Ongoing struggle to talk to the Creator of the Universe...

I don't know how many times I have sat on a pew within a church and watched as the preacher proclaimed to me that prayer is as much about listening for God's response as it is about speaking to God. And that my words are merely half of a dialogue with God. Still, I continue to struggle—I'm talking major struggle—with the notion of prayer.

I, however, refuse to apologize for this. After all, even the disciples were all about failure to pray... Whatever do I mean?! The disciples?! NO! lol. Ok, well check it out:

Like us, they had Jesus himself as a model. They saw him go off by himself to pray. They listened to him pray publicly. They overheard those seemingly weird private yet public prayers of his in which he told his father stuff like, I know you’re already doing this, but I am just saying this for the benefit of those listening. And yet, they didn’t pray enough—or perhaps the correct way—to cast out demons on at least one occasion. And they fell asleep instead of praying in Gethsemane. And, most importantly, they questioned Jesus about how to pray. They were, in other words, just like me. They were worried about prayer. They decided, or feared, or fantasized, that there might be some right way to pray—the way John the Baptist prayed, perhaps, or Billy Graham, or the way some dorky self-help book on morning devotions described what the author did each day, or the way some preacher told them was how prayer was supposed to be done—and they weren’t doing it that way. They thought their prayers were inadequate, somehow. I know they did. This is how I perpetually feel about prayer.

Don’t get me wrong. I pray. I prayed as a child. Nowadays, as then however, I pray on mostly an as-needed basis. I worry on behalf of others, a kind of intercessory prayer, I think. I also get great relief, many nights, from silently talking to God, so to speak, and knowing that he’s listening. In my few years years of being a bit agnostic, the prayers of my abandoned faith were what I missed most. Asking. Complaining. Being comforted. Feeling heard.

Yet... really... I don’t know what to say here. How did I come about a transition from this obviously knowing how to pray that I have had from childhood—and there is this sense that we all, deep down, actually do know how to pray without being told—to the conviction that my “prayer-life” is somehow faulty in the eyes of God and of men?! Is it just the influence of the sort of people who use such terms as “prayer-life” that devalues my habits? Or is there really some better way to pray, some more mature way of praying beyond the crying out like a newborn and being comforted?

I keep thinking about this, toying with it. It’s a deceptively easy subject, it seems to me. Maybe I worry about it too much? A lot of people tell me this about a lot of things, and they are surely right. Every one of those Fear-not!’s in the Bible was intended for me, I think. The preacher, whoever the preacher may be, says, "Prayer is just talking to God. Like in a normal conversation."

But here’s the thing. In most of the conversations I have with anyone else but God, the person responds. Out loud. In audible words. In my language—or at least in a language which I can understand and recognize as language. Which is not how God does it. .....Unless, of course, my experience of God really is far more limited than I know about. I mean we say that God doesn't speak audibly anymore... but... why not? I mean is that biblical "I shalt no longer speak to thee audibly."?! Don't think so... Yet when we do hear someone say "I heard God speak... I mean ACTUALLY speak to me." We just stare at them and wonder if we should contact those people that will come and give them one of those jackets that makes you hug yourself...

I have decided to consider the way those other conversations I have had—the ones that did not involve the other person audibly responding in recognizable words—to see what might be found there about the nature of prayer. Aside from mental telepathy, which I can't seem to make work the way it's supposed to... LoL, and talking to the radio, which poses similar difficulties, these one-sided conversations fall into two categories for me. Well, three. Conversations with babies. Conversations with animals (mostly dogs, but also hurt birds I have found in the yard. And conversations with dying people who are able to hear and process what I am saying but are not able to respond.

In all of these instances—with babies, with animals, and with people rendered mute as a result of disease—I held conversations, first of all, by paying attention to nonverbal responses. Eye rolling. Smiling. A look of gratitude. Wailing. Those ridiculous conversations I have with my baby nephew that cause me to wonder if people think I am nuts... “Is Christian wanting Abbie? Does he have a poopy diaper? I'm going to change it. Yes, I'm getting rid of that old nasty diaper. Oh, what now? Does Baby want the keys? Here are the keys. Here they are. Yes, Christian likes the keys, doesn’t he?”

