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Thoughts on Prayer |
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"God could do without our prayer.
It is a mystery that he sets such store by it."
- Brother Roger of Taizé
Indeed, it is a mystery. Just as it is a mystery that parents set such store by the crayon-smudged works of art that hang on their refrigerators. When I visited my father recently, I found one of my own elementary-school crayon "masterpieces" on display in his apartment, framed, more than fifty years after it was created. Even so does God cherish the prayers of God's children, no matter how feeble or fumbling they may be.
"Our hearts ache eastward" is the haunting first line of a prayer by Safiyah Fosua in response to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Prayer gives shape and direction to our heartaches and our joys. I have long said the two most basic forms of prayer are "Help!" and "Wow!" Whenever fear threatens to overwhelm, whenever wonder overflows, prayer provides both a channel for our emotions and a link to deeper mysteries.
Religious people may have no greater appreciation of life's wonders than do people who are not religious; they simply know where to send their thank-you notes. Prayer, says the poet Mary Oliver, is "the doorway / into thanks, and a silence in which / another voice may speak."
"In its full meaning, prayer is joyous acceptance
of life's greatest gift, the Lord's friendship,
and the return of the gift of one's self to God
in the service of [all].
- Bernard Häring |
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-- Bill |
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Meet the Other
When I pray, I frequently find myself somewhere else -- in a medieval monastery, on a garden bench, at the edge of a canyon overlooking mountain ridges rippling in the distance. All in my imagination, of course. When I pray I frequently go to a place in my memory where I have felt a suffusion of grace. Usually these memories bring me to where I prayed together with others, others who also experienced a deep and abiding Presence.
Meditative singing as practiced in the ecumenical community at Taize, France, is a way to bring humble prayer to those who gather there. Young people from all over the world chant the simple repeated lines from scripture in their native languages. When I pray there I get the larger sense of "other" -- each pilgrim in the church, around 5000 in all -- expressing innermost longings to Christ in utter freedom.
True prayer brings us out of ourselves into an awareness of the other -- fellow pilgrims on the road of life. And true prayer always brings us to God. Segundo Galilea, my favorite Latin American theologian who often wrote about the liberating power of the Gospel, wrote that the essence of real prayer always consists in "going out of oneself in order to meet the Other."* Who do you meet when you pray -- an other? the Other?
If someday you are praying in an alpine meadow, on the edge of a cliff, or among thousands chanting in dozens of foreign languages, look around and you might find me there. Or some other. Or the Other.
*Segundo Galilea, Following Jesus, p. 61.
--by Jan |
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Copyright (c) 2011 Soul Windows Ministries
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