My Prayer

I like this definition of prayer quite a bit. It's freer and more expansive than what I learned prayer was growing up in parochial school. There, we learned formal prayers by rote. The "Our Father" (known in the Protestant world as the Lord's Prayer), the "Hail Mary," the "Glory Be," the "Morning Offering," "Grace Before Meals," "Grace After Meals," "The Act of Contrition," the prayer to your Guardian Angel ... along with all the formal prayers that together form the Mass.

In Catholic school, these prayers were said along with the Pledge of Allegiance in the mornings. We stood as a group and rolled out the prayers by rote before and after each recess. We were encouraged to stop by the church for 'visits' and have other less formal conversations with our God.

I loved most of it. Embraced it all as a child.

Then Vatican II hit and changes came to the Catholic church. I gradually became more and more aware of my personal commitment and responsibility for my faith. Though the formal prayers were still important, I had a lot more informal prayers going on. Even though I attended a public high school, I still made frequent 'visits' to church, just to have some one-on-one time with my Lord. Only now, instead of kneeling before the tabernacle, I found a spot on the floor where I liked to sit cross-legged ... a bit further back ... a lot less formal.

I became highly involved in music ministry, first as part of the 'adult choir,' then as a music leader in the folk masses, and finally as a cantor. The main music of my life was liturgical music. I lived it and breathed it, sang it while singing praise.

In my early college years I got involved in the Charismatic movement within the church. I joined prayer groups. Occasionally I attended functions at the Newman Center at the local university (an organization that supports campus ministry). Prayer became even more informal, even more personal, yet communal at the same time. It was personal prayer spoken aloud.

And time moved on. Through a series of events, I became even more closely associated with the Church ... to the point of being a full-time volunteer as a campus minister here in north Idaho. I was also one of the resident funeral singers.

More time. More life experiences.

For several years now, my life with the church has been purely tangential. I stopped attending Sunday services when the community got too conservative, when politics entered the spiritual arena, when clergy was not held accountable for their own misdeeds. I stopped attending Sunday services when I'd leave Mass feeling more angry and alienated than when I arrived in the church parking lot. I now attend a weekly quilting group that is based in one of the local parishes, but that's about as far as it goes.

Out of these circumstances, my prayer life changed once again. My prayers tend to have few words these days. My prayer tends to be more action-oriented. My prayers are found in the quiet. They're more meditative, allowing my mind wander ... and finding that I am saying 'Thank You' a lot for this blessed and privileged life that I live. I end up asking for guidance on how to best use my talents and abilities to serve others. I ask to learn how to forgive and transform injury into something life-giving.

So the above definition of prayer fits well with my current state of spirituality. It's an attitude of the soul, agape', wide-open to love, to God. Trying to be wide-open to the needs of the people in my circle of life. Opening my mind and softening my heart to this force I call God in aspects other than the pieces of him I got to know as a child.

And every now and again, in rare moments, I find myself humming a melody I learned in church ... repeating the words of the old prayers and liturgies. There is peace in those familiar phrases and rituals.