Why I Don’t Pray Easy

“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.” – Mother Teresa

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer.” – The First Letter to the Christians by the Apostle Peter, 3:12

At exactly 7 a.m. a knot begins to form in the pit of my stomach. I feel cold. My mind races frantically, then blanks. My mouth dries out. I clutch my fists until my knuckles whiten. I stare at nothing, at silence.

I don’t pray easy. People who just talk God-talk to themselves or at the wall bother me – whether it’s the elder in church who uses his prayer-time to give the sermon he’s always wanted to give, or to tell us that good people vote for the party he prefers, or to make sure we know that the good songs are the ones about ebon pinions and not the ones about pierced ears, or to describe in graphic detail the state of someone’s gonorrhea; whether it’s the Bible major praying at the beginning of class who thinks that if he sprinkles the words “Father God” in among his cliché praises often enough his holiness barometer may raise him into paradise, and the girls who like the holy types might swoon, especially the blonde he glances at every ten seconds while he thinks everyone else has their eyes closed and isn’t looking; whether it’s the stock King James blather that passes for steadfast holiness among the more wrinkled believers who do not find its poetry moving because it’s the Bible after all not some piece of art, who half the time themselves don’t know that “thou” is personal, that “you” is formal, and whose plastered sternness would crack with much headshaking and muttering if they were to learn that KJV 1. Samuel 25:22 reads, “So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall.”

Or whether it’s me stumbling through an embarrassingly formulaic public prayer because after all these devos I’ve attended I’m supposed to know how to do this kind of thing. I don’t really, not without putting on a show. And most often I have a hard time finding anything to say since the last cologned whisper into my ear before I walked to the microphone was to be a good boy and by all means not pray anything too personal, too controversial, too out-of-line because – the implication hangs heavy in the dusty curtains lining the room and in the polite smiles of those bowing their heads – public prayer is about the feelings of the people listening, not about me or about the God outside the approved four or five versions of invocation.

By far, I bother me most.

Seven a.m. is the time I’ve set aside for prayer. My prayers always begin blank and nervous, in a helpless moment. What can I say to the Creator of the Universe? Ten or fifteen sentences crowd my mind right away, sketches of pleas, excuses, explanations, things I liked and wanted to say thank-you for. They wrangle like a classroom full of fourth graders storming doorwards at the recess bell. I raise my mental hand and they fall silent. They form a nice line. I look at their little childish faces, and I sigh. I notice a few of the ones in the back exchange mischievous glances. I sigh again.

God is not that petty, I think. Most of what I have to say is about me, about what I tell myself would be good for me and for others. Childish things. And I’m pretty sure God doesn’t fall for the lies waiting towards the end of the line after the safe prayers thanking for this, asking forgiveness for that – the lies I tell myself without realizing it, about what I need, about what I ought to have.

But God knows all that. So I wait silently. God will come. He always comes, I tell myself, and I dismiss the lurch in my stomach. Nerves, I think in a British accent. Bloody nerves.

How to begin? The problem with this problem – like most of my problems with faith – is that I know the right answer already. The Bible and C.S. Lewis between them have got it covered. I’m even convinced of the answer: God desires us to share everything we want with Him. It’s just that I don’t believe it, not whole-heartedly. I have a hard time wanting to share myself, even if I thought that what I have to say is at all interesting to someone who already knows everything. It feels a bit like playing “Twinkle, twinkle little star” on the piano for an audience consisting of Chopin, Beethoven and Bach. I can spare myself the patronizing nods, the tight-lipped smiles, the smirking comments after I leave the room.

And I have an even harder time sharing with someone whom I can’t understand (being the All in All and all that), who spends most of His time leaving me to my own problems (as far as I can tell), whose master plans don’t need to take me into account (given that He’ll let me go to hell if I want to), and who has me completely at His mercy. I mean, I don’t even open myself to most people whom I know well, who love me, and who I can protect myself from. How am I supposed to have a trusting chat with God?

I could fall back on what I know how to do. After all, I grew up saying a nice prayer every night. At three, it was dear God, thank you for the house. For the sandbox. For the car. At four, it was thankyouforthefoodamen. In preschool, it was please help learn to tie my shoes tomorrow. Then, help me pass the test. Help my favorite soccer team win. Help me win. Help me talk to that girl. Help me not to drink that much vodka again (That one worked: The smell now makes me ill.). Help me find the right words when they ask me about you. Help me be patient. Get me out of this town. God, help me get this job. Thanks.

But given that God is someone who doesn’t talk back a whole lot, all I feel left with taking that route is talking at God about myself. Or at the wall. At the sky. At the silence.

It’s the silence that I stare at now that I’m trying to pray. I breathe deeply a few times, and something stirs. I close my eyes as things brush up against my mind, slowly and confused at first. The silence begins to tingle. There are no words yet, only flashes of scenes and voices, fantasies, memories, like through splintered mirrors. I stretch inside myself, and the silence beneath all the glistening shimmers darkly, the surface of a quiet lake at night. As if a whole night passes in its rippling, something glistening like moonlight stirs across the dark. When it reaches me, it touches my face like a light wind, winds around my neck like a warm breath. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. There is a burning in the marrow of my bones.

