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“Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” –– Jeremiah 29:12-13
We know there is a call to prayer. We know prayer is a key component in a life of faith. We know we should probably pray more than we actually do. What slows our prayer journey to a crawl, if not a procrastinating pause, is not knowing what to say or understanding much about the “why” of it all. Of course, the same could be said about all our relationships (What to say? Why make the effort?). The torment of rehearsing over and over what you’ll say to another in stressful moments charged with emotion, moments that require delicacy and tact to avoid making things worse; the exhaustion of fighting against your indifference or preoccupation, and actually listen; the plaguing suspicion that the response will not be what you desire; and the nagging temptation to conclude it just not worth the effort. Isn’t that the struggle within all relationships? And yet, we still go to the contact list on our phones and make a call. We still agree to meet with friends, work with colleagues, sign up on the dating app, talk through an impasse. Shouldn’t we at least give prayer the same chance?
I am both charmed and instructed by the honesty of Flannery O’Connor’s prayer life. The noted Southern Gothic author kept a prayer journal in which she was forthright with the Lord about her mixed motivations and fleeting faithfulness. In one entry, she prays: “What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh Lord, I am saying, at present I am a cheese, make me a mystic, immediately. But then God can do that –– make mystics out of cheeses. But why should he do it for an ingrate slothful and dirty creature like me … The rosary is mere rote for me while I think of other and usually impious things. But I would like to be a mystic and immediately. But dear God please give some place, no matter how small, but let me know it and keep it … Take [my spirit] dear God because it knows that You are all it should want, and if it were wise You would be all it would want…” (A Prayer Journal, Flannery O’Connor)
Flannery never claims spiritual maturity or depth, and perceives that all relationships, including that one at the heart of prayer, are fraught –– always wanting to stay connected, yet easily exhausted by the effort of it, and distracted by anything and everything that is peripheral to it. And yet, God remains, like a mother who will not forsake a nursing child, and like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home.
Omnipresence and Omniscience, the inescapable presence of God and the complete understanding of God –– comprehended in that context, all of life is a prayer, a journey in the presence of an understanding God. God is always there. God sees it all. Don’t worry as much about what you say to God, but open yourself to the God you are already with.
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