With decades of morning prayer, mostly daily, I’m coming to know that I’m not perfect, and I am worthwhile. Regular practice at prayer is key to a growing understanding of Love and a journey in mutual help with neighbors.
Although some Friends avoid the word “prayer,” I find it useful. It’s plain language for a vital activity that’s been common to faithful people across the millennia and to generations of Friends.
Prayer isn’t just about asking for things. God isn’t a gumball machine into which we put our penance, say magic words, and get what we want. For me, prayer means intentionally spending time with God.
The best times of prayer start with a deep awareness of the inward presence of God. I usually begin to sense this presence in my chest. The Realm of God is a wordless place of love. I’ve learned from the writings of several teachers (including Mark the gospel writer, Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle, and George Fox) that I can attend to an inward part of myself, the part that notices the many words and images popping up in my mind. Attending to this inward, basic awareness, words and images matter less. Attention remains with the basic awareness. This inward place has become familiar. It’s a place of rest and stillness.
Several core intentions appear frequently in personal times of prayer: gratitude, self-examination, pleas for our troubled world, and pleas for my own assurance and guidance.
Gratitude is a common entry point to knowing that Christ is present and loving. Being grateful helps me know that good things come just because the world is full of Love. I am trying to unlearn the wrong idea that I must achieve some degree of learning or complete a set of good deeds before I deserve blessings. We do not earn all the Life we enjoy. Sometimes Grace just appears.
Self-examination through prayer means holding up to the Light those areas of my life and relationships in which I’m not doing well. Something may be troubling my heart. I may be hurting a member of my family in some way. I seek to acknowledge mistakes without a need to dwell on them. They are not going to get fixed magically by the Ultimate Power of God. But I can look at my mistakes, then see how to take responsibility for them and find some practical steps to take about them.
Immersed in the wordless Presence, understanding grows about parts of my life that are difficult to face at other times. At three in the morning, I can get to feeling guilty and start to punish myself inwardly. At three in the afternoon, I may want to brush over my faults so I can finish the day’s tasks and get a bite to eat. But during my morning prayer, after I know that the Spirit is present and that blessings are coming to me, I can face the tough stuff honestly.
When I listen with care to conversations, lives in distress (indeed, a world of them) make themselves known. I learn of people’s needs and of difficulties that seem too big for the people in them. I keep a list of troubles like these, so I’ll remember to pray about them. The individuals and situations on this list change over time. Currently, my list includes a local Friend who’s just come home from the hospital, Palestinians who are under attack, Israeli decision makers, two people I see at weekly Bible study, and the clerk of our yearly meeting, whose face and person came up for me one day in prayer.
Each of us needs grace, blessing, and change. For many years, I have had a persistent sense that prayer by others on our behalf (or just their quiet consideration) does help us. Beyond this inward sense, I have had some striking experiences also. Hitchhiking toward Santa Fe once, I was standing at a turnpike entrance in eastern Pennsylvania, holding a sign that said “Denver.” The fellowship I’d attended all summer was praying for my safe return to New Mexico.
After waiting almost three hours, which was an unusually long time in my experience, another college student stopped to pick me up. We drove through the night to Denver. The next rides I hitched followed quickly, one after another. I got from Pennsylvania to Santa Fe in two days, faster than my wildest dreams.
Assurance and guidance are also intentions to hold in prayer. When I’m honest with myself, I know that I don’t have my life and work all in hand. I need help from family, neighbors, and Friends to survive and do the work I love. I rely on the inwardly present Christ for assurance of God’s help and love. There’s also inward guidance that helps me make good decisions. In prayer, I often raise up my current challenges and pending decisions, then wait for spiritual help. Assurance and guidance are available to me every minute. I try to practice that awareness by opening my heart to surety and inward counsel.
Beyond these practices of personal prayer that I’ve described so far, in recent years I have also looked outward to learn new approaches to prayer.
In early 2020, my Friend Ruth invited me to join a contemplative Bible group. We don’t study so much as reflect on passages. We begin each session by praying together, then one person reads a gospel selection aloud. Each of us shares a word or phrase that has come into our heart from the reading. No comment is invited or needed from others. Then someone reads the passage again, and we discuss what puzzles, amuses, or intrigues us. After a third reading, we listen for any invitations for our lives that might have come to individuals, again without comment.
The priest who started this Bible group directed me toward a handbook on Lectio Divina, the time-honored discipline of spiritual reading from which our Bible group sprang. That handbook taught me a practice that monks call “the Word of the day.” In this practice, an individual engages with a single word or phrase from scripture each day. I use this practice several times a week, based on a Word of the day that I find in the Bible, or another writing.
I remember my calm, loving, wry Grandma. She lived in the house next door to my childhood home and kept a New English Bible on the arm of her regular armchair. I hope to learn from the Word of the day to be as gentle and caring as she was with all of us.
On occasion, I practice a method of praying through scripture that I learned in a Quaker course on spiritual practices. I have learned that it originated with Ignatius of Loyola. Taking a Bible story that includes several characters or a crowd of people, I read the selection several times to know the pattern of events, I imaginatively live through the story, putting myself in the scene as one of the characters. This can yield surprising insight. I usually find myself taking the role of a minor character or a person in the crowd. That person’s attitude toward the actions of Jesus or other characters can help shed Light on what the story means to me.
I’m learning that the words of prayers don’t matter. Investing our time and directing our intention to meet the Divine are two elements that help prayer change things for us and our neighbors.
Jay Thatcher works teaching cycling skills and officiating sporting events. He is a member of the Western Friend Board of Directors and of Corvallis Friends Meeting (NPYM).