Grassroots prayer: why so much diffidence?

When getting to know individual members of a local faith-community as a newly arrived Anglican parish priest and facilitator of local ministry I asked (among other things), “How’s your personal prayer life?”  The answer, almost invariably, was something like, “Not great.”

In one sense, that’s healthily honest – better than boasting of a failsafe hotline to the throne of grace. And the subject touches on a person’s innermost privacy into which no one has the right to intrude uninvited.

But if prayer is the wellspring of the mission and ministry of the Church in all her expressions in the world, the difference between one’s internal spirituality and one’s external living out of the radically challenging Gospel, why such diffidence?

Here, I’m addressing individual, private prayer when scattered, not the prayer of the Church which claims more confidence. I treasure perhaps Christianity’s most wordy liturgical tradition but here I’m on about stuff deeper than words. Further, conversations with people of other faith traditions have taught me that Christianity can’t claim exclusivity. Nor can religiosity as a whole; dying people who label themselves agnostic, even atheist, have revealed in my presence inner spirituality very real indeed. I love an understanding of the ancient Sanskrit greeting Namaste: believing that there is a spark of holiness in everything and everyone, that spark in me reaches out to greet the spark in you. Think also of the exchange of spirit-breaths in the hongi.

• So I claim every human is gifted with faith however unstructured, unfocused and un-nurtured.
• Next, I offer the proposition that the whole of the wondrous, still-evolving universe is infused, now and since it’s seeding, with grace, both infinite and intimate.
• Third, I trust the deep tradition that insists that the Infinite Other calling us into prayer is closer to each of us than we are to ourselves, so we ought not  imagine that we are reaching  out to a deity on a remote throne who on a whim may use a gadget to exercise remote control. 
• Fourth, if the Church is to be renewed from grassroots up (rather than languishing under the powers of remote hierarchies, clericalism and nostalgia for the good old days) the most essential yeast for the ferment must be true prayer at the grassroots and in the margins of faith. Recall that the New Testament Greek “laos” from which our laity derives means ALL the people. A caution: in my experience the call to grassroots-up renewal means a long, hard journey with temptation to compromise not only with top-down institutionalism but also with nostalgia within our local faith communities for the long-gone good old days of comfortable “churchianity”.  

Much as I’m inspired by wonderful mentors of prayer through the centuries, Much as I respect many  given spiritual authority in the Church, I don’t believe that I may delegate my  personal prayer-life to others.

I’ve done my share of spiritual mentoring but I don’t believe anyone can teach another person to pray with deep integrity as if one’s innermost spiritual lifer could be learned like arithmetic. Yes, when Jesus’ friends asked him how to pray he answered with what we all know and love as the Lord’s Prayer. We’ve all heard good homilies on its wealth of inspiration to go deep and wide in our personal and communal spirituality. But there’s much more to Jesus’ `teachings and life.

 I’m old, mostly detached from institutional church life by physical disability. I retain a discipline of saying an Office, praying the day’s Propers and so on.  Before my partner in a marriage now in its seventh decade and I had to move into a rest home my oratories (personal prayer-places) equally included our garden and kitchen. The principle remains.

I picture my minute, faltering offering of prayer entering, along with all life, all creation, into the all-embracing Dance of the Three.

I reckon I’ve learned much about personal prayer from the life of land and from marriage: the land because it includes vast life, much of it hidden, relating, living, dying yet embraced in the process of dynamic wholeness; marriage because it’s a mutual, constantly renewed commitment to true partnership, giving priority neither to the object self nor object partner but to the subject content of our relationship, demanding listening hearts.  I may fool others and myself sometimes, Lesley (and God) never! People vary in prayer-temperaments. Prayer that’s part of my being rather than something I “do” majors on thanksgiving, listening and simply laying down my concerns rather than asking for interventions. I’m happy that others differ in approach – say, major on intercession. Our differences are among the reasons why we’re called into communities, communion, of faith.