Why I pray

It is a strange thing to be a progressive theological Christian.  In a lot of ways my practice as a Catholic and Christian person would be unrecognizable if I wasn't so darn intentional about church and prayer.  But, the fact of the matter, a lot of times in my faith I have not needed church or prayer. At least I haven't needed an answer to a prayer.  Nor have I needed prayer to solidify my beliefs about God.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about God.  I believe in the goodness of God. I believe in my own belovedness (and your belovedness) in the story of things.  I believe I am called to action and to engage the world. I also believe that God manifests herself in all of creation (yes all).  I don't believe that our prayer can change outcomes very often.  I don't believe in a God who is a magician.

With a sound theology and a certain perspective on who God is, it's easy to NOT pray. After all, what does prayer do if God isn't going to swoop in and fix things and if I don't have to get God to like me.    In fact, I have asked many progressive Christians, "How do you pray?" and some answers loomy and fertile others a desert.  Rarely (have I ever) found someone who possesses a theology (as described above) whose prayer is somewhere in the middle.  In fact, I have been in that desert place, and am sure that someday I'll go back. These desert places are not crisis, in fact sometimes they are places for different energies...All sorts of wise and admirable people I know have prayed or not prayed in lots of different ways.  Not praying, when you trust in God (as described above) is (for me)

okay...

But I pray, lately at least,  because it is easy to have a theology that leans too much on the things I believe (see above) instead of the mystery of who God is.  I pray not because I believe God will bring about divine miracles (though she may). 

I pray because perhaps God will surprise me if I leave space in my theology and in my life for God to reveal something new.    

I pray because my theology of believing that everything possesses a spark of the divine (incarnation) I have to work hard to pay attention to how I am noticing that.

I pray because people of all kind have been doing it in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of cultures and through all kinds of methods and in all kinds of theological ideas.  I join others in my embrace of the unknown.

The way I pray changes like the seasons.  Some days I listen to NPR and find myself in dire straits over the world.  Some days I sing songs or write in a notebook or I sit here, in front of a screen, and pour myself into something (nothing?).  But the thing I have been doing lately that seems more like prayer than any practice I have done regularly for a decade or so is to sit quietly several times a week and clear my mind and say a mantra...different every day...and I just come back to my mantra again and again.  I think this practice of prayer is sometimes called "Centering Prayer..."

In doing this, I carve out a space for mystery to speak to me. I make space for gratitude, for God, for my own self in a way that other ways of being rarely allow me.

I trust that in life's journey prayer will continue to take on some new styles and new seasons a desert will come and I have confidence God will be there.  But for now the space between theology and mystery claims an energy in me I am paying attention to.