Thursday, October 05, 2006

I have been thinking a lot about the concept of prayer lately, partially because in my own life I have run up against the realization that God is not The Great Wish Granter in the sky. I knew this, of course, on an intellectual level, but to sincerely pray for things and not have them come to pass makes it necessary for me to re-examine my understanding of prayer and my image of God. I am reminded of the line from the movie Shadowlands, where C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) says to his friend, "I do not pray because it changes God; I pray because it changes me. I pray because the need flows out of me constantly." And so I have to ask myself in what ways my prayer changes me.

If I was asked what prayer is, I would respond that prayer is my relationship with God. Prayer is my way of being with God, sometimes spilling out what is in my heart, sometimes listening, sometimes just sitting in silence. Like any relationship, there are times when I feel very connected to God and in sync with God, and there are times when I feel a disconnect between God and myself. Teresa of Avila, a great mystic who tells of experiencing three years of dryness or disconnectedness in her relationship with God, says that in the midst of that dryness one should never stop praying, never cut off the relationship altogether. I have tried to hold true to that advice, praying even when I feel lost and alone, even when I wonder if God is really listening.

Prayer is also about my relationships with other people, about our interconnectedness with one another. Prayer is my solidarity with others in their joys and sufferings, sharing that solidarity with God who is in solidarity with us. As I imagine is true for many people, I generally do want God to "fix things" for me and for those I care about. That doesn't always happen. Returning to prayer as a way of "being with" God and others, I place those I care for in the presence of God. I pray that they feel the love and support and peace of God's presence in their lives. Sometimes I pray for those who cannot pray for themselves, either because they don't believe in God or because they are too angry with God, etc., placing them in the presence of God so that they may somehow experience God's presence through my experience of God's presence. They may not call what they experience "God," but I do believe that they may experience the love, peace, joy, etc., that is what I understand to be God.

In his book of prayers, Encounters with Silence, Karl Rahner writes about experiencing God's silence in prayer. He says,
Isn't Your Silence a sure sign that You're not listening? Or do You really
listen quite attentively, do You perhaps listen my whole life long, until I have
told You everything, until I have spoken out my entire self to You? Do You
remain so silent precisely because You are waiting until I am really finished,
so that You can then speak Your word to me, the word of Your eternity?

Rahner says prayer is giving oneself to God. He says that running from prayer is often running from oneself, from one's own superficiality. And still God patiently waits. Ultimately he says that it is God who opens that deepest part of ourselves to us, the place within us where we encounter God, and so all of our daily prayer is a preparation and a waiting for that moment when we find God at the center of our hearts. Prayer does not change God; it changes me.

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