On Prayer
“It is very important to for us to realize
that we do not know how to pray.
If we think of prayer as something that we can
—or worse, that we should—
master and become proficient at,
we are in danger of seriously
falsifying our relationship with God.”
Simon Tugwell
Prayer is something you do.
Prayer is not something you do but something you allow to be done to and through you.
Prayer is a conversation with God.
Prayer is time spent walking with Jesus.
Prayer is opening yourself to Holy Spirit.
Prayer is speaking.
Prayer is not speaking but listening.
Prayer requires many words.
Prayer requires no words at all.
Prayer is the action of communicating your will and faith and needs and fears to God.
Prayer is resting in the Spirit, like an infant resting in its mother’s arms.
Prayer is opening scripture to better allow God to speak through His word straight to your heart.
Prayer is a series of shared traditions and words that allow us to speak with one voice to God.
Prayer is time in the Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the cross, at the tomb on Saturday, mourning with the Lord in sorrowful silence.
Prayer is… prayer is… prayer is…
None of these sentences is wrong, and yet none of them will quite do. Perhaps together, they allow us to find the contours of this mysterious thing called prayer, or perhaps they just cloud what should really be a very simple issue. In the end, writing and talking about prayer is like sculpting in Jell-O. It’s always getting away from you, sliding just over there out of sight, refusing to take the shape you want.
And that’s when you know you’re on to something. When something is both too simple and too complicated, too large and too small, too personal and too public, we may have stumbled onto the divine. God is all in all, and to name and number and quantify and describe Him lays far beyond the capacity of tongue or pen. Why then should our communication with Him be any less ineffable?
Prayer is an action. Even in contemplation, in which we are passive, we act by not acting. It requires an act of will to allow yourself to be acted upon, to merely rest in the spirit.
And so we can properly say: Prayer is something you do. There are as many ways to pray as there are people praying. Just as each person is a unique and precious child of God, so are the ways of communicating with Him unique and, its way, precious.