It's Me O God Standing in the Need of Prayer

During the month of June, we will turn our attention and intention toward the Lord’s Prayer.  To prepare our hearts, heads, and whole selves for the experience/encounter, I invite you this week to start to swim in the waters of prayer.

First, what comes into your mind when you hear the word, “Prayer”?

Maybe your hands folded, and head bowed?

Maybe a preacher droning on and on with a laundry list of names or concerns? (I can resemble that remark!)

Maybe disappointments or disheartened moments when a prayer was unanswered?

To be honest about our initial encounters, experiences with prayer is the place to begin.  We can also connect prayer to the themes/threads we have been weaving together during the month of May.

Prayer could be a part of the art project called, “Your Life”.  Prayer could involve an actual canvas or with words spoken/sung or through an activity like gardening or walking or through sitting still and silence. 

Prayer is a connection to the Creator in whose image you are made.

Second, prayer – thanks to St. Sarah in the Bible – could be laughter.  I encourage you to practice that form of prayer many times this week.

Third, prayer could be admitting the Aaron moments (like in Exodus when Aaron makes a golden calf) in my life when I do or say something I immediate regret and want a rewind button to go back in time.  Prayer has been called, “A long loving look at the real.”  That means, the good and bad and ugly of life.  Notice, it is a loving look, not a guilt ridden look, at the real!

Fourth, prayer could be lifting every voice to sing in celebration of the vast variety of the Spirit and the ways the Divine delights in diversity.

Prayer can take so many shapes and shades, but in the end is about you finding pathways that give expression and experience the sacred stirring in your life.

One of my favorite quotes about prayer comes from Father Barry who says, “The primary motive for prayer is love, the love of God for us and then the arousal of our love for God.  We pray to come to know God as well.  Who is God for me and who am I before God?” Prayer is never a solitary act but rather an act of solidarity with the sacred.

Prayer is what helps us feel fully alive.

Today, consider your descriptions and definitions of “Prayer”.  I would love to read your comments on what the above meditation stirred within you.

It is my prayer that God will move in our midst in the coming days, awakening us to a relationship with the Holy that is humming and hovering around us.  May this relationship so move our hearts and guide our lives that by the end of June we sense a change (even slightly) to the question, “How is it with your soul?”

Prayer: Holy One, help me today pray and mean the words, “When Your peace like a river attends my soul…I shall say, ‘It is well.  It is well.  It is well with my soul’.”  Amen.