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.