The strenuous discipline of not praying

Last updated on: February 24, 2017 at 4:22 pm by Brad Roth

The strenuous discipline of not praying 2017-02-21T10:15:03-05:00 Brad Roth

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Somewhere on the road to Tucumcari, New Mexico, we got behind a semi truck painted with the question “Did you pray today?” on the back door. The sign rounded out its message with the stencil of a man pointing an accusatory finger. Did you pray today? You had better pray. Or else.

I wonder how many passing drivers knew what to do in response to this sign. You see, most of us do not know how to pray. Anybody who’s ever tried prayer knows what I’m talking about. There comes this moment when we’re alone with ourselves–and, we hope, alone with God–and the distinct question of now what? floats to the forefront of our minds. Even Jesus’ disciples, schooled in the cycle of Jewish prayers and steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures requested some instruction on prayer from Jesus. “Teach us to pray,” they said, “as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1).

The challenge is that the truest prayer is not a thing we do. It’s less about saying any particular words and more about being present to God. In fact, the truest prayer may be a kind of not doing. It’s not talking, not asking, not even listening. The goal of prayer is being. We’re present to God in prayer. It’s about the mind giving up on its words and lists and descending into the heart. This kind of prayer is what the Russian Orthodox saint Theophan the Recluse was talking about when he described prayer as standing “before God, in an opening of the heart to Him in reverence and love.”1

That’s pretty lofty stuff. I’m not sure I’m there. But here’s what I think it looks like: It’s being present to God, regardless of how we feel about prayer at any given moment. It’s ordering our days and our lives around prayer. It’s taking seriously that prayer is what roots us in God’s life. It’s learning the art of not doing, not saying, not striving. It’s being with God.

That won’t feel like praying to most of us, formed as we are by our go-go, do-do culture. Standing before God in reverence and love will feel more like not praying. But maybe that’s just what we need.

You see, talking to God isn’t so hard. The real challenge is keeping quiet. What’s tough is laying aside our demands and our projects and simply being with God. That’s prayer as openness, prayer as vulnerability, prayer as shedding. You can’t check it off a to-do list. It’s not really an action, though it’s strenuous enough in its own way. It’s the strenuous discipline of not-praying.

Did you pray today?

Nope.

did you pray today cropped

1Timothy Ware, ed., The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (compiled by Igumen Chariton of Valamo, trans: E. Kadloubovsky and Elizabeth Palmer; London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 72.

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