Prayer

 I have always been rather lazy with prayer, and sometimes confused about its purpose. Now I find myself on a large number of institutional prayer lists and included in the daily prayers of many people. Such care fills me with gratitude, and also makes me reconsider my own attitude to prayer.

 

I expect that my early history of prayer was similar to many of my generation. We might label our first prayers as level one prayers. These are not unlike the prayer lists on churches and so on. My mother taught me to kneel beside my bed each night and recite a litany of family members to be blessed. It would start “god bless mummy, God bless Daddy” and continue with my sister, aunts and uncles, grandparents alive and “in heaven”. I don’t think the discipline lasted very long after the parallel ritual of bedtime stories ceased.

 

As a kid, I think I was more interested in what I would now label as level two prayers. These are akin to requests from Santa Claus and are really personal begging. Most commonly, I would invoke this sort of prayer when faced with a threat, large or small. I could pray for something as mundane as a critical victory for the soccer team I support, or that I would not be caught out in some misbehaviour at school. Though the frequency of this sort of prayer decreased as I grew older, I confess that I still invoke it from time to time. When the epidural of my ex-wife failed to take effect at the time my daughter was to be born, and a decision was made to carry out a caesarean birth, I will have prayed level two prayers long and hard, hoping for a good outcome. Now, each time I face a brain procedure with a general anaesthetic, I find myself praying for a good outcome, and include some wishes for the blessing of my wife and family in the event that I don’t recover. Perhaps having all these other people praying for me might make me more inclined to pray for my own recovery, or perhaps I am just scared.

 

I first became more conscious of what I label level three prayer once attending Church became a more regular part of my life. I equate this sort of prayer to the simple idea of unhurried contemplation. This is the main opportunity I derive from attending Church services, but also just sitting quietly in a church or another place of peace. Around services, the quiet times at the beginning or end are excellent for contemplation. Services do tend to include a segment devoted to prayer, but this is usually a disappointment to me, especially in Catholic churches, where they just read out something bland written by a Vatican functionary, or, even worse, pursue a line akin to political propaganda.

 

Usually the most useful segments of a Christian service for contemplation are the readings followed by the homily. There is invariably plentiful material to contemplate in the readings, especially the gospel, and most weekends I will hear two homilies offering an interpretation, at least one of which is generally excellent.

 

This past weekend was a good example. The gospel told a parable where a rich fella invited the great and good to his banquet, but they failed to turn up, offering weak excuses. The host extended the welcome to all and sundry, who showed up and had a good time, but one dude showed up in unsuitable attire. I was expecting the host to show kindness and mercy to this chap – after all he might have been poor and certainly received the invitation late – but instead the fellow is cast out cruelly. “Many are called, but few are chosen” is the punchline.

 

Two good homilies set me thinking about this story. The essence is that it is not enough just to expect redemption, we have to do our bit to prepare ourselves. If we believe in life hereafter, we can consider the whole of life to be such a preparation. Only if we do this well, with serious intent, can we be hopeful of a kind judgment.

 

I spent much of last week in hospital, inevitably contemplating my own demise. On Saturday I found myself tearing up while leading the congregation in “Abide with Me”, as morbid a hymn as exists in the mind of most English folk. The whole experience, parable, homily, reflection and expression, acted as prayer for me. I welcomed it heartily. I find this happens most weeks and it helps me to accept the predicament I find myself in with greater equanimity, thought for others and peace.

The lovely thing about the gospels is how helpful they can be for prayer even if we do not accept a literal interpretation. So this week, with the procedure involving general anesthetic, as usual I spent time trying to be as ready as possible for the end, or even the beginning of the end. What does attending the party in suitable attire mean for me? My best answer is to ensure that my important relationships are all in good health, that there is no estrangement or unfinished business that might cause lasting damage to others should I not survive. This sort of prayer is also not entirely unselfish. Often, I find that trying to follow the messages in the gospels are a key too my own contentment.   

 

I was enraptured by a slightly different take on prayer some years ago while I was following a twelve step programme. The only mention of prayer comes in step eleven, which states “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

 

I still find this formulation to be helpful. Twelve step programmes ask to accept the possibility of a higher power, but allow us to interpret the concept in our own manner rather than being beholden to any particular doctrine. Then, in the prayer, I like the way we are guided away from level one and especially level two prayer, instead accepting our fate, humble but not passive. We are powerful, and can achieve wonderful things, but at the same time we are powerless in the face of the majesty around us.

 

I am not sure if I am abusing the welcome of the Church and its adherents, but I permit this attitude to enable me to partake of the blessings of religion without necessarily believing very much of its literal doctrine. My concept of God is highly abstract. But who am I to deny such doctrine? I am profoundly grateful for the consideration and love of many religious people. Just last Sunday my wife and I received valuable comfort from a visiting priest at my hospital bedside. It did no harm to our humour to also learn that this lovely man carried the ordained name of Hyacinth, seemingly an important Polish (male) saint, but a name forever associated by Europeans with the eponymous Mrs Bucket of situation comedy.

 

This gratitude also brings me back to all those prayer groups and individuals praying for me. I hope I don’t offend by disclosing that I struggle to accept much of the literal language in some of our prayers. I consider myself blessed in being able to derive enormous comfort from my own prayers and from those of others, and respect every one of their beliefs and their faith. And, even if we do not have any confidence in the existence of an afterlife, prayer is surely helpful and a chance for us to do good for others even if our own time may be short. “Abide with me, fast flows the eventide”. After a tough couple of weeks, I can only wonder at the power of unhurried contemplation and the prayerful support of so many.