For me prayer, interiorly established, as a relationship with God opens a big door. To have a sense that we are completely known by the Love that is at the heart of the universe is both scary and wonderfully freeing.
There is more than we think to all the forms of prayer that we engage in. We have no idea how far nor how deeply they are able to go, but that they go into Love’s furtherance is something I feel is completely and vitally true. As long as we do not demand what that should look like, we are living in and participating with a tremendous grace that is unfolding far beyond our ken.
Phrases posted on Facebook, July 2018
There are many moods possible in a relationship. If prayer is a relationship with our Source then it follows that there will be many moods in prayer. Let’s take one of them: complaint. It is well known that in a family or an organization the safe one gets most of the complaints because they are safe. That makes me understand why complaint is so frequent in the Book of Psalms. When I trust the great I AM, I can complain and sense that I am heard. Often being heard, however, comes about in ways that are not what I expected.
If complaint is a frequent mood of prayer then asking for help is mankind’s most universal and ancient prayer. Whatever the circumstance I believe at the heart of it we are asking Love to be with us and to share our fate. Help is a cry that bypasses analysis. Prayer for help is never wrong. No matter how secure and accomplished we think we are, we’ll always need help.
Part of prayer is also asking for help for others so that they, too, will have a sense of Love’s Presence in whatever challenges they are facing. I am not alone in the experience of friends, family and colleagues asking for prayers. No matter how far away the situations and persons we are praying for are, we can trust that neither distance nor time are factors to be concerned about. Love’s Presence is always now and here and everywhere. When we pray for others we are in a timeless unified field. The more we trust ourselves to that field, the more we will experience its reality.
I have a friend who had a talk with her almost grown son about what was most important in life. This is what she said: Be in constant awe and try to be helpful.
Being in constant awe is a prayer of praise. Trying to be helpful is an action prayer asking for guidance and strength.
Moods of prayer: so far we have named complaint and praying for help (petition), praying for others (intercession), awe (praise). Another classical one owns how we have gone amiss and asking for forgiveness (confession). An essential part of confession is awareness that we have forgotten, ignored, perhaps debased our relationship (and therefore ourselves) with the fundamental Love of the universe that gives us life and sustains us. All around us we are seeing the result.
Here’s a little more about owning how we go amiss. It will usually have a family theme or legacy, something that began with being wounded emotionally in childhood. If we can love our hurt inner child, it is easier to correct and forgive ourselves for the not so good ways we have compensated for those wounds. Then confession ultimately becomes a trust in repair and belonging.
Another aspect of prayer is what is called invocation. At the beginning of a worship service or a period of prayer when the participants ask for Spirit to be present they may believe that they are calling Spirit to order so to speak. Isn’t it the other way around? It is we who have to be invoked and called to order, to presence and so to realize that Spirit is already there beside us. It is we who have slipped out of relationship with the great I AM.
Every religious worship service of whatever kind has thanksgiving as a central part of it, and most of us in our private prayers will say thank you at some point. The great Christian theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, said that if the only prayer we ever say is thank you that will suffice.
In every good relationship there is always give and take. In our prayer life after we experience thanksgiving, a natural prayer response is to want to give back. A yielding heart that is full of here I am, use me will enrich us spiritually, and our days will be filled with more purpose and life.
For hundreds of years the Psalms have been chanted and sung. I think song is one of the best forms of prayer. Music lifts us above words. When we find ourselves singing we are in a place of feeling and being. Yes, words may be there, but in a deeper sense we are simply offering ourselves through breath and sound.
The following may be simplistic, but in the right spirit perhaps not. Hands, palm to palm, have been a classic gesture of gathering the self into prayer. I think of every digit as a reminder of the moods of prayer. Thumbs (praise). The index finger (owning that we have been separated from the relationship to Spirit – confession). The tall men (asking for help for ourselves and for others – petition and intercession) Ring fingers (offering ourselves in renewed commitment) Little fingers (thanksgiving). If time is short and the need for prayer urgent, then simply putting our hands palm-to-palm may pray it all.
It’s the last day of July. Summer is half over. Prayer is never over. We are always in connection with our Source, but we only know/feel it when we consciously abide in the relationship. Abiding over time, prayer becomes simpler and more constant. We’re not only at prayer then, but we’re also becoming prayers.
