Prayer

Some of you who read this blog will know that prayer is for me, my life's food. I spent 30 years in a contemplative order and continue to pray each day because I believe not only in my own need to pray but in its  power and gift. But I know that for many (most?) people prayer is difficult. Is this because we see prayer mostly as asking for things and when there seems to be no answer, we lose interest? Or is it because we don't have time? I know there can be lots of reasons but let me share a few thoughts anyway.

For those who do sometimes pray, there can be a real ambivalence, indeed conflict, about prayer and its companion, silence. Maybe this is partly because we feel a bit lost about what we should be doing or how we should be praying. Also, since we don't seem to get much feedback in prayer, we notice that there are plenty of other things to distract us and keep us from focusing too much on something as insubstantial as prayer seems to be.

I found this quote from Sister Wendy Beckett's book on prayer.* She says:

The astonishing thing about prayer is our inability to accept that if we have need of it, as we do, then because of God's goodness, it cannot be something that is difficult. Accept that God is good and that your relationship with God is prayer, and you must conclude that prayer is an act of the utmost simplicity. Yet so many people seem to feel that there is some mysterious method, some way in that others know, but they do not. 'Knock and it shall be opened to you': they seem to believe that it needs some sort of Masonic knock and their own humble tapping will go unnoticed. What kind of God thinks of tricks, lays down arcane rules, makes things difficult? God wants to love us ...God wants to draw us close, strengthen us and infuse peace. The humblest, most modest, almost imperceptible rubbing of our fingers on the door and it flies open...Prayer is the last thing we should feel discouraged about.

On the Way

 I know for myself that I spent years keeping busy, watching TV, filling my life with noise and distractions of one sort or another to keep from facing what, deep within, I knew I needed to do. Be quieter. Be less self-absorbed . Pray. What I believe God did was first of all to send into my life, people who could point the way; people who knew far better than me, the way to find God. Eventually and happily I had the courage to begin to try to pray and I found I did not need to be afraid because God who is love, asks and more to the point, gives, only what is for my good and the good of others. 

How did I know what God was asking? Mostly, what is asked is right before me each moment of each day. The daily living out of ordinary life. The daily contact with others who challenge and support you. The difference is, I think, that there in God is a context which gives meaning and purpose and a goal; the growth of love. That of course, is a life-time's work. 

Next week I would like to try to say a little more about prayer and about the silence that I think helps us toward well-being and joy.

* Sister Wendy Beckett: Sister Wendy on Prayer, Continuum, London, 2006