Prayer

Keep Asking

“Prayerful ways are not always easy, for our resistance is great.”

                                           Marianne Williamson (Illuminata)

We had an interesting discussion during the Spirituality group last Sunday. We've been reading the chapter, Ladders to God, in Illuminata, and comparing prayer and meditation. According to Williamson, prayer is when we talk to God, and meditation is when we listen. We talked about the things in our lives that prevent us from being prayerful. One person said that they had difficulty formulating prayers, knowing what to say, how to say it. His prayers always came off as begging and he felt they were annoying to God. Another said, he was good at he meditation part, but not at prayer. In my case, I have a hard time letting go and leaving God in charge.

Prayer, according to Williamson, roots us in relationship to God, and allows us to invoke God's power to heal. But it requires total reliance upon God's mercy, and humility enough to trust that God is willing and able to handle our concerns. Some of us cut our teeth on self-reliance. We were not the center of concern in our childhood lives, and so we learned to take care of ourselves. We didn't ask for what we needed because we knew we wouldn't get it. We separated out from our families early in life, and became the “I'll do it myself” generation. Now, we have trouble asking for help from anyone, and truly, it never occurs to us to ask for help from God. We have to relearn dependence.

We talked in group about our concepts of God—how they change over time. When we were children, God and Santa Claus were mixed up together. God became a kindly old man with a long beard—this generation would think of Gandalf or Dumbledore. God was a kind, but scary, old dude who handed out rewards and punishments according to his assessment of the situation. As we grew and aged, images of God transformed to one's of power and majesty—light and energy, consciousness, all. As we matured, our prayer life did, too. It went from being a series of petitions, to being an experience of the holy, the numinous. We felt ourselves to be surrounded and embraced by divine light; we were within, rather than without.

But all of that aside, we still want to lay our burdens down. To hand them over and never take them up again. We can do this. It may take one-hundred times of laying down the same old bag of rocks before we can let it go, but practice makes perfect, right. Lay it down. Ask the Source for help with whatever is troubling you. Keep doing it until you feel certain you have let it go. Prayer changes you from the inside out, and it will change your life from secular to holy if you let it.

                                                     In the spirit,

                                                        Jane