Also, as you can see with that baby, I asked a lot of questions. Similarly, a “conversation” with a dog was usually a series of questions too, followed by a few reassuring answers, or, better, the thumping of that back foot when I scratch the "sweet spot" on their belly...

Finally, I typically supplied answers for my silent conversation partner. The best example is with the mortally sick person in the hospital. When a friend's mom lay dying, she couldn’t keep her mouth closed because she wasn't able to get enough oxygen simply through her nose and her mouth STAYED dry. I knew she was desperately thirsty. She panted heavily. Every time I caught her eye, she directed her gaze meaningfully at the table by the bed, where we had kept a cup of ice chips to give her. “You’re thirsty,” I told her. “There, you like that. That feels good, doesn’t it? That’s enough now. You’re wondering where your husband is. He’s gone to get something to eat. Yeah, that’s good. He had your Jell-O at lunch. That was all. He wasn't hungry. Too worried about you. You don't want him to worry, I know. You want me to tell him that. Yes, he doesn't need to worry, does he? It's going to be okay.”

These are inadequate examples of conversations with God, I know. God’s not a baby or a dog or a dying person. And He’s certainly not incapable of responding in my eyes. He's not incapable of anything, except maybe NOT loving us... I mean, He can't help that... God is Love. And God is crazy about us. But what I get from thinking about these conversations with the mute is something relevant, I think, about how we talk to a seemingly silent, invisible, conversation partner like God.

First off, in praying, we have to pay attention to non-verbal information rather than direct responses. Events. Preexisting evidence of truth. Divine gestures, like awe-inspiring weather conditions, a potted plant suddenly blooming, or an auto accident involving the child of friends that suddenly thrusts one’s pettier complaints into perspective. I say we have to pay attention to these things, but, in truth, I think we often do it unconsciously. Sometimes, even, to an obsessive degree, resulting in superstitions and misguided notions about how God works, or ought to work, in our lives. Nevertheless, I believe God does respond to us in such gestures. This idea especially bothers a non-believing friend of mine, who makes much mock of Christians’ egotistical notion that God would cause rain or redirect the attention to a car wreck or orchestrate a bright pink sunrise just for one person praying. Absurd, yes, but, I think, true.

Second, prayer, like conversation with a mute partner, inevitably involves questions. Lots of questions. Sometimes nothing but questions. Questions one is forced to answer oneself, usually with a reassuring offer to take some action. I’m coming. I’m here. I’m ready to do what you want me to.

Finally, if engaging in more involved discussion with God than the prayer-equivalent of reassuring a baby or offering to wet a dying woman's tongue, one has to be ready to supply both sides of the conversation. Supplying another’s unspoken response is possible only to the degree that one is familiar with that person and can recreate what he or she is likely to be thinking. The ability to predict another’s thoughts is, of course, dependent on some degree of previous interaction with that person. Knowing what the person likes and despises, what topics are important to the person, what the person has said in the past.

God’s past utterances, of course, are helpful here. And luckily, lots of them are recorded where we can check and make sure we’re right about them. We can look them up and cross-reference them and read them in all kinds of translations, get down to the word level. That, then—our reliving, if you will, of God’s side of the conversation, of his gestures, the history of our relationship with him, his words on the pages of our Bibles—is what, for today, I have decided that my more experienced Christian friends must mean when they say that prayer is “just being quiet and listening to God.”

I have begun a prayer journal to help me on my journey to a better relationship with God. I am going to begin writing down my prayers in the form of P.R.A.Y. (Praises, Requests, Admitting of sins, Yourself) Then I leave the back of the page open so I can eventually record how and when God answered my prayers.

One last thought. Interestingly, one doesn’t make many requests of babies, animals, or dying people. But prayer does involve requests of God. Or, at least, all of Jesus’ recorded prayers to our Father did.

So, conversely to everything I have written here, perhaps, in praying, it is we who are the mute ones—the babies, the animals, the one who lies dying on the raised bed. We think we are doing the speaking when we pray—casting our thoughts out to some invisible, silent troller of words—but actually we are the ones lying awake and voiceless, listening, trying to respond, wanting to cry out and make our needs known, but, ultimately, silent, while God leans over us and speaks and speaks and speaks and speaks...