The Prayer Cafeteria

My friend Steve and I are blogging this summer for the church on the topic of praying. We are running it in a sort of point-counter point dialogue about different types of prayer and what works or doesn't work for each of us.  The interesting thing is that Steve and I see things a little differently, especially when it comes to praying.

First of all, I have a problem with what most people think of when they hear the word prayer.  It seems to me that we mostly think of prayer as a way of talking with or to god,  I remember learning in
catechism that there were all these types of prayer: confession, intercessory, petition, gratitude, and so on.  Steve and I came up with this idea that it is kind of a cafeteria from which we can sample whatever we are hungry for.  There was even a type of "break fast" prayer said after having been away for a while.

However, all those types of prayer were "to" god. But what if we believe that god knows all and sees all and is all before and during and after anything we can be or do or say??  Isn't it a bit anticlimactic to talk it all out to some one or something that already knows what we want to say before we say it?

But for me, what Thomas Merton said once about prayer is the real function of praying.  Merton said something to the effect that prayer doesn't change god, it changes us. I don't pray to god so that god will somehow get that I am penitent or grateful or wishful. I pray so that I can sort things out.  The in-dwelling god moves me to pray and in doing so facilitates my thinking and changing. That sorting out happens in me not in god and when I think about it really, it is that same source - the in-dwelling spark of god - that motivates or moves me to pray in the first place.  It feels like a different kind of prayer when god "prays" me.