Lord, Teach Me to Pray

In this season of Easter, here are some thoughts on prayer for you to consider.

Very Rev. Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco notes that it has been said that there are only two prayers: Help, and Thank You.  The rest are footnotes.  However, he expands on this by saying  he was told in Sunday school that there are five elements of prayer: Adoration, Praise, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.  Adoration and Thanksgiving are primary.  They place us in the relationship with God and with all things. 

Ann and Barry Ulanov declare that prayer is Primary Speech (the title of their book on prayer), “To pray is to listen to hear this self (who and what we are) who is speaking. This speech is primary because it is basic and fundamental, our ground.  In prayer we say who we are.”  

From writer Anne Lamott after her conversion to Christianity:

Prayer … begins with stopping in our tracks, or with our backs against the wall, or when we are going under the waves, or when we are just so sick and tired of being physically sick and tired that we surrender, or at least we finally stop running away and at long last walk or lurch or crawl toward something. Or maybe, miraculously, we just release our grip slightly.  

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape….  

I also practice Centering Prayer which is wordless – emptying of the self to help me listen to God and help me realize it is a two-way conversation.  The emptying often is less than quiet as my “monkey brain” (with apologies to monkeys) does not like the sound of silence – at least on my end of the conversation.

In any case God does not grade your prayer – the important thing is to pray as you are able.   May your prayers be blessed on your journey.