Wordy prayer

Good morning.

What are you doing when you pray? It’s a question so personal it feels almost rude to ask, but I’ve learned such a lot from people willing to share their experience and their practice.

Lots of us have versions of a Sunday school mnemonic, the image of a hand, a finger each representing thanksgiving, repentance, intercession, petition, worship. As someone who’s always talked a lot, this kind of praying can become a very wordy business, even when it appears to be silent. Lots of talking inside my head; not much listening.

I’ve been learning to move away from words, towards a deeper, wordless worship. It’s easier said than done, finding a place that is “inwardly quiet”, but it’s this reaching down into love that connects me to the Light.

For most of us I guess, moments that feel like revelation don’t come every day. They happen, and they are transformative, but they’re fleeting – we hardly become conscious of them, before they are overtaken by the thinking, analytical, wordy brain – and there’s no knowing when they’ll come again. I love what the American contemplative Jim Finley has to say about this experience: I won’t break faith with my enlightened heart. The moment dissipates, but I choose to allow it to shape me anyway.

One way of doing this is by honouring the convictions that arise in prayer. A twentieth century Quaker wrote that “a prayer is always a commitment”. We have to be prepared, that we ourselves might be the answer to our prayer.

And so the wordless prayer, leads us back to the world of words and action.

Thank you friends.