Prayer: The Language of Spiritual Desire

Two-hundred thousand years ago, a certain father got up from his fur-lined bed in a cave in Great Britain to relieve himself. As he stepped out from the cave, his eyes were drawn heavenward.

He gasped at the dark sky, studded with small twinkling lights that seemed to hang from a string from the beyond. While he had seen this many times, tonight he sensed something more was there. Maybe he was feeling desperately alone when he whispered to whatever power it was a prayer for help and protection for his family in his wild and dangerous world.

Ever since, our species have looked up into the heavens to ask for help, for protection, for guidance, and for companionship from this unseen power. Ever since, we began to pray.

It was the first week of first grade in a small Catholic school in Iowa. I was smaller than most in my class, so I was assigned a front row seat in the classroom. I was told by my older sisters and mother that I would learn to read when I entered the first grade, but when I got home after that first day, I complained to my mom, “They didn’t teach me to read, and you said they would!” She said “give them a little more time, Bobby. They will.”

Each day I looked up at short phrases posted with elaborate borders above the blackboard. One of them spelled “Know your Prayers”. I struggled for days with the first word.  I thought it may be “Canoe”, but that didn’t make sense. I finally asked my classmate what it that word was.

That year I memorized several short standard catholic prayers and recited them daily at school. I remember at lent my dad gathering the kids in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary in our home to say the rosary. I understood prayer as saying a prescribed set of words out loud or quietly to yourself.

Many years later, having left the Church and then slamming into a self-imposed life crisis, I took another look at prayer; what prayer is, is it necessary, and does it even work?

It was desperation that led me to a closer investigation of the practice of prayer. Like my imagined caveman, I was in over my head with life, using alcohol to cope until it became the problem I sought to answer. My sense of alienation and helplessness multiplied. I had to find the answer. Like the fifteenth century Italian poet Dante, I had come to the middle of my life and found myself lost in a dark forest.

I stumbled into recovery rooms, where of all places I discovered that my answer would be found in developing a living and vibrant relationship with God that I could rely on to help me with all my problems—and a willingness to try prayer again would be the key Like Dante who had Virgil as his guide, I also needed at first a human guide, a sponsor, to lead me through a path where later I would have an encounter with a loving and personal God.

In The Big Book of Alcoholics anonymous, the author writes “The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.”

What sustains this central fact throughout our lives is Prayer.

Learning what prayer is and making it a central life practice is the vehicle for an ongoing relationship with God.

Recovery showed me prayer is important not because it is the right thing to do, but because it works. Prayer may not change my situation, but it always changes my perception, and that is where my problems always lies.

C.S. Lewis famously said “Prayer does not so much change God as it changes us”.

Prayer is the heart and hub of my soul from which the life of God is directed into all other aspects of my life.

Through prayer I experience being home with God.

It is through prayer that I enter the stream of grace that carries me through my days.

Prayer joins me in some mystical way with all mankind, and with all of creation.

Prayer gives me my only chance at wholeness. Without it, I am a mere stickman groping around, trying to find my way. I am that shallow-mind that sees the world in the dark and narrow lens of how everything affects me.

Prayer – the life of divine relationship

Thinking of prayer in the context of relationship has revolutionized my prayer. Instead of my childish days of reciting rote prayers without thought–what Jesus called “babbling”, I now think in terms of the various degrees in the quality of  human relationships; Acquaintances, a stern boss, an indifferent parent, a loving and caring parent, spouse or significant other, close friend.

With each of these levels of relationship, there is a corresponding level of communication. The characteristics of human relationship building correlate with relationship building with God. Prayer is the mode of communication in the divine relationship.

How does one pray?

I heard once that there is only two things to know about developing a life of prayer. Those two things did not include methods or modes of prayer. They are two simple concepts that anyone at any level of education and age could do:  Start, and don’t stop!

These are simple but not easy. There are some things that will help both start and continue in building a life of prayer.

The interior disposition necessary for prayer

There are a few critical dispositions necessary for prayer to become an effective means of growing and developing my relationship with God.

• Desire
  

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Without a deep inner desire to be in close relationship with God, I will never develop the necessary discipline to build a life of prayer. Desire for more has always been underneath my dissatisfaction in life. That desire has been converted to a desire for more love, peace, contentment, joy—in a word, more of God. Desire is the flip side of desperation. Once I move beyond desperation, the danger is that complacency and self-satisfaction will lull me back where I was. Desire is the child of a humble and contrite heart, and it is only desire that brings me to the sacred mountain of grace through the simple, childlike practice of prayer.

• Believe you will be heard
  

Many people have left their spiritual path because of what they believed were unanswered prayers. I have learned that If I am going to persevere on the path of spiritual living, I must believe first of all in a good God who will always listen and be quick to answer me.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! MA 7:7-10

It just may not be the answer I was looking for. Or the answer may be “not yet”.  When my prayer shifts from “Not Your will, but mine be done”, to “Not My will, but yours”, then I have placed myself in Gods divine stream, and I will never be abandoned regardless of external circumstances. 

