Have you ever been a in group or gathering and someone asks, "If you could only eat on food for the rest of your life, what would it be?" We kind of do that with prayer, we are taught when we are young some prayers and say them throughout our lives, or we try several different ones and find the 'one' that works. In my last church in our discipleship group, many of them said they practice popcorn prayers. When something or someone pops into their head, they pray. However, just like food, we need a diverse diet so sustain our prayer life, our relationship with God and others, and life itself.
Ann Lamott, an author wrote that simply saying "Thank You" and "Help Me" are enough. How many times could we say thank you each day? How many times a day DO we say thank you? How many times do we ask for help? In my first church, I posted on my office door a prayer from email, "Dear Lord, today I have not sinned, I have not needed help, I have not doubted or hated or cursed. But God I am going to get out of bed now and need you."
Jesus prayed throughout his ministry, often taking off early in the morning or sending the disciples ahead so that he might have uninterrupted time for prayer. This became so central to his ministry that his disciples asked him how to pray. There is a rich tradition of prayer in the Jewish faith, it wasn't that the disciples didn't know or didn't pray themselves. It is also interesting that they didn't ask what to pray, but how to pray. Though we have the Lord's Prayer, it isn't the only thing Jesus says about prayer. "Just pray this prayer and all will be well." After the prayer, Jesus goes on to share about being persistent, being direct, and trusting God will give us what we need.
Marjorie Thompson in Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life tells us prayer is communication: Listening, Speaking, Intercession, and Trust/Surrender. Prayer is also communion: Contemplative Prayer is gazing toward One who loves us unshakably, absorbing in loving God with our whole being; Prayer of the Heart, and Centering Prayer.
There are as many ways to pray as there are ways to play music, cook food, and dance, and yes, dance can be a prayer.
Let's start with the name of God as a prayer: Inhale to speak Yah... Exhale to breathe Weh... Should have very little movement of lips and tongue, just simple act of breathing. Focusing on our breath, the ruach of God, feeling it fill our lives, bringing us life-giving oxygen and expelling CO2 which feeds the plants and trees around us.
Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer is a prayer that is used often by those who are working through recovery:
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.Maybe your family has a particular prayer that is said before meals, when you lay down at night. The could almost be a mantra. Which is a prayer that is said over and over again to raise our spirit to a higher level of consciousness. One that I have used over the years is the Jesus Prayer from the Orthodox side of our faith:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.
Of all the ways to pray, silence is the best prayer, to listen, to be. I often get Contemplation and Meditation confused, which one is to just be and not think and one is to focus on some idea and await inspiration. There are many ways to do these as well. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, who tried to escape the world by entering the monastery found that his contemplation drove him to engage the world and in the injustices by realizing, "True contemplation opens our hearts to the pain of the world"
For those who can't sit still and like to have busy hands, St. Ignatius - found ways to pray through the tasks of the day, even washing dishes can be a prayer.
Because God created us to be diverse and with different gifts and talents, we all find different ways in which to pray that work better for us than others. However, just relying on one or two ways to pray is like, again, relying on one or two foods to sustain us. To pray always in all ways is to develop different ways in which we come to God, just like we use different ways to connect with family and friends, to show our love, appreciation, care, and ask for help. This isn't a shaming or commandment, it is an invitation to grow as a Christian, as a human, and as a child of God.
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