Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire
March 2, 2008
“Looking At Prayer With Fresh Eyes”
Rev. Kathy Duhon
I have a political cartoon from a few years ago, at a time when one of the burning “values” questions for some voters was school prayer. In the picture, a woman wearing a Christian Coalition button is in her small front yard, down on her knees, although she is not in prayer. She is painting a sign, planted by the sidewalk, which says “Government Sponsored Prayer Now!” A minister in baggy pants has ambled up to her and quotes: “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites – they love to say their prayers where everyone can see them, and they have their reward. – But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door, and pray … in secret…”
She looks up, annoyed, and asks, “Oh, yeah? And what counter-culture anti-family secular humanist said that?”
The minister answers, “Just guess….”
This is a teaching of Jesus, of course, whom she purports to follow.
Prayer is a mystery and a difficulty, even to those who believe in it and try to pray. And so much can be called prayer – vocal, written, worship, song, chant, meditations, and more, but today we will only look at the kind of prayer that happens when you go into a room by yourself and pray in secret, in private, in the interior of your own mind.
Prayer is communication, and involves language, and is often beyond language. Two types of language exist for humanity, since our dawning. We have the language in which everyday and rational discourse takes place – ordinary, literal, or “steno” language[*] – and we have the language of poetry, song, ritual and religion – expressive, metaphorical or depth language. In the second form of language, we don’t try to say exactly what we mean – we try to plumb deep meaning with the words that we say.
Prayer that is internal does not involve the literal language of daily life, so right away we are in rarified conditions. Prayer is called “primary speech” by Ann and Barry Ulanov. They write, “It is that primordial discourse in which we assert, however clumsily or eloquently, our own being. If we are ever honest with ourselves, it is here that we must be, though we are often not sure about who it is that we are talking to or how well we are talking or that we are even talking.”
Prayer as internal, as honest, as asserting our own being, as using the expressive language of depth – this sounds different from what we usually think about prayer, as a conversation with God, often one in which God is being asked for something. Put that common conception aside for a bit, and we will look at prayer with fresh eyes.
Begin with the idea that you do this in private, away from others. This prayer is an internal communication, sometimes professedly with God, sometimes with the universe or the interdependent web of all existence, sometimes with no known target at all, but always with ourselves. Congressman John Lewis wrote this about prayer, “On the one hand prayer to me is an attempt to communicate with a power, with a force, with a being much greater than I am. On the other hand it is a period of simply having an executive session with yourself. It’s a period of being alone, a period of meditation, a period of quiet and just being you.”
We are always doing some form of internal communication. Usually it is mundane – planning ahead, reliving the past, finishing a long-over-with conversation in a much more clever way. Internally, we communicate to ourselves our worry, our stress, our pleasure, our thrills, our fears, our hopes, our disappointments, our thoughts, our embarrassment, our selfishness, our sadness, our joy. Sometimes this internal communication is not in word form, but is still understood and felt – we clench the fists while waiting in line, tense the shoulders when feeling anxious, overflow with tears when feeling down. Sometimes we are meaner to ourselves than we would ever be to someone else out-loud – berating the most recent stupidity in our lives, blaming, judging, clobbering the self within.
So, given all this internal chatter and flowing communication, how does prayer enter? And why? Starting with why: it’s clear that we are often mired in negative internal communication or too much chatter and then we are therefore not fully present to experience this life. Then we are not centered. Then our lives are more at war than at peace. Prayer is a different form of internal communication, one with aims other than chatter and self-reproach. Prayer can lead to a more centered, peaceful life of presence.
One of our ministers, Rob Eller-Isaacs, has said, “I don’t really know whether prayer makes things happen. But have no doubt, prayer makes love flow.” How does prayer enter? When we bring love for ourselves and our world into our inner communication, that is prayer. In a description of a healing prayer that Barbara Carlson, another of our ministers, said with a family in the hospital, Barbara wrote, “Down on my knees with the family, I had not known if the healing would be into life or into death. I only knew that whatever the outcome, love was the prayer.”
Prayer love has many forms of expression. Caring and concern, healing and hope can be love prayers. It is also loving to be honest with oneself, no matter how painful. Love can certainly be present in anger. In a Hasidic tale, the Rabbi yells at God that if God would forgive him for his failings, then he would forgive God for all the misery and hard times. I won’t untangle the theology in that, but the anger and betrayal that the Rabbi feels and expresses in his prayer is bound up in his deep love for God, for being itself, for life.
Sometimes love is not what we are quite ready for in our deepest internal communications, so how else does prayer enter? Prayer is seeking, reaching out for meaning or understanding; prayer is a journey of the heart. We are seeking guidance, strength, calmness, patience, belonging, hope. We are all longing for peace. Prayer is the internal communication that helps aim our lives in new and better directions.
Sometimes prayer is neither seeking nor love. Another way prayer enters our internal communication is as a passionate response to our world that wells up from within. Perhaps gratitude, awe, praise, blessing, heartbreak, joy. We can hardly contain the response when it comes pouring out of us, but we can block it from ever surfacing with too much other chatter and negativity. Sometimes we need to have a deliberate response to the world that helps us to trigger the other, more natural response. We can build in times that we remember to be grateful into particular times of the day, and then gratitude wells up at other times more easily. As Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever say is “Thank you,” it is enough.”
Prayer enters into our inner communication in the forms of love, seeking, and passionate response, and helps us to be more centered and peaceful, but surely this is not the whole story? This is not what all the hullabaloo is about. What about the power, the efficacy of prayer? This inner communication, besides being with ourselves, which we’ve concentrated on thus far, is also believed by many to be capable of a great reach, an extension beyond the interior of our mind.
Occasionally, I’ve read some really exciting scientific studies of prayer and its effect on healing, for example, and the findings have been positive for the power of prayer. But I have not done a thorough analysis of such literature and cannot tell you if prayer has healing power, at least in terms of scientific study. Nor do we know the relationship of cause and effect – perhaps secondary causes are in play – folks feel more up when prayed for and that good feeling may be what helps them heal. Also, prayer is not believed to be a one to one, deposit/withdrawal experience – deposit a prayer and get a healing, or an answer. Yet, many believe that prayer has positive power beyond the self.
What if prayer is a way of tapping into a larger energy, a positive force for good, that exists in the world? What if we have greater capacity for positive energy ourselves than is normally true, but that is possible when we activate it through our inner communication? With biofeedback, scientists have found that people can control their own blood pressure and heartbeat when they give themselves inner messages to that effect. Long ago, I found that if I said to myself, (worriedly), “I will forget my purse”, then I would; whereas, if I said to myself, “I will remember to take this with me” or “I will find joy in this time” or “I will make a change in my life”, that the miracles of remembering, joy or change happened. Maybe I was just more pointed in the right directions. Our minds are so much more powerful than we ever suppose.
Can our minds be joined with other forces beyond us? The interdependent web of all existence is certainly connected in mysterious and powerful ways that we don’t begin to fully understand. I don’t know if when we pray, we can activate strength and power beyond our capacity, but I have heard and seen and felt things happen such that this seems to be true, at least to me. Perhaps it is all explained by enhanced internal power, but force, power does seem to increase for the good in prayer.
I will finish with the words of Jacob Trapp concerning the paradox of prayer. “For the power whom we address in prayer is not a Somebody outside, but the very Power of Being by which we live, closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet. And in that Immanence the paradox is overcome . . . .” Amen.