NEED TO PRAY
When you get to be older and the concerns of the day have been attended to, and you turn to the inner life--well, if you don't know where it is or what it is, you'll be sorry.
Joseph Campbell
For many years the praying I did was out of obedience. I prayed because I was told I was supposed to pray. I remember as a child, for example, when I was going off to bed, my father would tell me: "Don't forget to say your prayers." It was as if there were a commandment that said: Thou shalt pray.
My teenage years were the exception. I was struggling to cope with my parents' divorce and, then, with a very difficult stepfather. My praying became more frequent and more fervent. I needed to pray to hold my life together. But, as an adult, my praying reverted back to the routine. I prayed because I was supposed to. There was little of me in my prayers. I was generally content to mouth other people's words.
My forties were again, like my teenage years, a turbulent time for me. I came face to face, like never before, with my own brokenness, neediness. Not unlike my adolescent years, I was faced with a choice--to wallow in self-pity, or to dig deeper and find a strength greater than my own. It was then that I had to rediscover prayer, or die. I learned to pray again, because I needed to pray.
6 BILLION WAYS TO PRAY
I read a little about prayer and experimented with different kinds of prayer. I came to see that there is no one form of prayer suited to everyone at every stage of their lives. Rather, learning to pray is a very personal adventure. There is a wealth of wisdom and methods available to us, but each of us needs to find the time, and the courage, to develop our own prayer life. There are six billion people on this planet now, and so there are six billion right ways to pray.
I know of people who pray while walking, jogging, swimming, skating, or cleaning house. Some use music in their prayer, sing their prayers out loud, or write out their prayer. Some incorporate nature, vistas of sky or sea, in their prayer, while others pray best before a shrine. Many people find the rhythms and mysteries of the rosary helpful, others litanies or novenas. Some meditate on stories in the Bible, even imaging themselves right into the scene, experiencing it from within as a participant.
One ancient form of prayer is to read the Bible (or other devotional text) until a line strikes us, for example, "Fear is useless, what is need is trust" (Mk 5:36). We then silently repeat that line again and again, so that soon it is almost repeating itself with us. When we become distracted, we simply return to the line. After our hearts have become saturated with this line, we then respond in spontaneous prayer, for example, "God, I have so many fears. . . ."
Slow, deep, relaxed breathing fosters prayer, especially the prayer that seeks God in the silent center of the heart. Such prayers often employ repetition of a selected word (such as Peace, Love, God, or Jesus) in order to screen out distractions. As the prayer deepens the word is repeated with each breath, or pulsation of the heart.
I became eclectic, blending various forms of prayer together in a way that met my needs. Since I tend to be a very active, aggressive person, I found that the prayer of quiet was most effective for me. I feel like a faucet turned on full blast with the water rushing out. In prayer I am trying to reduce the flow to a trickle so that I can recoup, heal, regain perspective. I complement this prayer of silence with a bit of scripture, spiritual exercises, and journaling.
God was good to me. In order to ease me back into genuine prayer, God soon let me feel a certain spiritual high in prayer. But I knew from my reading that this relaxing high was not the goal of prayer, so I didn't focus on maintaining it. And sure enough, after a few weeks, I no longer felt the same high. But I persevered in prayer, finding the time and place and energy to pray each day, because I needed to pray.
PRAYING WELL
Each of us needs to develop our own style of prayer. What matters is that we do pray, each day. While we can pray at any time or in any place we choose, I have two suggestions. First, we can't pray well when we are tired or sleepy. It's fine to say good night to God as we are falling off to sleep, but that can't be the whole of our prayer life. Second, we can't pray well in a place where we are subject to interruptions. We might be able to incorporate background noise into our prayer, but interruptions or audible conversations thwart effective prayer.
The quality of our praying is not to be judged by how we feel when we are praying. Sometimes we may feel very fervent and close to God. That's great, but that's not the heart of prayer. At other times we may feel nothing in prayer. That's OK. That doesn't mean we're not praying well.
How do I know I am praying well? What matters is not so much what we feel, or even what happens, during our prayer, but rather what happens when we are not praying. "By their fruits you will know them" (Lk 6:44). Is our prayer time bearing good fruits in our lives? Are we gradually becoming more peaceful, more loving? Are we growing stronger in our areas of weakness? Are we able to keep things in better perspective? Are we more aware of God's Presence in our lives when we are not praying? If so, we are praying well. If not, we need to ask whether we are devoting sufficient time and energy to prayer each day. Are we praying? If we are, but our prayer is not gradually producing good spiritual fruit in our lives, then we need to shake up our prayer lives, experiment, try new methods of prayer. The kind of prayer that may have served us effectively during one stage of our life, might no longer be right for us. God may be calling us deeper, to a different form of communion.
Many, many times our minds are filled with distractions. [My favorite spiritual author, Anthony de Mello, offers a vivid image of our proneness to distraction: he says that our minds are like trees filled with chattering monkeys!] That's OK, as long as, once we become aware of the distraction, we simply let it go and return to our prayer. The very process of letting go of our distraction, no matter how inviting it may be, and returning to prayer, is itself a healthy spiritual exercise. It is a beautifully concrete way of asserting, again and again, distraction after distraction, that nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important that my prayer relationship with God.
What is prayer? There are many ways of looking at prayer--raising our minds and hearts to God, a conversation with One Who loves us. I like to think of prayer as simply putting myself in the Presence of God. God is always present to us, but we are usually too busy to notice. Prayer is when we stop and focus on God's Presence within us and around us. Our prayer is effective if, when we are not praying, we remain more mindful that God is present in the daily affairs of our lives, that we never walk alone.
Our Muslim cousins have a beautiful custom. They stop whatever they are doing, five times a day, to pray. Their purpose is to so interlace their daily lives with awareness of God, that they spend the whole day conscious of God's Presence.
Now that I have gotten older I see the need to tend to my inner life, to "walk humbly with [my] God" (Mi 6:8). I am keenly aware of my weakness, of my helplessness without God. When I was a child I prayed because I was told to. Now, as in many areas of life, I have come to see the wisdom behind the command. I now know I need to pray in order to survive and keep growing. Not praying is no longer a viable option for me.
Ronald Stanley, O.P.
For additional articles relating to this topic see:
LIVING IN GRATITUDE
FATAL FLAWS
TRUE HUMILITY
TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE
WHO NEEDS GOD?
