There are as many ways to pray as there are people. While it is true that we are very much alike, yet, the life that we each have within is unique. One reason that communication is so difficult is because ‘words’ have to be interrupted, so misunderstandings are easy, common and oftentimes painful. Many as they go through life simply give up trying to be heard and understood by others. Perhaps the trick is to seek to understand, rather than to be understood, as is stated in the prayer of St. Francis.
Prayer is about having a personal relationship with the transcendent. Prayer, I believe, is also a response to an invitation, for when we commune with God it is a response to grace. In the Christian faith, God is revealed as a God who longs for us, pursues us throughout our lives and took flesh to ‘tabernacle’ with us. For many this is hard to believe and I can understand that. In prayer, God slowly and patiently draws us ever deeper into the mystery of his tenderness and compassion for all living things, leading us slowly at our own pace, to also develop an ability to simply be with others, without the need to judge, hate and reject.
For me, Jesus Christ is fully human, who was not bound by fear and who did not fear reality but faced it fully. He experienced great suffering and died a horrible death, yet he did not succumb to what is considered a normal response. He did not hate nor seek revenge, but simply forgave. He did not hide from loves demands, which is to see deeply into the heart, ones own and others and not to quail at what is found there. He could not escape into bitterness, resentment, hatred or the need for revenge…. that I would experience if I had to go through a fraction of what he did. In fact I struggle with the above; as I guess do most humans. So to pray is to enter relationship with a personal, loving awareness, which became one with us and is one with us. Prayer is an opening up an oasis in the inner desert, which slowly grows into the healing streams of living water, that truly flow from the author of life.
The spiritual life is about allowing grace to do its work. The fire of divine love will only work with us at the level we are ready for and open to. Prayer can actually be dangerous, for it does not lead to just peace and joy, for those are part of it, just like any other relationship. There are also the demands of love. One demand is to grow in trust. Growth into trust comes from a deep awareness of inner fragmentation and failure in the struggle to have a deeper more loving commitment to Christ or God. Trust comes from understanding that all is already known; there is nothing to hide, for we are really naked before God. We are loved, simply that. Trust allows us to not believe what our inner voices scream or whisper at us. Prayer slowly allows us to hear a deeper voice, one of continual invitation to come deeper, to look towards what beckons and not get stuck in an endless cycles of neurotic guilt and self pity. Letting go is a true death, made often in darkness, pain and fear. Trust allows us to simply not believe such mutterings but to answer the eternal summons that God offers all of his creatures.
We are truly seen; something perhaps, both desired and feared. Of course I writing about my own struggle in my walk of faith and not implying anything about those who will read this.
Br. Mark Dohle
Holy Spirit Monastery
