By Hal Green
Pondering Prayer
Prayer is communication with God in all its forms. This includes intimate as well as seemingly distant communication, from monologues to dialogues, from texts to touch, from speech to silent communion. Prayer establishes the bridge between God and humanity. Developing a flourishing prayer life is as vital to our personal well-being as it is to learning how to communicate love to human loved ones.
An analogy may be helpful here. There are two sides or hemispheres to the human brain. What connects them — so that they can communicate with each other and work together for that person to be whole and healthy — is a band of neural fibers called the “corpus callosum.” If this band is damaged or destroyed, that person can no longer function fully.
To extend the analogy: the left hemisphere represents our embodied being, connected to the physical universe. The right hemisphere represents our spiritual being connected to the unseen kingdom of God. That means we have a “joint citizenship” in both this cosmos and heaven. St. Augustine understood this back in the fifth century CE.
Here is the deal: we are meant to live in both hemispheres at the same time. Call the spiritual domain a “parallel universe,” or perhaps an undiscovered dimension of a “multiverse.” It is at least as vast as the physical universe. When you pray through this spiritual “corpus callosum,” which exists invisibly between you and God, you enter into this “other side,” which at the same time enters into you. You come from and belong to this spiritual hemisphere of heaven and when you cease to exist in the physical universe, you will find yourself in this, your true home. As Augustine prayed, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.” That means in God and God’s dominion.
Finally, it is important to note that in the current view of physics, the physical cosmos consists of 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter and only 5% physical, observable matter. That means physical space is not empty; nor is spiritual space, even if, like the physical universe, it is mostly invisible — here anyway. In short, the space between you and God is not empty. The only way to discover this is through prayer. The state of your prayer life is the state of your relationship with God.
My purpose in the prayer exercises I offer is to assist you to enter more fully into a daily dialogue with God across the connective fibers of prayer. That includes entering into the spiritual kingdom of God, while consenting to God’s presence and action within you. You may discover the astounding things God can do for you even through brief prayers. Ultimately, we can and must learn to live our lives facing God, much like the earth faces the sun: for life itself.
(Hal Green, Ph.D., is author of Pray This Way to Connect with God. You can contact him at drhalgreen@gmail.com.)
