Please don't say a prayer for me now ... (Duran Duran)

Pray continually (1 Thess 5:17)

This is an instruction from St Paul to the early churches and passed on in copious books, sermons and lectures. It is one of the 'impossible to succeed' instructions, along with 'Be perfect'. The function of this is twofold, in my view: 

    1. to encourage believers to aim high

    2. to keep believers failing so they have to depend on God's forgiveness

I did try to remember to pray frequently, at least, for many years, but continual conscious prayer is clearly unachievable by anyone living a normal life, working, interacting with other people. So I always fell short of the ideal, and attributed many frustrations in my life to this deficiency.

I was brought up in a Christian family, but prayer was simple and formulaic. I was taught to pray a 'God bless mummy and daddy...' type prayer at bedtime, and we always gave thanks before meals, often with a little song we sang together as a family:

    Thank you for the world so sweet

    Thank you for the food we eat

    Thank you for the birds that sing

    Thank you God for everything

This was a rather sweet ritual, and felt meaningful. I really liked food and my mother was a good cook.

As a teenager in Church Youth Groups I was taught a model of prayer based on the acronym, ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. I think this is a fairly good summary of different types of prayer, some of which I still enjoy, and some I have come to see as really problematic.

Adoration

How it's meant to work: Prayer is meant to start with adoring God, telling God how great God is. I thought God probably knew this already, so the point was to focus my mind on the character of God, often thinking about images in the Bible, like King of Kings, the Good Shepherd or Creator. It's hard not to think about things God has done (like leading me, his sheep, to green pastures, or making the universe) as we are very instrumental in our appreciation of other people, often, but I attempted to keep this as a focus on God rather than myself, and remind myself that God is good and powerful. I always loved to worship God, and sang along with worship music for hours a day for many years. I sang harmonies in the worship band at church, and loved to use my voice to help people lift their hearts and minds to God in this way.

What I think now: Awe and wonder are an amazing by-product of the level of consciousness we experience as humans. As far as we're aware, no other animal is able to step outside of their direct sensory experiences and gaze into the depths of space, looking for meaning or purpose in the twinkling stars. No other being can make the thought experiment of looking down on themselves from the perspective of a space station view, and have an awareness of themselves as a tiny moving object in the vastness of a largely unknown universe. This perspective should, ideally, take us out of our ego-centric mode of being, and make us aware of the interconnectedness of all the living and non-living systems we interact with. This is a goal of zen meditation too. For some reason there is an urge to personify this sense of Awe into a Person, which we call God. More recently I've encountered many people who personify 'The Universe' in this way, as a beneficent force of Love that is taking care of them, which unfortunately reverts to an ego-centric and magical viewpoint. 

Confession

How it's meant to work: Having turned our attention to God's perfection, we are of course reminded of how far we fall short. We then tell God about this, reminding God, and ourselves, of how dependent we are on forgiveness and grace. As the Anglican prayer book puts it:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have wandered and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts We have offended against your holy laws. We have left undone those things that we ought to have done; and we have done those things that we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.

But you, O Lord, have mercy upon us sinners. Spare those who confess their faults. Restore those who are penitent, according to your promises declared to mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may live a disciplined, righteous and godly life, to the glory of your holy name.

It can be refreshing, even cathartic, to get everything off your chest, and there is a special liturgy (set of prayers) for a good clear out on Ash Wednesday, the start of the period of Lent, which many Christians use as an annual spiritual cleansing ritual. This liturgy takes you through all the 10 commandments and gives you time to consider how you may have sinned by commission or omission, and to confess to God. I freely accepted the premise that I was essentially sinful, and expected to keep failing. I knew that my sinfulness made God (the ultimate patriarch) angry and I was totally dependent on God's forgiveness for my continued existence, and this had been bought at the price of Jesus' agonising death.

What I think now: I value the habit of self-reflection, and I think many of my prayer sessions were essentially 'What Went Well, Even Better If' sessions, a sort of New Day's resolutions to try to do better. However, I have a tendency to ruminate too much on things I did wrong, particularly in relationships, in which I have had the habit of micro-examining interactions and blaming myself for misunderstandings and for larger issues. This self-critical tendency was boosted by the pattern of daily confession, and I think it kept me constrained and repressed. I stayed in a marriage in which I was blamed, and blamed myself, for many toxic patterns of relating over 30 years. If I tried to express my needs I was accused of being critical, and I accepted this evaluation, and confessed it to God daily. I thought it was me, until I started working with teams of people in stressful circumstances who dealt with issues respectfully and calmly, and found that I was also very capable of this. Now I am enjoying a relationship of warmth and acceptance, where interpersonal issues can be discussed in a cooperative adult way, I realise that it wasn't me. It was the particular combination of two people in the marriage, and the context of shame, self-flagellation and grovelling self-abasement encouraged by the 'confession' emphasis in our Christian practice.

Thanksgiving

How it's meant to work: Giving thanks to God for anything and everything. Pleasant and enjoyable things are easy to feel thankful for, but it's a reminder to thank God for mundane things that you might otherwise take for granted, and even for difficult experiences which can be learning or growth opportunities. 

I really liked this one, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

What a stonking piece of writing! It covers pretty much everything. And includes a (healthy?) dose of begging too, and commitment to give ourselves up in service to God.

