I have been thinking a lot about prayer recently. I am starting a 2 year discernment process towards a decision of becoming a full member of the Iona Community. I will be committing myself to doing my best to keep the ‘rule’ of the community- which includes the following;

Daily prayer, worship with others and regular engagement with the Bible and other material which nourishes us.

Prayer is something I have never been ‘good’ at, even in the days when I tried hard to be good at it. In more recent times, I have moved to a point where I mostly do not pray – at least not in the way I used to understand what it was and what it was for.

I grew up with an understanding of prayer as a means to persuade God to aid our cause. The degree to which God was willing to accede to our entreaties and lists of requests was always something of a problem. It was very tempting to over-claim – or to build castles of consequence on shaky coincidences. Those times, for instance, when God miraculously granted us a free parking space, or a friend to talk to just when we needed them.

My wife Michaela was prayed for by good people for years because of her experience of chronic illness which left her ill and unable to participate in many things others took for granted. Some even suggested her lack of healing was due to unconfessed sin, or lack of faith.

Then her illness got better, overnight. It confounded medical people and confused us…

…particularly as my theological journey has taken me to a place where I no longer believe in an interventionist God. My current way of trying to resolve all of these contraditictions is through process theology – or sometimes open relational theology.

But this is all very ‘head first’ stuff.

For any theology to be real, it has to sing in our souls. The complexity of open relational ways to try to describe the way that a divine being might interact with our broken humanity is beyond more of us, particularly during the inevitable struggles and challenges of our lives.

What part has prayer to play in these struggles?

How might I/we concieve of a spiritual practice of prayer that is meaningful, relational, dynamic and useful?

I saw this quote from a new book the other day;

On the strength of this quote alone, and in the shadow of my own struggles with prayer, I ordered the book.

But these are not new questions for me, so I have some other provisional answers about what I think of as prayer now. They have broadened out to include this list (which is not in any kind of order)

• Breathing
• Seeking connection in forest
• Singing
• Caring and hoping for friends
• Dancing
• Looking for resonance in art
• Hoping
• listening to bird song
• Deep talk around a fireside
• Making art
• Seeking goodness
• Listening to people who are hurting
• Pilgrimage

You may well think that this list is a good list, but not a prayerful one…

Above all, my current thinking is that I need to pray with a pen in my hand (or more commonly a keyboard under my fingers.) For me, my poetry is above all, prayer.

So I finish with this poem, which I wrote this morning;

I will not pray

I will not pray for miraculous intervention

But I will try to pray for those

Who cannot pray

I will not sing those hymns of adoration

Yet still I sing for those

Who cannot sing

I will not seek your soul to save

But I will search the wildest places for

The beautiful but broken

I will not rend my clothes to mourn

Instead, I mark those names that

Were never known

I make no promise as a lover

Except to look in love for those

Whose love has been emptied

I will not pray for favour, or for better weather

But whatever roof I have is

Yours to share