How often do you DO it? And what is it like, really?

Dear Dr. Schafer,

Thank you for this post. Thank you also for your discussions of these details of the faith. Regarding your recent message on what it actually means to meet Jesus personally, I was encouraged that the many of the people I knew did NOT consider that question a sort of preaching to the choir, and that they also needed to have that question carefully articulated and shared – as much as it is possible to share that sort of experience with other human beings.

I would definitely like to hear more about your experiences with prayer. I will try to articulate mine, though I will add the disclaimer that I am still trying to learn.

There was a time in my life when I would try to pray daily (without a real time-minimum or limit, but generally about 30 minutes in the morning). I would sit at a quiet place, usually a desk, close my eyes, briefly note the blackness and quietness (appreciating the minimal input from the physical senses), and I would wait a bit until I felt my mind settle. This could be peaceful in itself. Sometimes, I would do things that Buddhist meditation recommends: focusing on my breath, pursuing no thought – letting them arise and fall – until I felt fully immersed in the present. These helped for mental clarity and self-control.

I would then recite the Lord’s Prayer, trying to pause over each phrase, and thinking of its relevance for the day. What did it mean, that day, for God’s will to be done? How was I to express worship to God through my life that day? What debts needed forgiveness?

I also had an ongoing list of people or things to pray for, and I would try to dwell over these as well. I would think of where certain people might be at that particular moment, what they were doing and feeling, and what they might want prayer for.

These things I considered a routine part of prayer. In terms of the confirmation to prayer that we could attribute in our daily lives, however, I was more wary. It seemed that the act of praying or meditating cemented worldviews and assumptions that were already posited at the most basic level (sort of like your question of the chicken and the egg). The praying Christian would see confirmation of his or her prayer in actual life experience, but equally so would the Muslim or the Buddhist. And, of course, the atheist also sees the confirmation of his truth in daily experience.

But there were also experiences I sought that were more difficult to
achieve or rightly understand. For instance, I strained for an emotional release, for a euphoric rush. Do other people invoke emotions in their prayer? I don’t know. But I would seek it, both for comfort and for energy. And sometimes this rush would spontaneously arise; other times only after much effort. During this time I was reading a book about prayer by this man named Andrew Murray, and he talked about entering the innermost chamber in our hearts, where we could enter communion with God, as God met the Israelites in the Most Holy Place. Sometimes I felt that I was walking into successively inner doors until there were no more doors to walk through.

Once there, I would try to visualize Jesus, or God. Or the cross and that moment on Calvary. But I wasn’t too sure how accurately or appropriately I was doing these. On one hand, I found that all the images that arose in my mind were still limited to those that I had encountered in my lifetime: Jim Caviezel, wooden crosses, (glorious) paintings of heaven and angels, bright lights like the sun, a gray brain struggling (and limited) by itself, no matter what projections it could make. I could not claim that this feeling was different from the emotional rush that can be obtained through anything else in our worldly experience, whether from the arts or from beautiful relationships with people. Perhaps this was not prayer.

On the other, I saw that I could choose to ignore these attributions and try to pursue those events further. And sometimes I would further visualize the flashing images of history (though still images from familiar places like history books) across the ages. Interwoven into these scenes was my perception of the cosmic theme of sin and redemption. And I would strain to think of how the blood from Jesus’ cross might cross over those ages and reach my own transgressions today. Or of how, when my brain, body, and heart stopped working, something of me would remain, and something external to me would welcome me into a bright light.

But then I would again hit a brick wall. What did it mean for my memories, my identity, to survive beyond my brain and all the metacognition that made this sort of thinking possible in the first place?

I am not sure of these things, and my mind goes back and forth on them. Even as I write this now, I am conversely reminded of what St. Augustine and CS Lewis talked about; that all of our emotions and desires and impulses find both their purest origin and totality in God. Why do I – even if I am only a purely material being – need to seek this release and peace? They could be echoes of something higher. These arguments compel me too.

So, currently, I don’t know. Should I be attempting to visualize these things in the first place? Or, as you ask, Dr. Schafer, do other people ask for promises… to wherever it is they are asking promises? And do they find simple conviction, feelings of assurance, voices they attribute to supernatural things, and bright lights?

Or can prayer also be found in the paradoxical state that the monk Thomas Merton describes:

“…inner silence depends on a continual seeking, a continual crying in the night, a repeated bending over the abyss. If we cling to a silence we think we have found forever, we stop seeking God and the silence goes dead within us… A silence from which He does not seem to be absent, dangerously threatens His continued presence. For He is found when He is sought and when He is no longer sought He escapes us. He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to listen, He ceases to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.” [from The Love of Solitude]

Or Mother Teresa, when she is so pained and brutally honest about the abyss she encounters in her mind, even while directly addressing God and longing for Him:

“In my heart there is no faith – no love – no trust – there is so much pain – the pain of longing, the pain of not being wanted. – I want God with all the powers of my soul – and yet there between us – there is terrible separation. – I don’t pray any longer – I utter words of community prayers – and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give. – But my prayer of union is not there any longer. – I no longer pray. – My soul is not one with You – and yet when alone in the streets – I talk to You for hours – of my longing for You. – How intimate are those words – and yet so empty, for they leave me far from You. [from Come Be My Light]

i really enjoyed reading richard’s response and reflection. he is an honest truth seeker like no one else i know.

the idea of prayer has been redefined so much as of late that i’m not sure what i think about it anymore. i know at some point, with great effort, i have to reflect deeply, reaching far back, so that i can do away with the built up chaff of knowledge without faith. until that time of recalibration, i stick to the thoughts on and surrounding prayer that come most readily.

conversations with people affect me. people affect me. ever since people became real to me — and this wasn’t all that long ago — i am deeply affected by them.

and i guess this is what i want from prayer. sure, i bring lists. but more than anything, i want to be affected by God, by talking to him.

to be honest … at times, the words, “heavenly Father” or “Lord” begins something like a mindless trance. and this is the baggage i deal with. i’m certain it has something to do with the years and years of settling for a god of my imagination, and not the God of reality.

prayer is hard for me. i imagine it’s harder for me than it is for a lot of people. sometimes i come out of prayer questioning whether or not i really connected with God. but for all the inner turmoil it causes, i feel this is right. it’s right for me to struggle in this way. because God is real. who said prayer was supposed to be easy anyway? it takes struggle for me because what i readily do is reduce God to a name, and pray to the name. but prayer is not about many words. prayer is not about starting right away. prayer is not about speaking passionately on a subject.

so i struggle. sometimes for a long period of time. then i can finally acknowledge God as a real living being, and i can squeeze out a few meaningful moments “in his presence”. just a few moments, but real and savory and saturated.

it’s my goal in life these days to pray until i really pray. to spend slow and patient time in prayer everyday.

“love the Lord your God with all your heart.”

the more God becomes real to me and the more i understand that God hears my prayers, the more i feel shameless about making prayer (and the world) all about me. a world that revolves around me is not consistent with real faith in God. so every time i struggled to pray, i was struggling to shed a self centered world view. what i mean to say is, praying has been changing me. God has been affecting me through prayer. especially praying the Lord’s prayer has been changing me.