When we say, "I don't know how to pray..."

a series re-imaging our idea of what prayer is

Have you ever read a familiar passage in your Bible, or some kind of meditative prayer book, and last time you read it you underlined a certain phrase or sentence? But this time reading the exact same passage, you underlined something different?

Something else stood out to you. The words didn’t change. You changed.

Because prayer is not the words or images we use.

Those are excavation tools.

Prayer is the ever-present on-going interior conversation you are having with God about the life you find yourself in.

That’s what you’re trying to get to. That’s what you’re trying extract out of the hard casing of noise, fear, and ego in an everyday life.

That’s where God wants to meet with you.

So what words or images are helping you exhume that conversation?

What’s your favorite song right now?

What quote or passage keeps calling you back to it.

You can’t get prayer wrong… because it’s already happening inside of you.

But you can ignore the ever present on going conversation that you’re already having… and that will leave you soul sick.

We often confuse the mechanics of prayer with the essence of prayer. The essence of prayer is the Love of God. The mechanics are the words, images, music, etc. we use to open us up to Love.

I hope over the next weeks these simple images help you on your journey to Love.

Here’s a poem I’ve been loving for excavating that deep conversation….

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This is a series of images and meditations I put together to “re-image” our idea of what prayer can be. I think we often feel like we fail at prayer because we can’t accomplish the internal image of what we think prayer is (hands clasped on a mountain at sunset for example). I put this altogether in a series of posters called Teach Us To Pray.

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