What I think now: Thankfulness is recognised as a way to stay mentally healthy, and there is evidence that gratitude journals, or thinking of three positive things daily, can be really significant to our wellbeing. It can take our thoughts out of negative spirals or rumination, and focus our attention on good things, internal or external. 

In my Christian life, it was also a way of deflecting the sense of injustice or divine neglect which threatened to challenge my thought system, however. Every difficult or painful personal experience could be re-framed, as a learning opportunity from God. I had to learn to trust him, to be thankful in all circumstances, to know his presence with me in my pain, to let go of my expectations or desires, to see even THIS (heartache, loneliness, cancer) as God's provision. And on a larger scale, it serves to focus Christians' attention on positive stories (harvests, healings, babies) while ignoring the really terrible ones (climate and ecological destruction, societal, health and family breakdown). I believe thankfulness can encourage a tendency to ego-centricity and to anthropocentricity, a focus on the human species while ignoring the fate of the millions of species which are heading for extinction because of our consumerist lifestyle. And thankfulness can just be an expression of toxic consumerism - the world as my resource. I see this language in talk of 'fish stocks' 'game' and 'livestock' - these are animals which have independent value and rights, not just as resources for human use. And also in the prayers of middle class English Christians who seemed to think they were entitled to own a large car, eat meat daily, have holidays abroad, and generally exceed the 3 tons per capita of carbon emissions which would be sustainable for net zero. 

Supplication

How it's meant to work: Supplication is not a word we use in daily life, but it makes a nice acronym, ACTS. It means asking God for things. This could be simple requests for help (food, financial needs) or self-improvement (patience, wisdom), or requests on behalf of other people (healing, comfort). Sometimes they can be really big-scale prayers, and I had a book at one point with facts and figures about all the countries in the world so that I could pray in an informed way, asking God to make specific changes to socio-political or religious systems. I found this a bit overwhelming, as was the requirement to pray for everyone I knew or had ever known to come to know God. This felt like an enormous responsibility, as I was taught that God had chosen to sit back and wait for us to ask for things: 'You do not have because you do not ask' (James 4:2). Some people kept prayer journals, timetabling their prayer topics systematically and recording 'results'. I wasn't very good at this, and came to the conclusion that I could trust God to remind me of people or topics I should be praying for, and go with the flow. I felt highly responsible for praying for my husband and children, however. Maybe the things that weren't going well for them were my fault, because I wasn't praying enough, or in the right way. But on the other hand, I could let go of the uncomfortable feeling that I couldn't do anything to help, as I could 'hand it to God' in prayer. This was always Doing Something.

Some people seemed to treat prayer as a slot machine or lottery. The more tickets you buy, the higher chance there is of winning. So if you get a lot of people to pray for a lot of hours, with a high level of energy, there was more chance of the prayer being answered. I joined some of these 24/7 prayer slots, but didn't really believe the maths. What kind of God would be counting up requests, like a government petition which promises a response if enough people sign up? And how was I meant to balance the instructions to ask with desperation, but at the same time, to trust and not beg?

As time went on, I found supplication or intercessory prayer increasingly difficult. How, or why, would a God who made every quark and galaxy, and maintains them constantly, make adjustments in the space-time continuum simply for my benefit? Also, if God knew what I needed before I asked, why did I need to ask? If I, as a mother, could see my child's need for a drink / rest / food / cuddle and provide their needs without being asked, surely God would do that too? And even more so on a national / international scale. So praying seemed pointless. If there were reasons why God would not answer the prayer, I would have to accept that without knowing what they were, so there seemed no point in even asking. I came to understand prayer as more about changing my perspective than changing God's mind or behaviour. 

What I think now: If there isn't someone to ask, you have to decide if you can actually do something to make your life better, or to help someone else, or to change a toxic world system, or accept that this is not something you have the power to change. Of course there are many Christians who are active changing things too, and I worked as a volunteer or trustee in some really positive projects over the years which were run by Christians, offering free crisis pregnancy counselling and sex education in schools, running a Nightshelter, and training traumatised African parents about baby-bonding. At their best, these organisations freely give support and evidence-based training to anyone in need. Underlying may be a hidden agenda at times (saving babies, hoping people will become Christians) but the volunteers are genuinely trying to help. 

Accepting that prayer was the solution to my unhappy marriage kept it stuck in unhealthy patterns. I believed that God could change us, and I read all the (Christian) relationship books, went on the courses and kept hoping and choosing to love, and there were some good times of connection. But why didn't we go for counselling, or recognise that we were harming each other and didn't have to continue? I think because we believed in prayer. If I prayed more, and tried harder while also trusting God (a tricky balance) it would get better. 

And praying for the sick is problematic for me on many levels. What about the people who aren't healed: are they not being prayed for by enough people, or particular people with the right degree of faith, or using the right words? How demanding of God to have such whimsical requirements. And I would not want to receive healing from such a capricious and favouritist deity.

So please don't waste your breath praying for me, if you are someone who prays. I'm privileged and grateful for the opportunities I've had, and the life that I'm enjoying now. Be thankful for the privileges and pleasures you enjoy, but then look around and see what you can do to make the world a better place. 

Making the garden a better place, working with nature to grow local and seasonal food