What About Prayer?

“Not as in the old days I pray,
God. My life is not what it was…
Once I would have asked for healing
I go now to be doctored,
I would have knelt long, wrestling with you.
Wearing you down. Hear my prayer, Lord hear
my prayer. As though you were deaf, myriads
of mortals have kept up their shrill
cry, explaining your stillness by
their unfitness.

It begins to appear this is not what prayer is about.
It is the annihilation of differences,
the consciousness of myself in you,
of you in me; the emerging
from the adolescence of nature
into the adult geometry
of the mind…
Circular as our way
is, it leads not back to that snake haunted
garden, but onward to the tall city
of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.”

- R. S. Thomas, Twentieth-century Welsh poet

I noted in My ‘More Than’ God blog entry that I think we can interact with and experience God, but that I don’t see God as an interventionalist God – otherwise, there are too many unexplainable non-interventions for a God of love, justice and compassion that I believe God to be. Having said that, I also noted that I don’t deny that there are some paranormal and supernatural happenings which can’t be explained. I don’t know if there is some link between these events and God, but I’m content not to be able to take a position on this one way or another at this point in time.

With that as context, what about prayer? I still think prayer makes sense...although maybe not in the way I used to. I’ve come to think about prayer more as us paying attention to God. There are 3 main types of prayer: verbal, meditation and contemplation.

Verbal prayer often involves petitions and intercessions. Given that I don’t think of God as an interventionalist God, one would think that these types of prayer don’t make sense to me. On the contrary, they do. Why? I can only say that they feel ‘right’ to me. It gives me some comfort, it makes me feel like I am, in a sense, caring for (or thinking of) others. Do I think these types of prayers make any difference? Well, paranormal things do happen. I don’t understand why or how, but, given our lack of knowledge of the supernatural, I’m not certain enough to state unequivocally that prayer never has any impact. But I'm not expecting that these prayers will change the mind or will of an 'out there' God so that he intervenes in the normal course of the universe. And, more importantly, regardless of their effectiveness, I think these types of prayer still have the impact of us paying attention to God or to the concepts surrounding God.

The second type of prayer is meditation, which involves reflecting on an image or phrase or text or idea…dwelling on it. The third type of prayer is contemplation, which is the practice of internal silence…sitting silently in the presence of “isness without limits”. It often involves the silent repetition of a single word or short phrase to give the mind a focus so that the ‘self’ can sink into silence. These are sometimes referred to as 'centering prayers'. These quiet times can be powerful mechanisms to enable a person to solve problems, work through issues and fears and step across barriers. Both of these forms of prayer are more common to eastern religions but seem to be in the process of being re-discovered in western religions.

So, in summary, my thoughts on prayer are as follows:

(1) Verbal (petitionary/intercessory) prayer feels ‘right’ to me – it is part of my process of thinking of and caring for others...but I don’t have an expectation that through these prayers I will change the mind or will of an ‘out there’ God so that He intervenes in the normal course of the universe.

(2) Meditative and contemplative prayers can be powerful ‘centering’ mechanisms that allow us to ‘pay attention’ to God and focus on ‘experiencing God’. I believe these types of prayer can impact and change the pray-er, which can then help the pray-er impact and help others .

POSTSCRIPT: WOW...3 YEARS LATER, I MUST SAY MY VIEWS ON THIS HAVE CHANGED COMPLETELY. NO LONGER DOES VERBAL PRAYER FEEL "RIGHT" TO ME...THE ONLY TIME IT EVEN OCCURS TO ME NOW IS IN THE MOST AWFUL OF SITUATIONS WHEN "OLD HABITS" KICK IN. AND I DON'T THINK THE MEDITATIVE/CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYERS HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH "EXPERIENCING" GOD...THEY MAY BE USEFUL TOOLS TO CALM AND CENTRE OUR MINDS, ETC., BUT I THINK THEY ARE ALL ABOUT US, NOT ABOUT AN EXPERIENCE WITH GOD.