A Radical Rethinking of Prayer
It's not about talking, it's about listening
Prayer is a difficult word for me. Specific to the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is defined as words or intentions addressed toward an external deity for supplication or thanksgiving. By that definition, if one is not a member of those traditions, or has no concept of a deity or intercessor who requires appeasing or can do anything to help you, prayer doesn’t make sense.
For most of my life, that was how I understood prayer, and I didn’t like it. As an impetuous 8-year-old, I angered my parents by standing up in synagogue during the High Holidays and loudly proclaiming, “I don’t know who I am talking to, so I don’t want to pray.” My father quietly escorted me out and scolded me for being contrary. That would have been an opening for an interesting theological discussion about how I viewed God, but it never happened. I was just expected to follow form and speak prescribed words to someone I didn’t know, didn’t believe in, and had no relationship with.
Clearly, I was already a little radical. I also spent a decade attending an Episcopal school where I was required to go to daily chapel and recite the Lord’s Prayer. This also held no meaning for me, and my refusal to participate in a performative prayer of piety turned my resistance into a subtle act of rebellion. I learned to recite it in a single breath – backwards.
I was just expected to follow form and speak prescribed words to someone I didn’t know, I didn’t believe in, and had no relationship with.
For decades, I believed that prayer was a waste of my time and energy. I had zero concept of an external deity, and my rational mind knew that no one and nothing needed my praise and certainly wasn’t going to come to my rescue. This resistance to prayer is probably one of the things that sent me running towards Ch’an/Zen Buddhism and Classical Daoism: there was no “sky god” I had to pray to. The Buddha isn’t a deity, and the Dao is completely impartial: it doesn’t care. I could recite sutras or scriptures all day long, but they weren’t “prayers.”
It took almost 30 years for me to come to another understanding of prayer. It arrived in the form of a 1000-year-old Juniper tree. I was three days into a week-long backpacking trip in California’s Sierra Nevada. My hiking partner and I were coming down off a high peak into a steep, forested valley. It was filled with twisted trees and mist, and tired and half-blinded, I carefully picked my way down the rocky trail.
Suddenly, I found myself facing the most spectacularly gnarled, ancient juniper appearing out of the mist, clinging impossibly to a rocky overhang. I came to a dead-stop in front of it, and gazed, dumbstruck. I had seen plenty of ragged, old trees, but I had never experienced this. The thunderous silence of the tree spoke of strength, perseverance, wisdom, majesty, and a kind of ineffable beauty that could only be described as fierce. Something in me broke open and, as if struck down, I fell to my knees in utter awe. “Oh my God!” I cried out while tears streamed down my face.
I felt like Moses before the Burning Bush: the immensity of something I couldn’t comprehend left me breathless and completely crushed. I was nobody and nothing before this tree, and yet I somehow knew that this was everything. The only words that came to me were “Thank you.” Over and over, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
I don’t know how long I was there before I could pick myself up and reluctantly tear myself away from this visitation. It might have been minutes or lifetimes. I remember very little of the rest of the hike that day, except that I felt as if I were floating. Everything I saw was filled with a radiant, exhilarating, alive presence. I was on Holy Ground.
From that day forward, my understanding of prayer radically changed. It was a tectonic shift.
From that day forward, my understanding of prayer radically changed. It was a tectonic shift. Before this, I realized that I had believed prayer was unidirectional. I, as the “pray-er,” was knocking on God’s door and pleading with Him/Her/It to listen to me and/or give me what I wanted. But my beloved Juniper showed me that it was, in fact, God (or whatever you want to call the sacred), that was knocking on my door, begging me to open it and hear what He/She/It/They had to say. It is my willingness to open the door to the sacred that matters. That’s the prayer. All I have to do is listen to what it has to say. Hineni, as Moses said at the Bush. “Here I am.” Shema, says God. “Listen.”
This is what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught. He said that it is not so much us seeking God, but God seeking us. God is screaming over the din, “Hey! I’m right here!” We just have to get our heads out of our books, devices, expectations, demands, or self-absorbed thoughts and turn to look. Prayer, then, is nothing more than my turning to look, or giving my attention to the Divine-of-my-understanding with a kind of open receptivity. We don’t have to play hide-and-seek with God, and we don’t have to bang on the door to get Him to open up. God isn’t playing hard-to-get. It’s us!
In retrospect, I understand that my previous resistance to prayer was my own lack of humility. It was based on the belief that my rational mind had access to all, and that there was nothing greater than my own understanding. In other words, it was a kind of adolescent intellectual hubris: I knew everything, I didn’t need anyone’s help, and I was solely the product of my own will. I was completely unwilling to consider that I might learn something I didn’t know that I didn’t know or surrender to something greater than myself. The Divine was knocking at the door and I kept refusing to answer, perhaps fearing that if I did, I would have to give a donation, or be proven wrong in my beliefs. It’s almost as if I didn’t want to hear what The Infinite had to say. Like a small child, I had my fingers in my ears, chanting “na,na,na,na,na….”
The Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, is quoted as saying, "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is Thank You, it will be enough." I get it. But it took me years…and a magical juniper tree. Not to be brazen, but I would add another word: “Wow!” It’s the experience of radical amazement or radical awe, such as what happened to me with that tree, that breaks us open and makes us exclaim, “Wow! Thank you for this. Thank you for the opportunity to be alive, to witness all this, to experience all this, to be shown that I don’t know everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Wow! Thank you for this. Thank you for the opportunity to be alive, to witness all this, to experience all this, to be shown that I don’t know everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
I open the door a lot these days. In fact, I pretty much leave it wide open, even if the flies get in. I have taken my fingers out of my ears and my hands from my eyes, and every moment has become an opportunity to hear what God/The Sacred/Ultimate Reality has to say or show. The Divine talks to me in the dirty dishes, the laundry, the sunset, and the painful moments of grief. It talks to me in the cats crying for supper and the laughter of children in the park. It talks to me in the hunger of my belly and the taste of a tangerine. Some days, I am overwhelmed by how chatty The One is! It’s almost as if, like an excited toddler, It is constantly calling out, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”
I don’t call this kind of listening prayer (OK, I still take issue with the word). I call it “Attending.” Attending, as in “giving my attention to,” isn’t in conflict with Eastern non-dual traditions; in fact, it’s the basis of them. Attention is how we discover that there is no external or internal God: it’s all God (or Ultimate Reality or The Dao), and it’s all talking to us. We just need to shut up long enough to listen to the silence that speaks. That’s all the Divine has ever asked for—some space to talk and be heard.
Father Thomas Keating says prayer is “a conversation with God.” A conversation takes two, but these days, I’m not doing any of the talking. I just open the door, invite the Divine in, pour a cup of tea, and let God do all the talking. Like a good friend or neighbor (The Hebrew word for the Presence of God is Shekhina, which comes from Shekhan, or neighbor), I offer space, get my stuff out of the way, and just listen without expectation of what I will hear. I am certain that if I listen, the Divine-of-my-Understanding will tell me something I need to hear (whether I like it or not). Often, it just says, “This. This. This.” And then the only words I ever have to say are “Wow! Thank you.”
It’s enough.