A Crazy Thing Called Prayer

I haven't written in forever. I half feel like I should say something like, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

I was thinking about prayer tonight at my evening prayer—it’s what I call prayer, anyway… for me. Prayer is something I try to start and end each day with. I know many tend to think that’s over kill but I need it. I don’t know if prayer changes things—but it certainly changes me.

For the longest time after coming out of the closet and leaving my fundamentalist Pentecostal life, I didn’t know what to do with prayer—what to make of it. Wasn’t prayer superstitious and mired in a theology that no longer worked for me? If I wasn’t praying asking for things, what was prayer anyway?

But an oblate is expected to pray and I was called to be an oblate—of that I am very sure but I can write about that more later.

Prayer for me is a time of reflection… and introspection. I read a psalm and then either scripture or some spiritual writing. In the morning I do lectio divina with the reading, asking what word or phrase called out to me; what does this word or words mean to me… for me. In the evening I do examen, asking what event from my day calls out to me, where did I see—or miss seeing—from this day?

But in between the psalm and the reading I started including my concerns, and my joys, too—a colleague’s family, my own family, the Interfaith Winter Homeless Shelter where I volunteer, Bread for the World, etc. I don’t make specific requests. I just bring these and others into my time of being intentional in relationship with the Holy. I just bring them. I’m not expecting hocus pocus.

I don’t know what happens with things we bring into prayer with us. I tend to think speaking these names can cause something cosmically to happen that I don’t understand. Here again, it causes something in me.

As I end each evening prayer, One thing I ask for, and this I seek after, that I may dwell in your Presence all the days of my life, to behold your beauty, and to inquire in You. Amen.