My mind kicks back in. This is biology, I think, the chemical process of concentration, the synapses firing weirdly in the brain. Or my overactive imagination. Or if it’s God – whatever God is – then it will have me no matter what, even if I return to the safe, dry husks of God-talk. I begin the side-stepping: Almighty God… The words are like smooth stones in my palms, familiar, throwable. I get a hold of myself as all my senses kick back in. My mind is in sharp focus. But even with the slingshot words to shield myself, I do not look up; it seems wrong. The wind is roaring in my head. The silence feels like underwater. I feel my soul or whatever it is harden like a metal blade, and begin to sink. The silence waits.

Now speak, I tell myself. Speak.

And here lies one of the mysteries of prayer, I think. Like all good things in life, prayer is waiting. We pour out a good red wine into a decanter so it can breathe before being tasted. We keep the last bit of chocolate sitting there a little longer than the rest. We hold back a smile a second longer so that means more when it comes. We allow a conversation to pause, allow ourselves time to nod, allow the other person time to think. We stop our march outdoors for a moment to smell the morning air. We move slowly into the caresses of love, waiting, probing, letting wait.

Like all good things in life, prayer is waiting. And when we wait, delayed like the last drowsy moments of sleep, like the last line of a story, like the slow unfolding of a smile, like a song that has run through all its repetitions and pauses and dragged out runs, the final chord dissolves and becomes the presence of God. I breathe.

He is here, and He listens now. I am first surprised, than flattered, then terrified. My bones shake with fever. The source of all being is here.

This is where other people say what’s on their mind, I think. What’s on my mind? I grope for thoughts. “Our Father,” I begin.

But the “yes” is there already and it is too much. I know who I’m supposed to be talking to, and all at once I see the first days of the universe, see Abraham raising his dagger over Isaac, Mount Sinai shaking and the Red Sea splitting, can smell the milk and honey of Canaan, and everywhere I see the birth of life – but I also see the blood of lambs and pigeons trickling down stone altars, the blood of Egypt’s firstborn (I am the firstborn son, I think with a start), the blood of the martyrs glistening around their unbent knees, the blood-stained crown of thorns. My temples throb. I stare at feet with nails through them. I cannot look up.

I revise. I hear my own voice: “Almighty God, the Father, and the Son…” I stop again.

Who am I to speak? This is when I understand the Catholics, wanting to speak to Mary, who can pass it on to Jesus, who can pass it on to God. I understand the ancient Jews, why God gave them rules about what to kill and how so they could know that they please Him. I want the written prayers of the Book of Common Prayer. I want directions.

I had a conversation about this feeling with Tessa at her house one of the times I visited there this summer. One of the things I admire about her is that she is deeply grounded in her faith (and she’s often more on target than I generally speaking), so it didn’t surprise me that her insight on the matter was the most encouraging I’ve heard so far.

I’d told Tessa that what I’ve been learning, really, about God these last few years is how much greater He is than anything I can imagine, how terrible and awe-inspiring and unbearably other He is, you know, the Creator of the Universe and so on.

“Maybe,” she said, “you feel comfortable keeping God distant. I think people do that sometimes to keep Him out of their business.”

I was a little stunned, but I deserved it. It is I who just moments earlier recited one of my favorite mantras: body and spirit are one. What I do with one, I do with the other. Tessa was right: If God is present when I pray, He is present when I don’t. It’s I who’s closed.

I explained to her that really I don’t want to take Him for granted. I don’t want to pretend like He’s my buddy, like I can even approach knowing Him on some sort of personal level. He’s not. I can’t. I don’t.

“But you do know Him well,” she said. “Is it so hard to imagine that God cares for you because He wants to?”

God can do and say what He wants to, I said. And He says lots.

Tessa looked at me with just enough incredulity to let me know I was being stupid.

“I mean,” she said, her wide blue eyes holding my shifting gaze, “at Judgment Day we will each stand before Him one at a time. He’ll look at each of us one at a time, and we’ll all answer one at a time. Why would He not care what each of us say now when we pray? He says we should ask Him for what we need. I believe that. I’ve seen prayers answered so many times…”

I nodded, feeling a little resentful. I don’t like to be out-argued quite so smoothly without at least having a chance to be ornery. But Tessa was giving examples of answered prayers that meant something to her, and so I dropped it.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, looking out the window.

And she is right, of course. I do know all these things. I know prayers are not a slot machine – but that does not mean I don’t resent praying in vain, especially if what I’m praying about is important. I know prayers are about me finding God, and not about me making God in my image – but that does not mean I find that temptation easy to resist, or feel irked when He disagrees with me (which is fairly often). I know prayers are about making myself helpless in the hands of God – but that does not mean that I trust someone whom I know – and will always know – mainly by hearsay.

But there is something quieting about seeing the same knowledge glint in those blue eyes, and not flinch.

As those eyes come to me now in the darkness of praying, I notice that I don’t know how much time has passed since 7 a.m. Ten minutes, maybe. I’ve been speaking into the silence now, about everything. I’ve even been speaking about things that words cannot say, speaking silently from within, from some place between my ribs. As I do, a familiar racking enters my body, the same submerging that I know from flu fevers. This is what the saints call the joy of prayer, and like all joys worth having, it costs. I do not flinch.

In the end, strangely feeling much stronger, I open my eyes. The chairs, the cabinets, the bed, the windows are in their usual places. They look refreshingly like chairs, cabinets, a bed, and windows are supposed to look – normal and familiar. I can hear the cat slink along the wood floor of the living room. I can hear the neighbor’s children shout as they run to the family van, can hear the car doors slam. The morning light is very white.

I rise, and all I feel now is an incredible lightness. I smile. God is in the silence. The creator of all being is here, and I know it.