I’ll echo Friar Ted in saying that prayer is for the person praying way more than it is for God, although I do believe that God likes to hear that we love him* and prayer is one way to communicate that.
I participate in lots of different types of prayers and all of them are done for different reasons. Most of my day to day prayer is free form. I may think or say actual words, or I may just be sitting and being with God. It feels a bit like sitting with a close friend, that same sort of comfort you get being around someone who knows you as you know yourself. I can tell God my worries and I trust that what needs to happen will happen, that, to quote Ani diFranco, “all of these dark colors are part of some bigger color scheme.” I try not to look at prayer as a birthday cake wish, where if I do it right I’ll get what I want. In darker times, prayer is just telling God what I’m going through and trusting that he won’t give me anything bigger than I can handle.
When I’m with the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia (technically, I live with them, but I’ve been away for a month to help with a new baby), I pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Three times a day, we gather as a community and pray a combination of psalms, scripture, and songs. At the surface, the psalms are the biggest part of the worship, but I think community trumps them when you get into the prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours is also called “The Prayer of the Church”. Roman Catholic (and perhaps other flavors of Catholics and Christians), priests, religious, and laity, pray the same prayers throughout their days around the world. Within the prayers, there’s a beautiful rhythm and a feeling of connectivity with a greater whole. That alone is a pretty powerful feeling. Then there are the words themselves. It’s a rare day when there isn’t some line from a psalm that hits me in a new way, as if God had planned that I would read it just when I needed to.
Then there are formal, usually individual prayers, like the Rosary. Just praying one mystery of the Rosary gets you fifty-three Hail Mary’s and large handfuls of Our Father’s, Glory Be’s, and Fatima Prayers, plus a few extra opening and closing its thrown in for good measure. Why on earth would I want to pray all of that? Same reason as everything else; it feels good. Prayers like the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet have a definite meditative quality to them. I imagine that if you studied my brain waves while I prayed them they’d look a lot like they do while I knit. I physically get a nice buzz from them. There’s a definite spiritual quality to praying those formal prayers on my own, but it is a bit different each time I sit down to pray. Sometimes, it’s a deeper understanding of some part of my faith. Sometimes, it’s comfort or relief from worry. Sometimes, it just helps me to feel close to my deceased grandmother who loved the Rosary.
Probably the last big way that I pray is spontaneous prayer throughout the day. Most often, this is in traffic. If there is a lousy driver near me on the road, I’ll say a quick prayer asking God to protect that driver and whoever he or she might come in contact with. I have no idea if it does anything for the driver, but it sure as heck keeps my stress level down. I have trouble being mad at people I pray for.
Another spontaneous prayer I say many times throughout an average day is a quick, “Thank you, Jesus!” when something good happens. That one is because I believe that God wants us to be basically happy and during those times when it’s easier to see that I try to give thanks. Again, this is more for me than for God. God knows when I’m thankful and when I’m not, but the act of saying, “Thank you, Jesus!” helps to keep me in a God-centered mindset. If I’m thinking about God, God’s plan for me becomes easier to discern (note: easier does not always equal easy) and I’m better able to live that basically happy life that God planned for me.
So, yeah, what Friar Ted said, but in a longer, more rambling way.
*No, I don’t think God is a man, but the male gender is more commonly associated with God and is less jarring to read, so I’m going to go with it instead of either female specific pronouns or not using any pronouns. Not using any pronouns is just too darn repetitive.
