Rethinking What it Means to Pray

I don’t know when it happened exactly – when I stopped praying. I didn’t make it obvious; to onlookers in church it would have looked like I was deep in prayer, but in reality I was taking a mental nap. I had become so good at pretending to pray that sometimes I would even trick myself into thinking that what I was doing was praying.

It wasn’t always that way though. When I was a young child I took prayer very seriously. I would concentrate really hard on making sure that my hands were perfectly pointed straight up to the ceiling as added insurance that my prayers would directly get to the Big G without any delay, so I believed. If I was really serious about my prayer, like my frequent petitions to God for a gold dress and long hair, I’d get on my knees as well – just to be extra sure. But as I grew older, my fervor for prayer waned.

I’ve visited many Christian churches: Catholic, Anglican, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist and mega churches, none of which seem to hold the answer to my prayer woes. I’ve never been good at using zealous language, like vanquishing demons with the blood of Christ and the sort, which is common at charismatic-type churches. The words feel clunky and contrived coming out of my mouth. Nor do I possess the crafted solemnity of the clergy from the more mellow Catholic and Anglican churches, who contently sit in quiet concentration as their fingers move steadily along prayer beads — my mind is either too scattered to keep up the necessary concentration levels, or too quiet that I end up nodding off...

Excerpt from post originally published on Madame Noire.

#spirituality