Prayer to a non-concierge God

The good and wise doctor whose nom de plume is Ur-spo posted this comment about the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi who thought his citizens should pray away potholes: "I suspect Heaven must feel some sort of frustration or negative emotion when people are using prayer as a sort of concierge to come fix this and that."

It reminded me of something one of my postulants told me way back in the day. The Discalced Carmelites spend a lot of time -- and I mean a lot of time -- in prayer every day. Besides daily Mass and a half dozen other acts of community prayer, each day included an hour of personal prayer in the morning and another in late afternoon. The Carmelite ideal was to pray always. We tried anyway.

At any rate, this particular postulant -- that is someone in his first several months in the community -- was a gifted concert pianist from Canada. About halfway through his time in the nine-month postulancy program, he reported that he had discovered something about the way he prayed.

"My prayers," he told me, "consist mainly of me saying, 'Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking.'"

What an insight! 

It made me reflect on my own prayers, many of which I discovered sounded like a to-do list for God.

I am not saying that praying for help and such things has no place in people's spiritual practice. To each his or her own in that regard. In fact, as you know, I ask for prayers (or the equivalent) from time to time for people who have requested them from me. I will be asking again for such in the next few days.

But ...

A friend who is in a Twelve Step program told me that their approach to prayer is found in the eleventh of the twelve steps: 

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.

I like that approach. It places responsibility for acting squarely on my shoulders, while asking God --or in the case of Twelve Step folks, their Higher Power as they understand it -- for insight and strength to follow through.

Such an approach might get something done about those potholes and other things, huh?