Lent Week Five ~ Prayer is Ongoing

 

Recently, I heard this quote, “Prayer is not performative”.  God isn’t grading my prayer.  Nor is my prayer about achievement or my personal enjoyment (like a Netflix show).  Prayer isn’t about me rating/ranking how spectacularly the Sacred showed up. 

 

Add this other insight, “Prayer isn’t starting a conversation, but entering one that is ongoing.” 

 

God has been with you every moment of your life, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.  As the mystics say, “There is nowhere God is not.”  Which means you don’t need to give God the inside scoop about what has been happening.  God, our constant companion and Creator, is continually at work authoring in our lives.  So much of our lives is about performing and projecting.  We really see ourselves, as Shakespeare said, as actors on the stage of the world.  But God isn’t in the audience writing a review of our words; God is part-taking alongside us in the unfolding drama/comedy/tragedy/ordinariness of each day.  Because we take on roles, we present a pretense/shape shifters, given the situation we find ourselves in each day. 

 

One other great quote to ponder with prayer, “Expectations can be resentments waiting to happen.”  When I expect or even demand God/others/myself to show up in a certain way with defined words on the script I’ve written, I reduce the humanness of myself and the other.  Or sometimes I don’t listen to what the other person is saying, because I assume I already “know” what they believe, regardless of whether that is what is falling from their lips.

 

Take the three quotes from today: “Prayer is not performative” ~ it is showing up in honest, even raw and uncensored, ways.  “Prayer isn’t the beginning but the continuation of a conversation” ~ what threads and themes are woven into your ongoing and unfolding dialogue with the Divine so far this month?  And are there “expectations that have turned to resentment” recently in your life?  Let these questions stir and sing and sink into your life.  I pray these insights will feed and fuel your ongoing conversation with our Creator.  Amen.