Communication is a key aspect of all relationships. It is extremely difficult to have a relationship with someone with whom you have no way of communicating. This communication can take many forms, from speaking to writing to nonverbal cues such as a raised eyebrow or a gently squeezed hand.
Our relationship with God is no different. It requires communication.
Obviously one of the primary ways we communicate with God is through prayer. We turn to God in moments of individual prayer and communal prayer, in prayers spoken out loud and prayers offered in silence, in carefully scripted prayers and in prayers that flow forth spontaneously. Prayer is a time for us to offer to God all that we are thinking, feeling, and desiring in that moment.
Our Whole Selves
When we go through times of crisis and isolation, our prayers have a tendency to change, sometimes in ways that make us uncomfortable. We are good with offering prayers of praise and thanksgiving. We are used to times of confession and supplication. But times like this often bring with them pain and lament, grief and fear, themes we are not always comfortable offering to God.
However, as we look at the history of our faith, we find that prayer is not always full of thanksgiving and praise. The Psalms are full of prayers of lament, pain, sadness, even doubt. Psalm 130 begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O God. Lord, hear my voice!” This is a cry to God full of pain and doubt and despair.
Looking to the life of Jesus, we see in the gospels how often Jesus took time to pray. While we do not know the content of all his prayers, some have made their way to us. As he prayed in Gethsemane, we know that Jesus’ prayer was full of pain and sadness as well as obedience to the place where he was being called to go.
In our relationship with God, we do not have to pretend that everything is always good. As with any close relationship, we are able to bring our whole selves into the relationship, our happiness and our sadness, our joys and our pains. In times of crisis and isolation, we bring all of our feelings into that relationship -- our uncertainties, our hopes, our fears, and our accomplishments. All of those things become part of our prayer life.
Daily Office
In times like this, prayer can also be part of how we cope with the uncertainty. In our times of crisis and isolation, time can become almost meaningless. One day flows almost seamlessly into the next and schedules are disrupted at best or nonexistent at worst. When we look to the traditions of the church, we find that at various times and places, communities have used prayer itself as a means of keeping time. The daily prayer cycle, or daily office as it is called in some communities, may include as few as two and as many as seven “hours” of prayer throughout the day, though the exact number has varied from community to community throughout the ages.
This prayer cycle can become a way to give structure to the day. It is a way to mark time. And it is something that, even when done in isolation, is also done in concert with others all over the world, as many monastic communities and individuals practice the hours of daily prayer.
In times of uncertainty, individuals or communities might choose to pray twice a day to mark both the start and the end of each day. Some monastic communities pray early morning, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, early evening, bedtime, and at least once during the night as a way of marking time. Prayers might be as simple as “Thank you God for bringing me to the start of a new day” or as complex as a multi-part liturgy of prayers, scripture, and song.
The daily office is a practice that individuals or groups can choose to use in times like this to mark the hours of the day. Something as simple as praying morning, noon, and evening can provide a sense of structure that may be lacking in days that all seem to be the same.
Via technology, it is also something that can be practiced with others. Video calls (or even a normal phone call) can allow us to join others in prayer together.
For those that prefer a little structure to their times of prayer, many resources exist to support these times of prayer. Many mainline denominational worship books such as The United Methodist Hymnal include guidelines for at least morning and evening prayer. Resources such as The Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican tradition include prayers for all of the hours of the day. Other resources, including those from religious orders or even some nondenominational resources include orders of morning and evening prayer for every day of the year. Some of these resources and others are even available online or in apps on our phones.
A sample of some online resources is available here:
United Methodist - Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer
Irish Jesuit - Sacred Space
Episcopal - The Mission of St. Clare
Ecumenical - Common Prayer
Prayer Partners
For some of us, the social isolation that often comes in times of crisis and physical distancing can be mentally and emotionally crushing. In this situation, finding someone that we can connect to as a prayer partner can make a difficult time easier. While a prayer partner is something that many people have during ordinary times, it may not be something everyone has considered before. For those who crave social contact with others, it is one way to train yourself to maintain that contact in uncertain times.
A prayer partner is one that you make a covenant with to pray together and to hold one another accountable to your times of prayer. Because a prayer partner is usually someone outside your immediate family, having a prayer partner forces you to reach out to someone else. At the same time, when one becomes too mentally and emotionally exhausted to reach out to someone else, a prayer partner is one who will reach out to you.
As with daily prayer, phone and internet technology makes contact with a prayer partner relatively easy as long as communication services are available. Making a concerted effort to speak with someone outside your immediate family by phone can be a lifeline for some people. Add in the option of a video call where you can actually see one another face-to-face, and it can be even more meaningful.
-------------
Times of isolation and crisis are emotionally and spiritually draining. The uncertainty and fear we all feel run the risk of taking over our lives. The disturbance of normal routines creates an additional layer of stress and anxiety. Just as prayer allows us to communicate our joys and thanksgiving when things are going well, prayer also provides us a lifeline when things are not going well. It can provide us an opportunity to share our grief and pain, grant us a certain amount of structure, and provide us with the option of connecting to others when it is so easy to become mired in social isolation.
Prayer can also reduce our stress and should, at best, provide us an avenue to listen to God communicating back to us. In the next post we will look specifically at the art of Centering ourselves. This is a specific way of approaching prayer that can reduce our stress and provide us with a means of focusing our thoughts on God’s love and grace even as it makes us honestly aware of our own thoughts and concerns.