cajolery
Some recent thoughts on prayer have had some affirmation in Richard Rohr's reflections. He says that all that is needed is surrender and gratitude. So much of our prayer is asking. "What is wrong with asking? Didn't Jesus teach us to ask?"
There is nothing wrong with asking. It is appropriate that we ask God to help when we need help. Dallas Willard saus that it is the nature of the kingdom to ask. It is a real part of real relationships to ask, and it is important to remain in the awareness that we are fundamentally dependent upon God for our existence.
Yet I need to reflect on how much of my asking is an exercise in cajolery. Is my asking merely a way that I try to get my way? There is not much surrender in that, though there may be some gratitude if things work out the way I want them to. We know that prayer doesn't work like a slot machine: put in your coin and wait for the jackpot. I think that is an easy posture to slouch into, though. Even if the asking is not necessarily self-centered, if praying is only about asking, it does not leave much space for listening so that we might surrender to the Voice.
I am always struck by the strangeness of prayers that seem to suggest God does not yet have the information, or prayers that seem to suggest that God won't care unless we let God know how urgent the situation is. I think our prayers should start with "God you know what is going on, and you care about this person infinitely more than we do...help us know what to do." Or end with "...empower us to do what we are unable and afraid to do." I don't think it is inappropriate to ask God to heal or to help in some way, but we need to ask in light of an awareness that God is already more present, concerned, and active than we can imagine.
Our inability to listen—prayer as silent, contemplative attentiveness—results in an inability to do anything other than talk. I wonder what might happen if churches really taught people that prayer is at least 50% listening. We were taught that prayer fit the formula: Adulation, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication (ACTS). There was no teaching that praying was about listening. It was all talking. We don't know how to be in quiet. We don't know how to listen in silence.
I have been practicing gratitude by contemplating people for whom I am thankful. I consider the beauty of creation and I am overwhelmed by gratitude. In this, I do not speak or even "speak in my head silently". I simply try to be overwhelmed or immersed in gratitude as a kind of prayer. This, I see, can be a path to listening prayer (we do have a hard time thinking of prayer as something other than talking—I have to attach "listening" to prayer to qualify it!).
Gratitude, I find, leads me to find surrender an easy thing to do. What remains is to listen... Only when we listen first can we keep prayer from devolving into cajolery.
There is nothing wrong with asking. It is appropriate that we ask God to help when we need help. Dallas Willard saus that it is the nature of the kingdom to ask. It is a real part of real relationships to ask, and it is important to remain in the awareness that we are fundamentally dependent upon God for our existence.
Yet I need to reflect on how much of my asking is an exercise in cajolery. Is my asking merely a way that I try to get my way? There is not much surrender in that, though there may be some gratitude if things work out the way I want them to. We know that prayer doesn't work like a slot machine: put in your coin and wait for the jackpot. I think that is an easy posture to slouch into, though. Even if the asking is not necessarily self-centered, if praying is only about asking, it does not leave much space for listening so that we might surrender to the Voice.
I am always struck by the strangeness of prayers that seem to suggest God does not yet have the information, or prayers that seem to suggest that God won't care unless we let God know how urgent the situation is. I think our prayers should start with "God you know what is going on, and you care about this person infinitely more than we do...help us know what to do." Or end with "...empower us to do what we are unable and afraid to do." I don't think it is inappropriate to ask God to heal or to help in some way, but we need to ask in light of an awareness that God is already more present, concerned, and active than we can imagine.
Our inability to listen—prayer as silent, contemplative attentiveness—results in an inability to do anything other than talk. I wonder what might happen if churches really taught people that prayer is at least 50% listening. We were taught that prayer fit the formula: Adulation, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication (ACTS). There was no teaching that praying was about listening. It was all talking. We don't know how to be in quiet. We don't know how to listen in silence.
I have been practicing gratitude by contemplating people for whom I am thankful. I consider the beauty of creation and I am overwhelmed by gratitude. In this, I do not speak or even "speak in my head silently". I simply try to be overwhelmed or immersed in gratitude as a kind of prayer. This, I see, can be a path to listening prayer (we do have a hard time thinking of prayer as something other than talking—I have to attach "listening" to prayer to qualify it!).
Gratitude, I find, leads me to find surrender an easy thing to do. What remains is to listen... Only when we listen first can we keep prayer from devolving into cajolery.
posted by joel at 2:16 PM
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