What is Prayer?

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Prayer is the faith filled act of sitting confidently in Divine Light, knowing that love always abounds.

A recent article in the Quaker magazine, Friends Journal asked an intriguing question:  What is the essence of prayer?

I know what prayer is not.  I am long past the time when I would pray as if I was bartering and asking favors of the Divine.  I might have once prayed “if I get this job that I really want, I’ll do more for the church,” thinking that prayer was both contractual and conditional.  There is ample evidence of Jesus exhorting his follower to ask God for what they want.  For example, in the new testament, (Matthew 7:7) we are told  “Ask and you will receive.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened to you.”  And additionally (in Matthew 7: 9-12) Jesus goes even further asking, “Which of you, when your child asks for bread will give them a stone, or if they ask for a fish will give them a serpent…”

This kind of prayer no longer makes sense to me. We Quakers believe there is “that of God” in every person.  My way of thinking is this:  if the spirit of the Divine is carved into our individual soul, does not the Spirit already know what is our heart’s desire?  Is divine love so conditional that what we seek will be withheld until we bow our heads and pray for it?  I don’t think so.

I believe that I am God’s beloved; that each of us is God’s beloved and as such Divine love is poured out in such abundance that we are engulfed by the Spirit with love.  This love is never withheld, but is given freely.  Continuously.  Perhaps, in the passages above, Jesus is trying to teach us that Divine love and blessings are readily available and we just have to open ourselves up to the possibility.  We need only quiet our minds and listen in prayerful anticipation for the blessings of the Spirit, which abound.

With prayers of intersession, things get a bit more paradoxical for me.  When I am asked to pray for someone - or as we Quakers say to hold someone “in the light” - I do so as earnestly as I can knowing full well that it goes against my basic understanding of prayer.  Why do I need to ask God to help someone, when I fully believe that love and blessings are already being showered upon them?  But pray I will, in part because there are gold standard studies showing that intercessory prayers actually – verifiably help with healing.
 
When I am asked to hold someone “in the Light,” that is precisely what I do. I form an image of that person being enveloped with divine Light and Love.  There are no words to my prayer, just a deep belief that the love of God is showering down on the person in need.

Perhaps an easier way to think about this is to ponder a quote from the Indian Hindu Mystic, Ramakrishna who said, “The winds of grace are always blowing.  All we need do is raise our sails.” When we hold someone in the Light, what we are really doing is assisting them to raise their sails.
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In answer to the Friends Journal question, I offer this.  Prayer is the faith filled act of sitting confidently in Divine Light, knowing that love always abounds.