Prayer is one important way in which we deepen and strengthen our relationship with the Sacred.
While Interim at a previous congregation, I asked everyone during an adult education about prayer, what they learned about prayer in their childhood. It was quite interesting to hear the answers. Many learned very specific prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer, bedtime prayers, dinner grace, the rosary and creeds. They learned how to ask God for what they wanted. It was like prayer was prescribed magical words that God heard and answered. How did they know God answered? Because what they asked for was given to them. God’s answers were experienced as immediate, positive, determined by each of them.
As I pondered this in my own life, I am aware that I learned how to pray with my head as a child. Prayers were memorized. Prayers came from my worries/anxieties (in my head), my wants and desires (head-oriented again), and what I thought I should ask for as a ‘good Christian.’
When I asked how prayer changed as adults, I received a very different answer. Prayer is our way of communicating with the Divine: expressing our feelings freely; offering gratitude and thankfulness; sharing our fears; opening ourselves to God’s transformative Love and Grace; listening to God’s voice, presence. Prayer is as much a way of communicating with God as it is a way of being in this world. Prayer is intentional loving actions for those around us. Prayer brings us to a One-ness with the Sacred where there is no differentiation between me and the Sacred; where prayer is embodied fully.
How did we make this shift from magical words to embodied One-ness? For some it was through life experiences, through experimentation and questioning. For others it was through books, spiritual mentors, retreats. What I noticed was missing was the Church being a catalyst for this transform of what prayer is in our lives!
This is my experience as well. Church did not teach me to shift how I experienced and understood prayer from childhood petitions and prescribed prayers to embodied feeling prayers. In many ways, this struggle to truly meet God in prayer took me away from the Church for many years. I explored a variety of spiritual traditions from Buddhism to Shamanism. I sought out the contemplative tradition, learning how to listen and feel the movement of Spirit. Once I began to experience Spirit’s full presence in my life, I found myself lacking interest in Christian churches. When I would attend worship, there was something missing. It took me a while to realize that embodied transformational prayer was missing.
The one thing that connected me to Spirit in the moment was missing from worship and faith formation. I remember the moment I talked about prayer with my first group of confirmands. None of them knew how to pray. None of them had any concept of what prayer was. The Church had failed them. They had no idea how to have a relationship with God.
The core goal of church (for me) is to educate and empower people to have a personal relationship with God. It is to offer opportunities to experience God in the present moment: through prayer/worship, as well as through prayer/justice-work. It is to mentor people and teach how we pray our life and live our prayer. It is to encourage and empower people to be conscious, honest, simple and merciful toward all people, creatures and the Earth.
How do we do this? How do we pray our life and live our prayer? How do we teach this way of being? We embody our prayer with Intention. We pray our feelings. We bring prayerful awareness to our words, to our thoughts, to our actions, to our lives. The more we enter into the fullness of the day through the perspective of prayer, the more we will experience Spirit’s presence, feel Spirit’s transformative Love, guidance, grace, mercy.
I invite you each morning when you wake to allow your first thought to be a prayer of gratitude to God for this new day. Then spend a few moments before you move noticing how this gratitude is experienced by God and transforms how you start your day.
May each day begin and end with the full presence of the Sacred embodied in you!
