I’m suggesting that we start praying, including talking to God, before we know who God is. This is true for an adult who doesn’t belong to a particular tradition and yet lights a candle for a friend going through hardship. It is also true for a small child being raised in a church. The children’s minister teaches the kids little songs about God and little prayers to God; it is in the singing and the praying that the children come to have some sense of who God is.
Theologian Karl Rahner says that the word “God” is the term that culture and history give us to ask the really big questions about ourselves and the world. The term “God” helps us ask questions about the meaning of the universe and of our lives within it. History also gives us the word “God” to use when we are talking about aspects of our experience that open up beyond ourselves, which many might call spiritual. We need language to gesture towards parts of our lived reality that defy explicit definition; the word “God” helps.7 I would add to Rahner’s two-fold description of the word “God”; it is also the term that history and culture give us to use when we desire to be in relationship with that which we cannot pinpoint but still feel called to. It is a word that helps us pray.
Electronic Networks
When I first joined Facebook several years ago, I was pleasantly surprised that this social-media tool is so often used for prayer requests. People ask for prayers when loved ones are ill, when preparing for a job interview, when embarking on a new project or adventure. Sometimes people post specifics, “Pray for me at 10:00am tomorrow!” and sometimes not, “Unspoken prayer request. God knows the need.” Often, people make space for various interpretations of what they are asking for, requesting “prayer, mojo, or good vibes.” A lot of people are doing something that fits within an expansive understanding of prayer, using a variety of language. Some of these people are “spiritual but not religious.” Many have experienced harm in churches or other religious settings. Some never had a religious upbringing; others reject the terms of the religious tradition they inherited. In the midst of all that diversity, uncertainty, and ambiguity, people are reaching out to relate to God, or the Holy, or the Universe—whatever term they prefer—and they are asking others to join them. Remarkably, the communities of prayer that emerge do not require those involved to agree on all the terms—what is meant by “prayer” and precisely who is “God”—in order to be part of the collective communication.8 Long before all the answers about who God is are worked out, people move towards relationship with God. Drawn by intuition or curiosity or hope or longing—we pray.
The act of prayer reveals a deep hope that God cares for us. Prayer shows the hope and, in some sense, the act of believing that our lives do not play out in a neutral setting or a context apathetic to our existence. In praying, we act as if God is interested in our lives and in us, as if we are already in relationship with God and more is invited. Various religious traditions, including Christianity, affirm this and take it further based on other forms of revelation or knowledge: that God desires goodness, moves toward love, urges compassion, and is justice.
Prayer and Perspective
When we pray, we bring ourselves and our concerns before God—precisely the God who is beyond our comprehension. This shifts the framing of our own existence. It can alter our sense of scale.
Our vision (literal and metaphorical) is usually honed on the mid-range—on trees and cars and people and buildings. Given a microscope, we can focus on much smaller realities, on bacteria and cells and such. As I understand it, scientists have not found an absolute end in this direction—more powerful tools help humans see ever smaller parts and particles. Similarly, given a telescope, we can focus on much bigger realities, on stars and planets and galaxies. Our most powerful tools have not found the limit of the cosmos, but instead reveal ever greater horizons.
So as we walk along the street, focusing on trees and cars and other people, we occupy one small strata of an enormous continuum, stretching from microbes to galaxies. It can be awe-inspiring to look up at the stars and recognize ourselves as a tiny element of a vast cosmos. It can, in different ways, help us see our own size more clearly. Stargazing can shift our sense of scale.
In prayer, we put ourselves in intentional relationship with God, whose reality dwarfs the universe and undergirds electrons. God is bigger than the cosmos and smaller than the tiniest particle yet discovered. God is the Creator of the whole continuum. We bring our present conditions, our painful pasts, and our dreams for the future before God eternal, Creator of time itself. Concerned as we are with the minutiae of our own daily lives, we benefit from stepping back to allow our view to include both the small details and the God of all Creation. Prayer involves bringing ourselves and our concerns before the Holy, the mystery of the Universe that holds all things together. This can shift our sense of scale and give us a different perspective on our own realities.
Such a shift does not simply make us insignificant. We already affirm in praying the belief that God cares for us—each and every one. Rather, it emphasizes that we are part of something more expansive than ourselves and that our advocate in all of this, God, is more expansive still. Such a shift of scale does not negate our experiences of pain and suffering. However, these experiences are placed within a larger context that is, we affirm, concerned with our well-being. Prayer assures us that we do not face the difficulties of life on our own. The Holy, God, the Universe—whatever name we choose—desires goodness, moves towards love, and is (at the very least) rooting for us.
Prayer and Formation
In addition to granting us perspective, prayer also forms our habits of mind and emotion. Humans are profoundly malleable. We can be shaped by what happens to us and by what we, ourselves, do. Intentional prayer is a way of shaping ourselves in accordance to the commitments and values that we hold and that are held by our community. Specifically, prayer shapes the habits of mind and emotion that are sometimes called “affections.”9 For example, gratitude is an affection. It includes both an intellectual assessment that something is a good part of one’s life and, in some sense, a gift rather than a necessary outcome. It also includes an emotion of gladness and thanksgiving. If someone makes a point of being grateful for specific things in their life on a daily basis, that person will develop a habit of gratitude, a disposition of thankfulness that will influence how she understands and interacts with the world.10 The practices of different communities cultivate particular affections. Theologian Don. E. Saliers says, “whatever else it may include, the Christian faith is a pattern of deep emotions” or affections.11