present and darken the future. We are angry and so try to hide our anger. In such cases, those who are closest to us are sailing through dangerous waters. The most innocent maneuver may result in a collision. When we harbor bitterness or resentment within us, allowing our hearts to ice over, the slightest mishap may sink all hope for love. This is no way to live, either for us or for them.
Often our estrangement is the result of so many little things that it is hard to know where to begin unraveling it. Such estrangement tends to grow like a shopping list. The problem is, we can lose all sense of direction and never find the store. So the list grows, until we find ourselves carrying around a staggering inventory of grievances. No sugar, no cream, no warmth, no light. Late at night we tick off the items until they lull us into restless sleep.
For such a condition, no amount of accommodation will suffice to work a cure. An armed truce is no more than a reminder that the battle lines are drawn. Both parties remain on edge.
There is only one sure cure for estrangement. It is reconciliation. Reconciliation is not accommodation; it has nothing to do with compromise. It demands a change of heart, a radical refusal to be trapped by our bitterness. It requires that we remember that there is a bond between us greater and more powerful than anything that separates us: the bond of birth and death.
Though we have little power over what others think of us, we do have the power to free ourselves from our anger toward them. We picture them in our mind. And we pray for them. It is hard to hate and pray at the same time.
Reconciliation, with those we think we hate as with those we try to love, is a living symbol of that which, in theological terms, is called atonement. Atonement is, literally, at-one-ment, the redemptive uniting of parts into wholeness.
The moment we pray for others, our attitude toward them changes. And due to the relief we feel once unburdened of our spite, the way we approach them will change as well.
In certain instances, the only thing that stands between estrangement and reconciliation is an inability to imagine the possibility of reconciliation. In its very essence, to pray for another is an act of reconciliation.
The third kind of prayer is the most healing of all. It is a way of saying yes to life, a yes of gratitude and trust. Blending all dissonance into a larger harmony, putting all the parts in perspective of the whole, we say, “I am in Thy hands, Thy will be done.” In such a prayer, we ask nothing of ourself or for another. We simply acknowledge life’s wonder and mystery, not taking it for granted, but receiving it as a gift.
This is the most important of prayers, a loving token of fidelity to all that lies beyond our power to effect or change, an expression not of obligation but of appreciation, not of guilt but gratitude. It is a way of letting go and for a blessed moment being swept away.
In the Psalms it is called the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Not only do we sacrifice our ego by acknowledging the receipt of undeserved gifts, especially the gift of life, we also find our life rendered sacred by this same acknowledgment. Sacrifice means to render sacred. By suspending the claim of our own ultimacy, willfulness, and authority, we are freed to perform this sacrifice. The present becomes one with eternity. In eternity, division and brokenness are overcome. Where once we harrowed, we are hallowed and made whole.
- The Imperfectionist - May 1, 2015
- Love and Death - November 12, 2014
- Prayer 101 - April 1, 2011
