Prayer as a State of Being 
I never quite know what I’m going to be musing on. Scrolling down the list of past musings, I’m surprised that I’ve never said anything about prayer. It’s a big part of my life.  
 
Let me begin with a parable by Leo Tolstoy that gets to the heart of it for me. It’s from a book I ran across this past weekend titled Spiritual Direction, by my friend Henri Nouwen: 
 
~ Three Monks on an Island ~
 
Three Russian monks lived on a faraway island. Nobody ever went there, but one day their bishop decided to make a pastoral visit. When he arrived, he discovered that the monks didn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer. So he spent all his time and energy teaching them the “Our Father” and then left, satisfied with his pastoral work. But when his ship had left the island and was back in the open sea, he suddenly noticed the three hermits walking on the water—in fact, they were running after the ship!   When they reached it, they cried, “Dear Father, we have forgotten the prayer you taught us.” 
 
The bishop overwhelmed by what he was seeing and hearing, said, “But, dear brothers, how then do you pray?” They answered, “Well, we just say, ‘Dear God, there are three of us and there are three of you, have mercy on us!’” The bishop, awestruck by their sanctity and simplicity, said “Go back to your land and be at peace.”   
 
Henri follows this parable by saying, “There’s a difference between learning prayers and prayerfulness.”  
 
For me, prayer is not separate from daily life. It’s a way of being. It’s like being with Linda for a weekend at the farm. We’re just there with one another. We talk over lunch and dinner, but it doesn’t particularly matter what we say. It’s more about who we are. It’s about being together. Sharing lives together – with someone you love and trust.  
 
Prayer is, for me, like that – a state of being together with God. It’s not usually triggered by liturgy or special needs.  It’s more like what the Bible instructs us to do: Pray without ceasing.  
 
I say the Lord’s Prayer, The Doxology, and other liturgical prayers seldom in the day, often at night. There’s no such thing as a mental void. When I wake up from sleep, I have a tendency to role play my coming day in imagination, especially if I am anxious about the day ahead. Giving a speech. Confronting something that’s not going especially well. Once I get that kind of thought going, it’s difficult to get back to sleep. So I fill the void with ritual prayer. 
If I’ve been with an especially stimulating, emotionally engaging group of people the day before, I find that they stay in my head at night. They’re still there. If they have strong personalities, they leave emotional impressions. I’m still doing business with them, saying things we didn’t say, finishing conversations we didn’t complete – wondering if there’s more we will say or do.  
 
Knowing that there’s only so much room in the mental box, I “sing” silently The Doxology. I say the 23rd Psalm. I say the Lord’s Prayer, often drifting back into sleep knowing that I am loved by God, a love that fills the God-shaped void within me.  
 
Often when I pray, I use a framework that has come echoing down century after century. It’s easy to remember using the acronym A.C.T.S. which stands for:    
 
Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication
 
 
First Adoration: Simply bringing God to mind sometimes using a remembered song -- often a Psalm like this one:
 
O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.  
-- Psalm 139 (David)  
 
Next comes Confession, usually for me a matter of my own childish and natural self-absorption. I ask and receive forgiveness.  
 
Next, the largest section of my prayers these days, Thanksgiving. Often I use for gratitude a mechanism I learned from psychologist, Larry Crabb, in his appropriately titled book, Inside Out. Imagine a target that looks like this:

I begin with Christ in gratitude for my inner life now and my eternal life to come when I’m done here. I move on to the relationships I’m grateful for. Then to projects I’ve had the privilege to work on with others. And last, I’m thankful for the material treasures that are a platform for my life and work. Then I get around to my wish list (Supplication), which is always the shortest section, often just the phrase, “Thy will be done on earth (and in my life) as it is in Heaven.”

 
Sometimes, particularly when I’m driving (eyes open!) or walking alone for exercise, I use my hands as artifacts for prayer – holding a hand upward for praise; palm forward for confession, imagining that my palm rests on the chest of Christ on the cross, my sins passing on to Him; palm up for thanksgiving, an attitude of receiving; and palm down for supplication leaving my concerns in the lap of God.  
 
I always, always feel renewed and refreshed in the knowledge that while things seldom turn out as I’ve planned and imagined them, they always seem to turn out – Is it me? Is it God intervening? Is it the interaction of my wishes with those of hundreds of other people who have their own wishes? I don’t know and I don’t have to know. We live in a mystery. Each of us stares into a reality others can’t see. We must not presume to know too much.  
 
This I know. There is a God. He’s not distant, but close at hand. He’s part of me, braided into who I am. I’m never alone. He loves me. I trust Him. That’s about it.   
 
 
So What About You?
Some of you great thinkers in the network have asked for an ACTIVEenergy blog. I am investigating options and will include news of what I find in upcoming newsletters. For now, I look forward to receiving your feedback at bob.buford@ACTIVEenergy.net.  
  1. If you had only three words, how would you describe your relationship with God? Is it personal, intimate, distant, trusting, suspicious? How is it? 
  2. When do you feel closest to God? Is it a special time or place? Or anyplace?  
  3. Does God speak to you? When you ring, does He answer? How? Through the Word? Through intuition? Imagination – where you “just know?” Through people? Through circumstances?  
 
 
Celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday:
 
“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. "Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You refused to stand up for justice”
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at
Ebeneezer Baptist Church November 5, 1967.
He was assassinated five months later on April 4, 1968
 
 
Feedback
 
Bob, Happy New Year !!
I have been pondering your musings on 2006, including the Jim Collins observation that "tragic flaws" often flow out of a failure to be brutally honest.
 
Here is a capsule of my own thinking.
 
We often see "tragic flaws" surface as a result of some "besetting sin" in a life. Ted Haggard is our poster boy for 2006, I suppose. But, I also surmise that his "fall" caused many to wonder about their own secrets.
 
But, my thought this morning is that many are "tragically flawed" not by any particular besetting sin or a conspicuous "fall" from grace. Many are tragically flawed not by a fall but by a failure to stand; by a failure to see the latent energy in their lives released into active energy - into their Maker's work. If they were brutally honest, they would see that they are on the bench in the real game of life.
 
Jay Bennett
Minneapolis, MN
 
 
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