Skip to main content

Prayer -- Rev Dr. Linda Anderson

I am a Unitarian Universalist minister with a Buddhist meditation practice in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master. Neither of my faith communities has a standard or fixed liturgical practice of prayer as such. The words of poet Mary Oliver resonate with me: “I don’t know where prayers go,/or what they do.” (from “I Happened To Be Standing”) Yet I have been thinking about prayer lately in terms of three questions: What does it mean to pray? How do I do it? What purpose does prayer serve?  Here are some of my attempts at answers to those questions; answers which are highly personal and not intended to tell anyone else how to experience prayer.
I believe in an unnamable life force, which some call God and others call by many other names. I believe there is something, some mystery, far larger than me that I am but a small part of.  Prayer is a form of communication with that mystery. At the same time prayer is grounded in my experience of living. Prayer is an expression, at times a spontaneous expression, of my deepest responses to life.  “For some it (prayer) is a conversation, a speaking to God, (however one understands that word); for others it is speaking to oneself; and for still others it is speaking aloud – to all who are gathered together, or to no one in particular." (Pat Hoertdoerfer) In all cases prayer is a relational act, between the one who prays, the ones who are prayed for and the ones who are prayed to.
How do I pray? How do I help myself to commune with that mystery? I meditate. I try to listen to the silence within to find what is in my heart and to respond to it. Out of the silence I hope to find the words that will both describe and illuminate my understanding of what I experience. How do I pray? I pray when I consciously send the energy of goodwill to others. How do I pray? I pray when I respond to the world with awe and gratitude. I understand that in order to do this, I need to pay attention.

The power of prayer lies in its ability to help me feel connected. It opens my heart. The communicating, relational nature of prayer helps me deeply experience the interconnectedness of life. Prayer for me is experiential. And when I experience it, it can be a deep source of joy, a deep source of comfort, a deep source of hope, a deep source of love. I feel the power of connection and I intuit that goodness, peace, and compassion are possible if I can live in a way that respects and acknowledges our interdependence. To paraphrase Chief Seattle, when I know that what I do to the web of life I do to myself, I will take more care with the web. When I believe in our connections, I believe that what I do matters. That changes me and the energy of my changes ripples out and touches others. Prayer, I realize, takes me into the stream of interdependence which is foundational to life and that is a mighty place indeed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Make even these days count

One of the most popular features on a local newscast of a small TV station is something rather surprising. It is a feature called- “The Day of the Week”.  Today is…….. Monday!  The station put forth this as a kind of joke at first, but it was so popular that it became a regular daily addition to the morning newscast.  Apparently, so many of us have lost track of what day it is that we need a reminder. During this stay-at-home time, every day seems to blend into the next.  It is truly difficult to remember how many days we have all been quarantined at home, what the date is and what day of the week it is.  Many of us have a few markers that help- jobs that pause for the weekend, celebrations of Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays- special days of worship.  But even with these, the days seem to bleed into each other like a striped shirt washed in hot water. The period that we are in right now in the Jewish calendar is ironically, a time of counting. A time w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Time

My mind has been thinking about time and how it seems to be different now with all of what is happening. First there is COVID-19 and our stay-in-place semi-lockdown.  For those who have full-time jobs, and even for those who don't, we schedule things around moments in time.  Our lives are routine-based:  when we get up, when we eat, when we work, when we have time for family, when we have time to ourselves, when we sleep, etc.  When our routines are disrupted, many of us feel out of sorts or even lost.  What happened?  Why is this happening?  When is it (routine) coming back?  I've heard that there are many Americans who find it difficult to take a vacation, a real vacation of a week or two, because it takes them away from their work for too long.  As we are gradually allowed to come back to our former lives before COVID-19, perhaps we will have a better sense of time, our old time.  But then again, maybe time will never be the same. ...
Post a Comment
Read more
I did not want to write about this virus-time. I did not think I could.  Another piece was in my mind this week, not quite yet taking shape. But when I sat to write, the virus took my attention and I could not wrest it back.   There are useful and funny memes online, and stories of good will and good works, and words of inspiration and comfort. And terrible stories, too.  Mostly at a distance, we have been sharing dance and art and music, facts and opinions, cautionary tales and fairy tales. We miss hugs and doing projects and working and learning together in person. Sometimes we are in a bubble for a while that lets us just be, free of anxiety or fear.  Sometimes we cannot get out of bed.  Sometimes we cannot sleep.  Sometimes we eat all the chocolate and sometimes we eat nothing.  We who are privileged live like this.  We are grateful to the people who work at the jobs we need to have done even in t...
Post a Comment
Read more