The trouble about saying prayer, and the reason why a great many otherwise religious and educated persons retreat into crowded rooms of books or laughing faces with panicking pouts, their whole being intent on escaping this moment of intensity presents the seriousness and the silliness of contemporary thought with its fondness for difficulty and adversity, to many armchair generals and quarterbacks, prayer looks too easy.
You attend a crowded Mass each week and consider that each occupant of the polished wooden pews is there just like you filling this hour before a sporting event, before an eating event, or before a shopping event trying to remember where the car is parked, where the keys are, if the doors are locked; the simple responses to the pulpit greetings frighten you; your slumbering brain is awakened and encouraged to request your tongue to make some audible, vocal sound, and your blood boils. A shimmer of honest resentment rearranges this old thought, reanimates that old thought of some ancient misunderstanding that occurred to your best friend’s grandfather’s father when he was thirteen and misbehaving during Mass. Mass participation often feels like the drab, damp precipitation of colorless unasked questions, absolute and protected with a juvenile recess in the mind where this and that snap and flash. You are asked to suffer each week bombarded by the following words, love, sacrifice, patience, faith, hope, mercy, sin, service, obedience, purity, penance. How you suffer, tight lips, tight cheeks, tight eyes, everything pulled and stretched like a rubber band, waiting to be released. You must listen to this reading, recite in unison that prayer. Mass prayer sounds beautiful, cohesive, intellectual. The the thought of private prayer scares and intimidates you. Your fear grows--slowly and painfully, and over time each day without private prayer allows you to construct a village, a moat, a castle, and a tower to remove the idea of private personal prayer from your modern skull altogether.
The Mass prayers are old and were created and preserved because somebody--not the general public, but the church leaders--wanted them. Each prayer you recite during Mass has a specific length, specific purpose, specific place in the liturgy. You are given the responsibility to create and preserve your private prayers. This simple fact sometimes scares, sometimes annoys, sometimes petrifies you from praying. Some people commission somebody else to write them a prayer or two. Some downtrodden creative creature with a MFA is cajoled into signing a contract: and, from that instant, his battles with the devil and his clients begin.
Early inspiration gives him a pleasing and ingenious words and phrasings. Full of optimism, he starts to write it, starts to recite it aloud. By the time he has finished an excellent first draft, he is informed that certain deceased family members must be included and at least three Latin words or phrases and at least two French words must be included and now prayers are needed for weekday and Sunday meals and bedtime, Federal holidays, religious holidays, and will he kindly create simple, contemporary sounding prayers accordingly? This baffles the author greatly. He is aware of the current animosity directed toward all the deceased family members, toward the living family members, toward the living family members in hiding; he is aware of the gracious and graceful gestures which both charm and soothe eyes of many casual observers; he is aware of barrenness in the zone where the mind and soul are located, there is no goodness, no holiness, no kindness playing there in any shape or form. And he had allowed for this in his original conception of the prayer, by making the prayer a gesture of almost perpetual silence punctuated with “Dear God, I give you all my love, all my hope, all my praise for allowing me to walk and talk these crazy days. Amen. The unfolding of the silence, could either add depth, breadth, or sense of great intellectual thought.
He takes a walk around two blocks, ties a clove of garlic around his neck, and starts to work to renovate his piece. He is discouraged at times, but somehow continues, perseveres. With almost superhuman diligence he conceives the only possible prayer which will fit the requirements and necessities of this job. He has finished the final draft of the prayer and is about to print it and send it to his client, when he learns from an intermediary that there is another slight hitch. Instead of being in ordinary paragraph form, it seems that this conversation with God has to be composed in old English, in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme.
By this time our author has accepted his fate, decided to allow this thing to remain in his system: or, rather, he has worked so hard that he feels he cannot abandon the prayer now. He hunts through this thesaurus, that dictionary, these psalms, those verses, and at length finds new inspiration. The only proviso is that this prayer does not need to be big and bold and heavy, but one with a dash of levity, a hint of brevity. This prayer can be viewed as a introduction or potential contract. With notes for the prayer under his arm he staggers between church, coffee shop, bookstore, library. He reads the prayer--smiles--chuckles--thoroughly enjoys it. Then a cloud passes twitching his brow. He wonders if his clients will enjoy, if they will recite it while relaxing near the water cooler or if they will want a new version with a new twist, a contemporary vehicle in the style and vernacular of Pound, Eliot,Arnold.
Now, the prayer needs to have a catchy refrain or a trendy, instant catch phrase.
Returning to his client the author approaches them slowly, cautiously. He glances into his client’s face looking for tight lips, tight cheeks, tight eyes, tight forehead. He presents the prayer, waits for a response, watches as the eyes move above the paper. He wishes that he was on the lost on the Amazons River or lost in Paris. He waits. It is easy to be the critic, to find fault, to find deficiencies, to want more of this, less of that. The author waits for a reply with thoughts of shepherds, doves, and loaves dancing in his head. He waits with thoughts of penance, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, penuriousness. He watches each movement of the eyebrow, each movement of the pupil. He waits for signs of intelligence, artificial, natural, organic, or somewhere in between.
Prayer requires thought, patience, diligence, creativity. Prayer requires repetition. Prayer needs to become a part of your daily routine. Prayer can have lightness. Prayer can inspire thoughts of the Seine River at sunset in August as the streetlamps come on, inspire thoughts of serenity, inspire thoughts of peace.
If you need help with composing or saying your private, personal prayer, help is always nearby.
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