Teach Me To Pray

As an Anglican, I have the consolation of many prayers which are prescribed in our prayer books and elsewhere.  I find this comforting as it is a challenge for me to pray extemporaneously.  However, it is also restrictive as I am often not challenged to explore the possibilities of prayer that come from within as well as other places.  In this, I can relate to the disciples who asked, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”  This raises an interesting question about how John taught his disciples as was raised recently, however, that is a question for another time.  

The question I want to explore is how we pray?  Jesus provided us the well-known answer in what is known as the Lord’s prayer which is undoubtedly the best-known prayer―at least in the Christian world.  Even this is presented to us in different forms and languages which we can draw on and learn from.  I recently drew on the form from the New Zealand church which I find resonates with me.  That gives some hints at how we can learn to pray.  What speaks to you and gives you words that resonate with you at a deep level.  It also tells us that we need to have experience of prayer in many different forms to receive more possibilities of how we can pray. 

I recently listened to the program On Being on National Public Radio which had an interview with Elie Wiesel https://onbeing.org/programs/evil-forgiveness-prayer-elie-wiesel-2/#transcript.  This was a rebroadcast from  a program on the occasion of Wiesel’s death in 2016.  Wiesel was a holocaust survivor and renowned author.  In the interview, he prayed a prayer that was from his book One Generation After:

I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware and worthy of Your listening. I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You. I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.

As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers, but not Your countenance.

They are modest, my prayers, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land. I ask You, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too. I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only implore You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.

There is so much of Elie Wiesel and of God packed into that prayer that you could spend many days or weeks or a life time exploring.  That is truly what prayer is about―to explore your relationship with God and with life and with yourself.

Blessings on you journey.