By Kathy Berken
On Deck
Do you find yourself clicking on social media videos with outrageous captions? I’m often intrigued by these, especially if the topic is controversial.
The other day a video popped up that asked what might happen if you stop praying to God. Okay, I’ll bite. What happens? I was so ready to bring out all of my theology books and my decades of Catholic education and church work to counter this obviously heretical content.
Instead, I found myself actually agreeing with the speaker, albeit an AI voice, that said that when you pray TO God, you immediately set yourself apart from God. But when you pray knowing that “the Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), you bring yourself into a much more intimate place with God. I think St. Augustine would agree!
We believe that God is omnipresent, so, yes, God is “out there” as well, but only in the sense that God cannot be contained in any physical space. This idea follows my previous two columns on the presence of God, as we saw in the story of Moses and the Burning Bush, as well as the metaphors in the films “The Wizard of Oz” and “Wicked.”
This month, I focus on how our prayer is more about presence than relationship. If we compare God to the ocean and us as a wave, we see that the ocean contains the wave more than having a relationship with it. A ship or a whale is separate from the ocean and relates to it, but a wave is an aspect or feature of the ocean itself. When we pray imagining ourselves as waves, we simply experience God’s eternal being.
Words have meaning and they matter. Contemplative prayer helps us pray WITH God — in the presence of God — rather than TO God at a distance. As prayer is communication with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, we are in communion with God, we are one with God.
Practices to help us with this include centering prayer, meditating on the stations of the cross, making a holy hour, praying the fourth stage in lectio divina (contemplation) or Ignatian prayer (where you imagine yourself present in Scripture), walking the labyrinth, listening to instrumental music, rocking a baby to sleep, watching a sunset, sitting by a body of water, or walking in a forest. We simply are present to God’s holy being. These prayers use silence rather than words, so God is not separate from us, and there is no need to pray TO God. We are in deeper communion with God, aware of God’s presence in and around us.
Although the video I referred to above is from a non-Catholic source, truth can be found anywhere. Over the years I have gleaned seeds of wisdom from vast resources discovered in the world’s religions, literature, music, film, art, television, everyday experiences, and objects I happen upon. In so doing, I have expanded my theological and religious imagination. Like many of us, I grew up in a pre-Vatican II world, taught by faith-filled Sisters using the Baltimore Catechism (where I, too, memorized every answer to every question in that little blue booklet).
This larger notion of prayer can be helpful to those who feel distant from God, who say that they don’t think God hears their prayers, much less answer them. This is where a simple change in how we understand prayer can be transformative. I no longer pray as a child, asking God to do something or give me something, as if I am so powerful I can change God’s mind! Instead of praying, “God, draw me closer to you, grant this or that,” I find myself using different words, believing God is already with me, making prayer a more powerful spiritual experience.
Thus: “Dear God, may I be humbly aware of your presence in my life right now. May I rest in your infinite Being and feel your unconditional love surrounding me with peace. Amen.”
(Kathy Berken is a spiritual director and retreat leader in St. Paul, Minnesota. She lived and worked at L’Arche in Clinton — The Arch from 1999-2009.)