• A humble and placid heart
  

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not turn away from. Ps 51

Prayer seems to erupt within me when I am in most need-when I am anxious, when I am angry, or when I am sullen or disappointed. What I need is to see how needful I am even when I don’t feel needful—when I am feeling strong and well. To live a spiritual life based on “Foxhole” praying is to miss the wonderful adventure that awaits me every day as I go out and partner with God, entering the stream that is his.

A humble and placid heart is one that wakes up and gives up their agenda and their plans to the one who directs all of creation.

I rise before dawn and cry for help. My eyes watch through the night to ponder your promise. (Ps 119)

Maybe my schedule is already laid out for me, but how I approach each task, i.e. with care and love or with impatience and haste, is all a matter of how the hub of prayer radiates out into my activities.

• Interior stillness
  

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Ma 6:6-8

When I pray, I close the exterior door of my office, even if I am alone. By that simple act stillness is transferred into my soul. I also seek to close the door of my mind and heart to the frantic or just plain tiresome and busy thoughts that continue swirling in my brain. I consciously still my inner house. Sometimes that takes time. Paying attention to my breath helps. Lighting and gazing at a candle helps, as does using a meaningful word to repeat every so often helps, like “Love” or “Peace”.

The Role of Spiritual Discipline in building a prayer life

  If we don’t have trouble starting, which many of us do, we will have trouble continuing, which practically all of us do.

This brings up the nasty word “DISCIPLINE”. When I was a child, I didn’t like that word. It was associated with the corporal punishment in schools that was acceptable at the time.

But, in its more classical meaning, discipline is what is required to gain skills in an area you are interested in – music, art, writing, athletics, craftsmanship.

A classic definition for discipline is “To follow another’s path until it becomes your own”.

In medieval times, prayer was considered a skill that required a spiritual guide or director, and much practice. Finding a set time and place was the beginning of building a life nurtured by prayer.

Jesus is a perfect guide in how to develop a life of prayer:

• He had a desire to be in communication with his Father
• He went off alone often to “lonely” places to pray
• He prayed before decisions large and small.
• He prayed as he went about his day.
• He prayed publicly, privately, vocally, and silently

I have learned that I cannot pray all the time everywhere if I am not praying some time somewhere. I choose a quiet time in my day—early mornings and late afternoons are best for me. This time is like a regular appointment with a friend, where we chat heart to heart.

I have a small area in my home dedicated to prayer. A small table sits in a corner with a cloth, a candle, several prayer and meditation books, and icons on the wall above.

I start be inviting God in, though I know he has not gone anywhere. I relax, pay attention to my breathing, and read slowly with intention something from a spiritual book. At a certain point in my reading I will stop and reflect on a specific concept or idea. If challenged by something, I may ask for help. Otherwise I thank God and settle down in silence for a few minutes.

Day in, Day out, Day in, and Day out.

I occasionally miss some mornings and evenings. But the commitment I have made to myself for over twenty years is that no more than two days would ever go by without keeping my appointment. I choose not to quit. That alone has made all the difference in my life.

Fruit of a prayer life

There are several immediate benefits to those times of prayer when you intentionally slow down, relax, focus on your breath, and open yourself to the spiritual dimension of life. You will experience some physical benefits, such as lowered blood pressure, a release of muscle tension.

But the greater benefits of a regular practice of prayer come to us over time, spilling out into our daily lives and changing us so slowly we may not notice until someone else does.

Those who have practiced regular prayer and meditation report the following benefits over time as their practice unfolds;

• • An increased awareness of Intuition/guidance
  • An abiding sense of peace and contentment in their state of life
  • A greater capacity for empathy & tolerance of others-especially of those who do not ‘look’ like them.
  • The boundaries of “The Other” are broken through and a realization that we are all one will come.
  • A greater sense of confidence not in self, but in God. A confidence that tells us we are not alone in anything, and that we will be cared for and given what we need to walk through difficulties
    • “But blessed are those who trust in God. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:8
  • This confidence brings to us a new strength, courage, and perseverance
  • We become more patient through suffering and troubles
  • There comes an inner joy that is not related to our outward circumstances but arises within us from the security we have in our relationship with God, and with is love.
  • Generosity towards others—no longer ultra-concerned with our survival and protection from loss, our gaze goes outward towards others.
  • A certain lightness and an increased sense of humor in life- we learn to wear life as a loose cloak over our shoulders.

The spiritual world is like a fourth dimension. It is this dimension that if one is connected to it through faith and through prayer, transforms the physical world we move in, exploding it with remarkable and unthinkable possibilities.

I know today I have little power to change myself, no matter how hard I try. I cannot get rid of those things I don’t like about myself or hold me back from being helpful to others.

But the desire to change is the beginning of prayer, and it is through prayer that over time transformation happens.

If one chooses to start to develop a life of prayer, and chooses to never stop, they will discover that there is no end on this side of eternity to how close you can cleave to God, and how different you will experience life from year to year.

A few years back I climbed MT. Adams in Washington State with my high school buddy.

We were camped out at 9500 ft, sleeping under the stars. Like the caveman hundreds of thousands of years ago, my gaze fixed upon the midnight sky with its luminous stars, large and small, white, red, and yellow.

But my heart went beyond what I could visibly see to what I could not see, yet somehow knew. The wisdom that holds those stars in place also lives within me, holding my life in its place.

A habit of prayer has shown me this.

Kind Regards,

Bob