The majority of Americans report praying daily. It is something however we rarely discuss. (Americans tend to be profoundly spiritual AND profoundly private about it.)
In the future, we will be doing a small group program around prayer and/ or a one day workshop on prayer. Prayer is a discipline – a part of the “work” that centers us in a spiritual life.
A part of growth is the shift from seeing prayer as something that we do, to seeing prayer as something that is done to us. Prayer, from a New Church perspective, is as Emanuel Swedenborg noted “Conversation with God.” It is conversation in which God’s response is often hope or comfort.
Prayer is not, as one author noted, an “intelligence briefing to God” though that is where we often start. There is nothing wrong with this approach but it is only a start on the spiritual path. At some time we must shift – moving away from one-way monologue in which we “report” our lives and requests to God to a movement towards a space in which we are quiet enough to “hear” God in the language that God speaks.
That takes discipline. For me, such an approach works best when I arrive at prayer with a simple request to “know nothing.” That seems to be a far healthier space for an obnoxious “doer” like myself. From that space, at times, I can breath into a presence of God in which I think He can speak – not a speech of “today’s winning lottery number will be …” but a speech that includes words that settle deeply into my soul. This past week for example that included ‘humanity’ and ‘What opens people to faith.’ The difference, restated, would be praying before a worship, early on a Sunday morning, “Lord help me to communicate ‘x’” vs. “Lord, what would you have me say today?”
Believe it or not, one prayer I find particularly effective – “Lord, take it all. Leave me nothing but clear window.”
From there, prayer can happen to us – shining right on in.