Prayer Column 3: Ways to Pray

Prayer Column 3:  Ways to Pray

When you were a child, you may have learned to pray by kneeling beside your bed, placing your palms together in front of your chest, bowing your head, closing your eyes, and reciting, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  Should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."  Or perhaps you were responsible for saying grace at the dinner table:  "God is great, God is good.  Let us thank him for our food.  By his hands, we all are fed, give us Lord our daily bread."  Somewhere along the line, though, you may have realized that you're no longer a child, and decided that you needed to give up your childish ways of praying.  If so, your idea of what you ought to be doing may be more along these lines:  find a chair in which you can sit in a relaxed upright position, place your palms together about four inches in front of your chest, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, spend 30 minutes in deep conversation with God, and sign off with "Amen."  

Time for another confession, and this one is in the category of deep, dark secrets.  I think I can count on my fingers and maybe a couple of toes the number of times that I have succeeded in praying this way, and that includes several times that the "comfortable chair" was an outcropping of rock overlooking an amazing landscape.  I just can't pray that way on any kind of a regular basis.  Unfortunately, for a lot of us, sitting still for 10 minutes is an insurmountable challenge, to say nothing of coming up with 30 minutes worth of meaningful non-repetitious conscious thoughts to share with God.  However, the news is not all bad.  For starters, if you are participating in our 40-day study of Unbinding Your Heart by Martha Grace Reese, you already have in your possession an invaluable resource to provide alternatives to the "standard" prayer technique.  Many such alternatives are included in the 40 days of devotional exercises.  

Another resource is Prayer for People Who Can't Sit Still, by William Tenny-Brittian.  Until I discovered this book, I was under the mistaken impression that unless I was motionless, my prayers were somehow invalid.  Since I couldn't do that, I thought I wasn't trying hard enough.  Sometimes I even thought that it meant I wasn't really a Christian.  That changed when I glanced at the table of contents of Tenny-Brittian's book, and since I can't reproduce the whole book here, I'll give you a whirlwind tour.  Chapter 1 discusses "The Joy of Journaling," which Margaret Lyon wrote about a few weeks ago, and which I personally find to be one of the most meaningful forms of prayer.  There are many variations, but it typically involves choosing a passage of scripture and reflecting on it in a journal.  Chapter 2 talks about dance as a form of prayer (not my personal favorite, but maybe yours), and Chapter 3 covers "Action Prayer."  Praying while walking a "labyrinth" is one of the oldest known forms of prayer, and is the subject of Chapter 4.  In case you'd like to try this technique, Westminster Presbyterian Church has a labyrinth that is open to the public from noon to 7 pm on the first Tuesday of every month, and I'm told there are at least two others in the Dayton area.  Chapter 5 talks about a well-known form of prayer traditionally associated with the Catholic church, which is the use of prayer beads, as well as daisy chains and counting prayers.  Chapter 6 discusses "Sensational Prayer," while Chapter 7 introduces another one of my favorites -- prayer walking.  The last three chapters are about "Artistic Prayer," "Musical Prayer," and "Technology-Assisted Prayer."  The one thing that all of these techniques have in common is that they give us something to do that keeps our mind from wandering, and therefore allows us to stay engaged in our communication with God.

The traditional motionless prayer isn't right for everybody, and none of the types of prayer that Reese and Tenny-Brittian mention will be either.  My prayer, though, is that if you have felt in the past that you were somehow not spiritual enough to "pray right," you will be encouraged by the idea that there are many perfectly valid ways to communicate with God.  I will write more about selected alternatives to the traditional motionless prayer over the next few weeks.  

What's Wrong with Motherhood and Appl...

What's Wrong with Motherhood and Apple Pie:  Reflections on Halos, Good Samaritans, and Nazareth

I hope you will forgive my understatement when I say that our nation currently faces some challenges.  There are many, among them being the number of children growing up in broken homes, the high school dropout rate, and the mismatch between the skills of our workforce and the jobs of our information age economy.  One thing we can do to work toward addressing these challenges is to communicate to our young people the importance of taking responsibility for their own success, staying in school, and setting goals.  These ideas could all be considered to be well aligned with conservative values.  One would think that conservatives would be happy about a leader with considerable respect among the youth of our nation modeling these values and speaking to them on these issues. 

