Mar 08 2009

Prayer

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 7:07 pm

Learning how to pray? Relearning how to pray?

Sometimes we just don’t know how, or where to start, especially if we feel ourselves to be in a “spiritual dry spell.” You might try Praying Through The Psalms.  They are sometimes brutally honest cries of the heart, from one of God’s favorite very-imperfect people.

Or you might try this.

The evangelical tradition of “improvisatory prayer” has much to recommend it.  But it’s also a box that can capture the spirit by limiting it to one’s own ability to think in words, spontaneously.  God hears our prayers, verbal and non-verbal…  and I think that praying beautifully written and inspired prayers from others has the ability, oddly, to liberate our own non-verbal prayers, as we give our assent and emotional force to the words of someone else.  Sometimes, when the mind has something worthwhile to chew on, the heart is freed.

Jesus seems to have thought this was a pretty good idea, too.

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