How Do We Pray? Grace, Mystery, and the Law of the Universe

Let’s start off with a quote from:

Inside cover. Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding The Heart’s True Home, Harper San Francisco, 1992.

“The truth of the matter is we all come to prayer with a tangle mass of motives—altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it,”

I ponder Jan Morris, In My Mind’s Eye: A Thought Diary, Norton, 2018. Here’s her thinking:

“I use the term unitive consciousness to describe a perceptual field, intuitive power and the functional blending of interior/exterior realities. These faculties could not and would not exist without unitive influence. I hope to demystify the notion, to include larger numbers of types of people. My sense is that therapy, self-help books and “experts” can do little to open us up to the unitive state, although these may sensitize and help ready us for a whatever is deepest within. On the other hand, prayer, meditations, certain art and physical disciplines, music and a host of esoteric and traditionally spiritual practices quite easily move us into this inner world in terms of direct experience, pp 66-7. … Perhaps more important, creative people see “nonordinarily.” As a general rule, the greater their psychological health, the more discerning, accurate and whole their perception of reality,” p 67.

Another view of Prayer:

“In essence, prayer is communion with mystery. And for that reason, there can be no one right way to do it, no prescription for prayer that will minister to everyone’s needs. The message implied in the Zen saying: Don’t take other people’s medicine, seems equally applicable to the practice of prayer.”

~ Sherry Ruth Anderson & Patricia Hopkins, The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women, Penguin, 1992.225

And still another view of Prayer:

Sophy Burnham, A Book of Angels: Reflections on Angels Past and Present and True Stories of How They Touch Our Lives, Ballantine Books, 1990. [An interesting view]

“Many people don’t believe in prayer, but prayer is nothing more than thought. It is a yearning of the heart. It is a concentrated thought, gathered and sent out from us, and if by thought we create our world, then surely by the concentrated thought of prayer we create it as well. The problem is that we aren’t taught how to make a prayer that can be heard, that can be answered when we ask, and therefore when we don’t receive the answer—or don’t receive it in the fashion we expect, or in the time frame we set up—we think it wasn’t heard, that prayer is ineffectual or some other cosmic joke.

“But prayer is a law of the universe, like gravity. You don’t even have to believe in God to ask, but you must follow the rules. Imagine there is a giant radio station out in space, beyond the stars, a receiving station, and all you have to do is to beam your thought, your longing to that station, and if it is received clearly, without static, the answer comes pouring down upon you immediately— instantly, with an abundance of delight, for it is the pleasure of the universe to give us what we need.

“The question is, how do we send our thought in such a way that it can be received? pp 222-3… how to pray – don’t use example of “Don’t let my baby die” but rather the positive example of “Thank you for letting my baby live,” p 222.]

[My apologies: Reading, Writing currently consumes most of my dwindling energy.]
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