And yet, when exactly that leader announced that he was going to do exactly that, conservatives reacted with outrage.  They labeled it as "indoctrination."  They nitpicked that he used the word "I" when he talked about his effort to improve educational facilities, and the words "help the President" instead of "help the nation."  They complained about the fact that he had not coordinated directly with every school district in America.  They demanded that parents be given the opportunity to opt their children out of his speech, or that the schools not show the speech at all.  When they got their wish to be able to opt their children out, they complained that if they did, their children would feel ostracized.

It seems that President Obama can do no right in the eyes of conservatives.  Perhaps if he had announced that he was going to speak to the children about the goodness of Motherhood and Apple Pie they would have been happier.  Frankly, though, I doubt it.  Somebody would have complained that by speaking about motherhood, he was advocating for fathers to abandon their families.  Somebody else would have argued that apple pie is fattening and that encouraging youth to eat it would contribute to the nation's obesity crisis. 

This is a classic example of what people usually refer to a the "reverse halo effect" (someone with a stronger background in psychology might name a different cognitive bias).  In short, once we've decided that a person has a bad trait (like being a Democrat, perhaps), then we tend to think ill of everything that person does.  This certainly isn't limited to politics, and it leads to errors in judgment no matter where it occurs.

The gospel attributed to Luke contains a relevant passage:

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Luke 10:25-37, NRSV)

Luke was addressed primarily to the Jewish community, and like many of Jesus' teachings, this story would have been very challenging to a Jewish listener.  Samaria had been the capital of the Northern Kingdom (of Israel), which was conquered and resettled by the Assyrians.  As a result, the Samarians of Jesus' day were the mixed offspring of pagans and Jews, with a distinctly Assyrian worldview.  Some of them continued to practice Judaism, but the Jews to whom Jesus was speaking in this passage thought of the them as "evil cousins" who had corrupted the Torah -- perhaps worse than Gentiles. 

Jesus challenged his listenesr to recognize that a Samaritan could be acting more in accordance with the will of God than a member of the Jewish community, even one who knew and followed the Law of Moses very closely.  The writer of Luke was telling the Jews, through the lawyer, that in the eyes of God it doesn't matter what group you belong to.  What matters is how you live your life.  What I hope is now the obvious corollary is that it shouldn't matter to conservatives that Obama is a Democrat when he is telling our young people to take responsibility for their own lives, stay in school, and set goals for themselves.

There is a school of thought that argues an author should always give an editor one thing to complain about that will be easy to fix, so that the editor can feel that they have done their job and the author can publish the work the way they intended in the first place.  In that spirit, I will risk my conservative critics accusing me of likening President Obama to the Messiah (it's just going to be an analogy, folks!).  While officially being a Jewish province, Galilee was rife with pagans and fanatics.  Its residents held an even lower place in the esteem of the residents of Jerusalem than did Samaritans.  Yet Jesus was born there, in the town of Nazareth.  Hence the following early dialog among the apostles reported in the gospel attributed to John:

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.'  (John 1:45-46, NRSV)

My point is not that President Obama is the Messiah (he's not, OK?).  My point is that too many conservatives respond the same way as Nathanael when they hear about a Democrat.  Can anything good come out of Obama?  Come and see.

Acknowledgement and Epilogue

I need to acknowledge the help of the Rev. Dr. Verity A. Jones in understanding the context of the Good Samaritan story, though obviously any errors are entirely my own.  Rev. Jones is the Publisher and Editor of DisciplesWorld magazine, and I am proud to call her my friend.

Also, after I drafted the majority of this post, I listened to NPR's report on President Obama's address.  It includes these encouraging words:

In Florida, where the speech was harshly criticized by state Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, school officials in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools said parents were initially concerned, but seemed more agreeable after the text was posted on the White House Web site.

"We basically made it voluntary. We sent a message to the parents and to all the schools that if it's something dealing with the instructional mission of the classroom that they can view it if they want," said Hilda Diaz, district spokeswoman. "If the parents send a note, then the students don't have to participate."

Even Greer backed off his opposition after he read the text, saying Monday that he thought the speech was fine.

