Some of you know that a long time ago, since around 1981, I very suddenly began to get very serious about prayer. Over time prayer became so much the center of my life and ministry that some friends told me I was a mystic. Sometimes I saw myself that way, especially in times when I was paying deep attention to my spiritual life and was equally devoted to nurturing the spiritual lives of the people who called me "pastor." I also know, for an absolute fact, that when I stay close to God amazing things happen; sermons are birthed in a micro-second, answers are given before questions are asked, I show up in the nick of time and others arrive in my life before I knew I needed them.
Leading a church in the year 2011 and preparing at the same time to go on a sabbatical--to say nothing of spending as much time as possible with my wife, children and grandchildren--has lately made it extremely difficult to take time for prayer. (Exercise has also been short shifted recently.) However, one aspect of my sabbatical preparations has been to get to know more about Islam and to meet some real flesh and blood Muslims. There is a lot to learn and I still do not have anything like a significant friendship with a Muslim, but one thing that is impossible to miss in even casual encounters is that Muslims are people of prayer. Formal prayer. Disciplined prayer. Prayer grounded in their holy book and the life of their prophet. Frequent prayer. Prayer in community. Over and over I read and hear about the Muslim's commitment to pray five times a day, ritualized prayers memorized from the traditions of their faith.
I hardly ever pray prayers memorized from the traditions of my faith. I take scant advantage--or at least I have of late--of the rich resources of prayer in my Christian tradition. "Not good," I told myself a few weeks ago. I need to add something very significant to my practice of prayer. This is what happened.
I decided that I would decide on five prayers or scriptures that were especially meaningful to me at this time in my life. I would commit these five to memory and I would pray them all, in sequence, a couple of times a day. I did this and I am continuing to do it and it has been making all the difference in my connection to God and in my life. The five are: 1) The Jesus Prayer, ("Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, have mercy on me, a sinner.) 2) The Lord's Prayer, 3) The 23rd Psalm, 4) Isaiah 40:28-31, 5) John 3:16-17.
One great difficulty I have with prayer is that I get DISTRACTED, BIG TIME! I am one of those people who can listen to a lecture only if I am doodling. I would need something physical to help me to focus on my five prayers. Muslims help focus their prayers by bowing towards Mecca. I thought about bowing to our family homestead in the Catskill Mountains, but that smacked just a bit of idolatry. After a couple of experiments I settled on taking advantage of our church sanctuary which is definitely sacred space for me. I visualize five places in the sanctuary, one for each prayer. Four of the places are the corners and the fifth is the communion table at the front/center of the church. I don't know why it works, but focusing my attention on these places helps me to stay focused on each prayer. And when I am so focused and pray each prayer I feel the message of each prayer deeply, I experience the power of each prayer to draw me close to God and to change the way I am living my life.
I think it would be wise for anyone who wants to pray in a similar way to first pray for God's guidance in choosing the prayers and scriptures and I also think it would be wise to change the prayers and scriptures now and then according to the spiritual needs of one's life.
May your life of prayer be a blessing to you, giving you the grace and power to be a blessing to others.
Ken:
ReplyDeleteWish I had found your blog much earlier - I just saw your "teaser" on Facebook. But better late than never as they say...
"How to pray" has been an interesting topic for me as well. In Matt 6, Jesus teaches the disciples that there is no merit in the long, public prayers spoken by many in the synagoges and on the streets. He says instead that one should go in a quiet room and pray simply something like...
And in response, we have turned that simple prayer precisely into what Jesus seems to have been warning us to avoid - an utterance that we can perform by rote, while our mind wanders off on other things.
Matt 6:8 tells us that God doesn't need our prayers to know what we need - He already knows.
So why pray? I think it's because God wants us to spend a little time every once in a while thinking just of Him. Not reciting the same words over and over in a public display, and yet not really thinking about Him, but rather He wants a time when we give Him our undivided attention.
So does that mean I think the kind of praying you're doing has no merit? Certainly not!
I was listening to EWTN one morning, and heard a nun discussing the Rosary - the model of repeated, memorized, rote prayer. She said something that stuck with me: that for her, the Rosary was a chant that she used to clear her mind and shield her from the distractions of the world so she could devote the rest of her mind to focusing on God.
Very cool.
I wonder if the Islamic prayer ritual allows the same kind of thing to happen for them? I suspect that for some, it certainly does. Both most probably miss the point entirely, as do Jews and Christians who think it's the reciting of the rote prayer which makes the connection with God.
Knowing you, I suspect that this ritual you have developed will come to serve you as it did the nun. It will become a tool to shove all the nonsense and noise out of the way for a small time so you can focus on God...
... which is - I think - exactly what Jesus was trying to teach us to do.