Pray

This is the fourth part in a series on The Way of Love.

The Book of Common Prayer has a section which provides excellent reading material at those times when sermons go off the rails. It's found on pages 844-862 and it's called "An Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism." It's a series of questions with short responses. The section on Prayer and Worship provides an excellent resource for this post and the next one that will follow on Worship.

It is worth nothing that prayer and worship are not the same. There is, of course, time to add our prayers of thanksgiving and petition in our corporate worship. But prayer isn't just for Sunday, even if that is the only time we gather with the community for worship. Prayer is meant to be a part of each day for those traveling the way of love. 

The Prayerbook defines prayer as "responding to God, by thought and by deed, with or without words." When I used to invite my confirmation students to read this and to discuss it was almost always a much more expansive definition than they had previously held. The idea that deeds could be a form of prayer was particularly compelling. And for some, the idea that words were not needed was also helpful. Mostly I wanted to get them to see that "making a list of requests and checking it twice" was what we do for Santa Claus, not for God. 

The Prayerbook goes on to speak of the principal kinds of prayer as adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition. For many the routine for prayer here, too, tended to be more narrow and focused primarily on penitence, intercession, and petition. So I spent some time on the psalms which are loaded with adoration, praise, and thanksgiving. My goal was to expand their definitions and ultimately their practices. 

For almost two decades now I've been part of the Fellowship of St. John the Evangelist. They have a phrase that comes from their founder, that they (and those, like me, who follow their Rule of Life) are called to pray our lives. 

As a follower of Jesus and as a priest - as both life-long learner and teacher - I think that the biggest obstacles to prayer are (a) that our definition is too narrow and/or (b) that we think we are not doing it right. My experience has taught me that the response is to "just do it" by making time to be in the presence of God. We can begin with what is easier for us and work toward what is harder. 

In the months of the year when weather permits, most of my mornings begin on my porch with coffee and silence, where I consider the birds of the air and the flowers in my yard. Other times my prayer includes a short form of The Daily Office which includes meditating on Holy Scripture - not to be preached or taught but simply to be explored as a reflection of my own life. Each evening I try to take some time to reflect on the day in order to give thanks for what has been given and to confess to where I've missed the mark. The more formal office of the Church where this happens is Compline. 

For me, this notion of praying our lives makes sense and it is therefore, above all else, finding practices that allow us to be as present as possible to each moment, which is about letting go of the past and leaving the future to God so that we might find abundant life each day.