Prayer seems so central to
Christian faith. And yet since childhood, when I used to kneel and speak to
heaven and heaven seemed silent, I have found prayer bewildering. In the 1970s
I read books on the subject (such as L.
A. T. van Dooren’s Prayer: the
Christian’s vital breath and R. A. Torrey’s How to pray) and grasped the theology and mechanics of prayer, and
even preached on prayer yet somehow prayer itself remained a perplexing mystery
and the books alienated rather than blessed me.
I do understand prayer as a
connectedness with someone out there. By this, I don’t mean that I have ever
had a sense of the numinous, an awareness of a spiritual presence. It’s simply
that at times I’ve been aware of words flowing freely from me, in such a way
that the very act of uttering them contains, or produces the confidence that
they are heard.
And I understand too the power of
thankfulness, as the recognition that I have been given, and have received so
many gifts and blessings liberates in return words of thanksgiving and
gratitude.
But more often than not my
personal, verbal prayers are no more than abrupt ejaculations: ‘Help me God!’
or ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner’ (The Jesus
prayer)
My sense – a belief accompanied
by a confidence – that someone us there has always been intermittent. Often
what I am conscious of is not God’s presence, but the void of God’s absence. To
try to pray is a dragging of words out of myself when there is no inner energy
driving those words. Often I give up, and focus on something else while not
losing the context of Christian faith – perhaps writing, or playing around with
ideas, or simply opening my mind and listening – and often through this I
receive insights which release creativity and a sense of wholeness. Perhaps,
for me, on those days, that is prayer.
But there are other days, when, unpredictably, I have a sense, a knowledge that God is there, and that I can entrust to God the business of the day, in confidence that through God’s presence I will find a solution, a way ahead.
With regard to praying with other people, I have been able to pray with individuals, bringing them and their situation into the presence of God in a way which they have found helpful. But I am aware of the danger of using praying either as a way of holding people at a distance and avoiding truly engaging with them, or as a way of making myself look good in their eyes.
But there are other days, when, unpredictably, I have a sense, a knowledge that God is there, and that I can entrust to God the business of the day, in confidence that through God’s presence I will find a solution, a way ahead.
With regard to praying with other people, I have been able to pray with individuals, bringing them and their situation into the presence of God in a way which they have found helpful. But I am aware of the danger of using praying either as a way of holding people at a distance and avoiding truly engaging with them, or as a way of making myself look good in their eyes.
Prayer in small groups I have
often found embarrassing. I find myself wanting to stay quiet, and yet the
situation demands that you say something. And so I open my mouth and speak, and
sometimes words come, and there is structure and eloquence, and though I say
the kind of things someone more tuned into God might say with sincerity I can’t
claim to be speaking with any integrity. Might I not simply be spinning
sentences to create an illusion of spirituality, or simply to ward off the
questions to which my silence would give rise.
Prayer in larger groups is
easier. Sometimes when I stand up to pray there is a deadness, and I feel
there’s nothing to say, but often the words come, and I speak fluently, and
ideas and images and connections drop into my mind giving life to my sentences.
I don’t usually feel very sincere, but I want to be sincere, and humbly feel in
some sense ‘used’ while at the same time combatting pride at the clever
insights ‘I’ have given voice to.
I am very bad at praying for
other people. One reason for this is a lack of compassion for others. I can in
my mind understand people’s needs, but I am not in my heart moved and prompted
to action, although I would love to have a melted, gentle, compassionate heart
towards those around me. The second
reason is a lack of personal belief that prayer makes a difference. I believe
that God is loving and gracious, that we are secure in God. But I am not sure
about praying for a specific response.
And when Christians speak about
prayer being the power-house of the church, the concept seems alien to me. I
feel I am on the outside looking in.
Frankly, I do wish Jesus had been
a bit more nuanced. ‘Ask and you shall receive,’ he said. Why didn’t he add
that this is not as straightforward as it sounds? We pray, and sometimes there
are no answers. We know that we ourselves are changed as we pray, and helped to
be more God-focussed and to align our wishes with the Spirit of heaven. But
when there are no answers, we wonder if we’ve asked for the wrong stuff, or the
right stuff at the wrong time, or the right stuff in the wrong spirit, or
whether God has just said ‘No!’ We try everything to get God off the hook. We
blame ourselves. Anything rather than facing up to the implications of God’s
mysterious silence.
On a number of occasions over the
years I have experimented with praying an eminently respectable evangelical
prayer. ‘Father please grant me today an
opportunity to show, or speak of your love to someone, and grant the
perceptiveness to recognise this opportunity and the courage to seize it.’ And
the day would end, with no apparent answers. Was it a wrong prayer? Was it
wrong to ask? Or had God come to me incognito as he did to the shoemaker in
Tolstoy’s story Where love is there God
is also?
The clearest sense I have of ‘answers
to prayer’ is where I have sermon or of piece of spiritual writing to prepare,
and I don’t have a clear sense either of the theme I should address or approach
to it which I should take. ‘Father, you stand outwith time. You know the words
which will appear in next week’s paper. You know the words I will say as I
stand up in church on Sunday morning. Please show me.’ I have found often that prayer to be a gateway to insight and
creativity.
I have come, on my clearer-seeing
days, to view the whole of life as a prayer. A life lived in the belief that
God is there, and with the desire that every word, action, thought, cry of
anguish, sense of God’s presence or of God’s absence should say ‘Yes!’ to the
Creator, ‘Yes!’ to the risen Jesus, ‘Yes!’ to the present and future coming of
the kingdom. Often this is the only kind of prayer I can manage, but I believe
it is enough.
The most helpful book on prayer I
have ever read is Primary Speech: a
psychology of prayer by Ann and Barry Ulanov who lectured at Union
Theological Seminary in New York. The book looks at prayer from the perspective
of Jungian psychology, and its final chapters describe a connectedness with God
which is far beyond my experience. But I find the earlier chapters enormously
helpful – the insight, for example, that prayer is ‘primary speech’, that all of
us call out wordlessly to God from the very depth of our beings.
I appreciated most of all the thought that we can come to
God as we are, in our totality. I am aware in myself of what Carl Jung would
call ‘the shadow side’ – aware of thoughts and feelings of bitterness, hatred,
pride, lust, anti-God impulses, lack of concern and compassion. I find myself
asking where these things come from? Are they part of me, or alien enemies? Do
I need to rid myself of these shadows before I can hope to enter God’s presence.
The Ulanovs encourage me to see
these things as part of myself, while not allowing them to define me. I must
acknowledge these dark emotions and desires, and listen to what they reveal
about my deepest self, and then come to God with this expanded understanding of
who I am, and find in coming God’s forgiving and embracing love.
‘Father God I believe you are
there. Please hold, help, transform me. Today and always may my life
approximate to your dream for me.’
