How did you learn to pray? My mother taught me. Every night, before bed, we knelt down and said 'thank yous', 'sorrys' and then there was 'please bless...Mummy, Daddy, Nana, Taid, Auntie so and so, Uncle thingumy...' It could go on for quite while.
That's not so different from a lot of adult prayer. Some of us go in for sincere, conscientious lists of people and concerns we are committed to. Others go in for the dutiful, disciplined offering of set forms of prayer that mark out the times of day and the seasons. Still others regale the Almighty with desires, believing that if we have enough faith, these desires will somehow become consonant with God's and will therefore 'come to pass' as the scriptures put it. Most of us include genuine expressions of gratitude and regret as we go along the way but a very big chunk of much prayer is either intercessory or liturgical, the former expressing desire and the latter involving the recitation of the words of scripture or a denominational text. When words fail us we have recourse to 'your will be done'. A particular dislike of mine is the pastoral conversation that is directed into prayer when things get a bit tricky; I'm suspicious that there's an unacknowledged agenda or that it's a device for exerting covert pressure to conform.
Recently re-reading a biography of Jung, I was struck by a passage in which he describes overhearing his father (a minister) praying. 'I saw how hopelessly he was entrapped by the church and its theological thinking' (p.20, Jung: A Biography, Gerhard Wehr, 2001). This gave me pause for thought. So much prayer is constrained either by our own semi-acknowledged desires and horizons or by what church tradition has told us it is acceptable to think, feel and say. Much Christian prayer seems to miss out on the truly radical aspect of relationship with the Divine which is listening - listening to ourselves to discover the truth about our innermost motives and our habitual behaviours, listening for the stirring of that which is of God within us, within others and within the political and natural events around us. This takes time, discipline, repetition and a persistent commitment to an openness of attitude that lays aside dogma and systematisation.
There are many books about this kind of listening (often called contemplation). It's an inward journey, but also a journey shaped by and seen in outward influences. Here are some questions that might prompt us to review how deeply we listen. The more profoundly we listen in everyday life, the more we increase our capacity to listen to God and vice versa.
- Who have you really listened to today?
- Who has really listened to you and how did you know?
- How often do you find yourself anticipating what's going to be said or thinking about your reply before the speaker finishes?
- When did you last hear something that changed you?
- When did you last stop to listen to something in the natural world?
- What was communicated in the last memo you read?
- How many repetitions does it take you to pick up a short tune?
- Do you often forget or mis-hear simple instructions?
- When did you last hear something truly unexpected?
- Who never listens to you?
- Who do you tend not to listen to?
- When did you last sit in silence for 10 minutes...half an hour...an hour?
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