"It's a good speech," Greer told ABC News."It encourages kids to stay in school and the importance of education, and I think that's what a president should do when they're going to talk to students across the country."

Last week, Greer had said he was appalled that taxpayer dollars were being used to spread Obama's "socialist ideology."

Prayer Column 2: What Are the Purposes of Prayer?

Central Christian Church of Kettering's 40-day study of Unbinding Your Heart by Martha Grace Reese is now two Sundays away.  Last week I wrote about a simple definition of prayer:  "Prayer is talking with God."  I also observed that this definition matches up pretty well with the first part of a more formal definition turned up by Google that says prayer is "the act of communicating with a deity (especially as a petition or in adoration or contrition or thanksgiving)."  This week I'm going to take a look at the second half of the formal definition.

Bear with me for a moment while I briefly illustrate these four types of prayer with a somewhat facetious example.  Suppose that a mutual friend of ours visited the Ohio lottery website to see if he had the winning ticket in a big drawing.  Before he checked the winning numbers, he might pray, "Lord, please let me have a winning ticket."  That would be a prayer of petition.  If our friend took the time to click on the "About the Lottery" link, he might pray, "Lord, it is only because of you that the lottery has been able to provide more than $16 billion to public education."  That would be a prayer of adoration.  Of course, if our friend stopped to think about all of the good things that he could have done instead with the money he spent on the ticket, he might pray, "Lord, forgive my shortsightedness and greed in playing the lottery."  That would be a prayer of contrition.  Finally, if our friend found that he did have a winning ticket, he might pray, "Lord, thank you for guiding me to play the lottery this week."  That would be a prayer of thanksgiving. 

If you're like me, you might be skeptical that God takes an active role in choosing lottery winners, turning traffic lights green, or opening great parking spaces just in time for us to fill them.  Prayers of petition can be much nobler.  We might, for example, pray for the safety of our family, for the healing of a sick friend, for patience in dealing with work issues, for greater faith, or for our daily bread.  God does answer "yes" to many prayers of petition, but even when we petition God with the noblest of intentions, God sometimes says "no."  God's reasons are often a mystery to us, and many books have been written on the subject.  For now, though, we'll just acknowledge the mystery and note that a prayer of petition should include a submission to God's will.  When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want." (Matthew 26:39, NRSV)  When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we say, "Thy will be done." 

The prayer of adoration is an expression of our love for God.  When we marvel at the beauty of nature, the wonders of the cosmos, or the elegance of mathematics we are adoring the perfect creation of God.  When we weep with joy at the birth, first steps, or first words of a child, we are adoring our life-giving God.  When we celebrate the well-lived life of our church's saints, we are adoring the everlasting nature of God.  When a tear comes to our eye as we read about people donating their kidneys to save a stranger's life because somebody did the same thing for their sibling, we are adoring the sacrificial love of God.  My personal favorite prayer of adoration?  That beautiful hymn, "How Great Thou Art."

For many people, the most difficult type of prayer is that of contrition, in which we confess our shortcomings, failures, or sins, and ask for God's forgiveness.  It is difficult for many of us to recognize our own shortcomings, much less admit them publicly.  However, we can be secure in the knowledge that God is our closest confidant, to whom we can safely tell anything.  In fact, God already knows, even before we do.  More importantly, the good news of the gospel is that God has already forgiven us. 

The last type of prayer mentioned in Google's reported definition is that of thanksgiving.  Next to prayers of petition, this is perhaps the most familiar type, given that the most common spoken prayers outside of worship are to give thanks before meals for the food and the hands that prepared it.  The name is self-explanatory:  we express our gratitude for God acting in our lives.  As familiar and obvious as this type of prayer is, most of us could probably find more opportunities to use it if we opened our eyes (and hearts) as we go through our daily business.  Did I accomplish a lot at work today?  If so, I should give thanks to God for giving me the energy, talent, and opportunity for education that prepared me for my job.  Did my child's behavior frustrate me tonight?  I should thank God that I had parents who put aside their frustration with my behavior and raised me to the best of their abilities.

These four types of prayer (petition, adoration, contrition, and thanksgiving) are not exhaustive, and various writers use different categories.  Nonetheless, I pray that thinking about different types of prayer might help you to strengthen your prayer habits and open those lines of communication with God.