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Wrestling with God

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How to Pray? I Wish I Knew

How to Pray? I Wish I Knew

Last updated on: October 13, 2015 at 12:01 am by Barbara Falconer Newhall

How to Pray? I Wish I Knew 2015-10-12T14:05:25-08:00 Barbara Falconer Newhall

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Barbara Brown Taylor, author of “An Altar in the World.”

I don’t know how to pray. Haven’t a clue. Apparently, I’m not alone.

Barbara Brown Taylor — professor, author, theologian, Episcopal priest and a woman TIME magazine once designated one of the world’s most influential people — seems to be as flummoxed by the prayer question as I am.

“I am a failure at prayer,” she confessed in her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. “To say I love God but I do not pray much is like saying I love life but I do not breathe much.”

Now there’s a woman after my own heart.

I belong to a group that meets once a month on Mondays. Some people might describe it a prayer group. But I don’t – because I, for one, am not that good at praying. Our group is good at talking, and we’re really good at listening to each other. And, somehow or other, God seems to be there when we meet on our Mondays for a simple meal and talk. Prayer — how to do it, why do it — is a topic we bump up against from time to time.

Like me, Taylor expresses consternation at trying to formulate a clear theology and practice of prayer. The author of the acclaimed Leaving Church, she waits until the second to last chapter of An Altar in the World to finally bring up the subject of prayer. When she does, it is with trepidation. “I would rather show someone my checkbook stubs than talk about my prayer life,” she writes.

“I have shelves full of prayer books and books on prayer. I have file drawers full of notes from courses I have taught and taken on prayer. I have meditation benches I have used twice, prayer mantras I have intoned for as long as a week, notebooks with column after column of the names of people in need of prayer (is writing them down enough?) I have a bowed psaltery–a biblical string instrument mentioned in the book of Psalms–that dates from the year I thought I might be able to sing prayers easier than I could say them. I have invested a small fortune in icons, candles, monastic incense, coals, and incense burners.”

Every once in a while, prayer overtakes Taylor and she is flooded with a transcendent presence. But most of the time, she finds a more immediate sense of God in what she calls “enlarged awareness” – in paying attention — as she bites into a homegrown tomato, or sets the table for guests with her best dishes and silverware, or pauses to notice the moon, round and full “like the wide iris of God’s own eye.”

An Altar in the World limns a spirituality of the everyday, of finding Holy in the feeding of the cats and the dogs, the family and the friends. It suggests that, instead of waiting for God to answer our prayers, we wake up to the fact that our lives are the very answer to the question we ask. The sacred is right there in plain sight and always has been.

Maybe that’s what happens to me when my Monday night group meets to eat, talk and be present for God. I listen to the others speak. I offer up my own private stories — and I feel them coming back to me, intensified, enlarged and sanctified.

An earlier version of this post appeared on BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com, where Barbara writes about her rocky spiritual journey — and the view from the second half of life. More thoughts on prayer at “Want to See Your Creator? Go Look at a Rock.” Also “Simone Weil on Prayer: First, Pay Attention.”

Barbara is the author of “Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith,” from Patheos Press.

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