Prayer isn’t a shopping list, it’s about a relationship with ‘the great loving heart beating at the centre of the universe, the power for love that fuels all that is good in the world’, reflects writer and author Clare Boyd-Macrae.
‘An independent study showed that patients in a Korean experiment who were prayed for showed recovery rates twice as high as their counterparts who were not.’
A friend who knows I’m interested in these things recently sent me this piece of spurious information from the Internet. And it wouldn’t surprise me if those prayed for did heal faster, or had better recovery rates than the others.
But it gives the wrong impression of prayer. Most of us, I suspect, think of prayer as a kind of shopping list. We tell God the things we want, and then wait for God to do something. This view is only strengthened by the fact that many people, even quite thoroughly secular ones, find themselves uttering desperate little prayers when they are in a really tight corner, like ‘please God, oh please, don’t let her die’.
Prayer is not a shopping list or an emergency button. It’s what you do to develop a relationship and to let some of the big strong power of love that is God filter in to your life and the life of those around you.
To me, prayer is something I do every day, whether I feel like it or not, just as I talk to the members of my family every day, even if I’m feeling grumpy and would much rather spend the day alone.
Prayer is often a completely silent thing, a meditation or contemplation: just breathing quietly, being conscious of God all around me, breathing God in, storing up strength and patience and love to face the day.
Other times prayer is exultant and joyous, praising God for all the wonderful things and people, opportunities and happiness that fill my life. Still other times I let all my anger and despair hang out, asking God why such terrible things crush the innocent. Or else I just lie like something washed up on a beach, feeling swamped by depression or loss, or full of hateful emotions for another human being.
I find that when I pray for situations I am involved in, I change. If I pray about some conflict that seems irresolvable, something in me softens and bends. When I pray for strength simply to tackle the daily round with grace and humour, there is more chance that this will in fact happen.
It’s not a simple cause and effect thing. It’s not as though if I pray in the morning I’ll have a good day, and if I don’t, I won’t. But if, over days and weeks I make a habit of stilling my mind and spending time opening my heart to the great good power at the heart of the universe, things are noticeably different. There is a quality to my relationships and my work that is lacking if I don’t make time for prayer and simply run frazzled, from one thing to another.
So, what about those Korean patients? Over the years I have been involved in praying for many sick and dying people. Sometimes they are healed physically, other times people of enormous faith, my mother being one, die. But the prayers make a difference. Prayer always makes a difference, because it activates the part of us that is not closed to wonder and possibilities and the unexpected. The regular practice of prayer lets something into our lives that is life-giving and healing, whether or not the healing is physical.
And to me, ultimately, prayer is all about deepening my relationship with God. There are other ways of doing this: talking to other Christians and people of different faiths, attending worship, reading the Bible, or sitting in front of a candle. But I believe that God is the creator of the universe, the great loving heart beating at its centre, the power for love that fuels all that is good in the world, the being that was personified in Jesus of Nazareth, who lived with such freedom, integrity, courage and love. This big and boundless God calls forth my allegiance and my worship, and is a source of grace in living that I cannot do without. That’s why I pray.
Praying with a Mantra
As a young Christian, I was often frustrated that while I was exhorted to pray, no one seemed to provide practical details on exactly how to do this. As an older believer I can understand that even fervent pray-ers know that prayer is different for everyone, and don’t want to impose what works for them on others.
It changed my prayer life, however, and consequently everything in my world, when I encountered a group who were willing to share ways of connecting with the Divine that they found helpful.
The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) was founded by John Main, a Benedictine monk who lived from 1926-82. As a younger man, he spent time in Malaysia and found that he was better able to pray using the disciplines of Hindu meditation than the Christian ones he grew up with.
Returning to the West and taking religious orders, he discovered that despite the popular perception of meditation as an Eastern spiritual technique, it was in fact also an ancient Christian practice described by John Cassian and other Desert Fathers and Mothers in the fourth and fifth centuries.
He proceeded to spread the word, and the WCCM now has branches all over the world. Their basic teaching is simple. You spend 20-30 minutes, twice daily, sitting still in meditation. And you use a mantra.
The mantra they recommend is ‘Maranatha’, an Aramaic word meaning, ‘Come, Lord’. I prefer to use the name of Jesus, repeated in threes – ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’ Using this way of prayer regularly has changed me.
Sitting still, breathing steadily, centring myself and saying the mantra reminds me over and over, in an almost physical way, that God loves the world and everyone in it, and that I want to be a part of that big love. Through the filter of the mantra, pain, anger, jealousy, joy, pride, confusion – all the emotions that used to render me helpless – are contained within the knowledge that God loves me too.
Making time to say the mantra every day isn’t easy. Even harder is the praying itself, during which my mind flits around, distracting itself with thoughts about the day just gone, the day ahead, the shopping list, the idea for a faith column. And I bring it gently back.
That’s all that happens. Some days I will have been sitting for fifteen minutes and I realise I have said the mantra precisely once. That’s ok. What matters is setting aside the time to centre on God, who understands our busy, worrying, human minds.
The wonderful thing about the mantra is that I can take it anywhere, any time. Concern about the world, conflict with a loved one, exhaustion, happiness, a daily walk, all can be folded through with the mantra, infiltrated by the reminder of God’s love. Helping me, in a tiny way, to be more loving myself.
See Clare’s blog at: http://www.clareboyd-macrae.com/
Her latest book, Off the Page, is available online:
https://www.mediacomeducation.org.au/shop/off-the-page/
For more information about John Main and the World Community for Christian Meditation, see: https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/christian-meditation