I didn’t learn how to pray…really pray…through Christianity. Growing up Catholic (Gee, I wonder how many sentences in this blog are going to start out that way!), I memorized all the usual prayers: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Act of Contrition, Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Memorare, Prayer to the Guardian Angel, Meal Blessing, Bedtime Prayer, Prayer of St. Francis. Those are the ones that I remember, anyway. I’d have to say that my prayer life from childhood through adolescence consisted mostly of recitations and apologies with the occasional thanksgivings or requests thrown in for good measure. Needless to say, this was not the most satisfying prayer life.
Memorized prayers were never very effective for me. Perhaps because I learned them so early in life, they didn’t really hold any magic for me when I was finally old enough to appreciate them. Even today, the Our Father and the Prayer of St. Francis are the only two that are truly meaningful for me: the Our Father because it was given by Jesus and the other because St. Francis was just such a groovy dude. Even though I can now recognize beauty in the simplicity of prayers like Glory Be or appreciate the poetry of others, like Memorare, I think that perhaps I have mindlessly regurgitated them on demand a few too many times and they have now lost some of their spirit. (Oh…I sense a future study project…an effort to perhaps reclaim some of these lost prayers…but that is for another day.)
Guilt was always an effective prayer-motivator back then. Despite the negative muck that all of that old Catholic guilt dredges up (What was it that the Muse said in Dogma? Catholics don’t celebrate their faith; they mourn it.), I have to admit that the apology prayers were probably among my most sincere. An apology can be an aide in building relationships; but a relationship built only on apologies will not be strong. So, while these prayers were earnest, they were not enough to cultivate a close bond between me and the Lord.
Prayers of gratefulness were often uttered on autopilot for me. It wasn’t that I was not truly grateful for whatever I was praying about; it was more because it is not an emotion that I express easily. Why? You know, I am really not sure. I mean, of course I know how to say, “Thanks.” It’s just that a simple thanks often doesn’t seem to be enough and that’s where I would get hung up. Sometimes I would try to do something nice for someone else because I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that this was actually a way of praying and a perfectly valid way of saying thanks to God.
The final type of prayer of my youth was the request prayer. I have never been good at asking for things…from anyone…including God. Praying for something was not something that happens often in my life even today. I’ve just never felt quite comfortable with it. Thomas Paine once said, “A man does not serve God when he prays, for it is himself he is trying to serve.” This idea of selfishness in prayer is very difficult for me to get past. The idea of worship and request together is just not something with which I am very comfortable. I mean, if someone made a practice of following me around, telling me that I’m great and asking me for stuff…well, I don’t think we’d get along very well. (Now, if they told me how great I am without asking me for stuff…that might be a bit more tolerable. ~grin~)
So, as a young Catholic, I never really developed a healthy approach to prayer. I don’t necessarily blame Catholicism for that. There were certainly other factors involved. But the “why” isn’t really important here; we’ve pretty much established that I wasn’t a great pray-er. What I really want to talk about here is how I got better at it. Surprising as it may sound, what I learned from practicing magick, ritual and meditation as a Pagan has helped me to build a strong relationship with Christ.
Even if you aren’t familiar with Pagan ways, it probably won’t surprise you that there are many diverse paths that seem to fall under the umbrella of what is referred to as Paganism. The path that I followed was Celtic-influenced and, I suppose, more or less Wicca-based. Perhaps it started as a desire to connect with something both divine and feminine, but for whatever reason I turned to Pagan practices, I still maintain that it was a good thing for me at the time and that I grew closer to God as a result. The spiritual practices in which I participated during that time taught me to be a studious, reflective, creative, and active pray-er.
Trying to practice an ancient religion in a modern world has its drawbacks. For me, it was an attempt to connect with the divine and with all creation. I tried to do that through the context of ancient deity concepts from a time when man saw God in the moon and the sun and the stars and the earth in a more literal way than we do today. The problem with ancient practices is…well they are ancient. Few have survived the test of time. They were not widely recorded. So what we had were hints, ideas and collections of traditions and stories. This left things wide open to personal interpretation. I learned about other cultures and customs, read mythologies and literature, and studied how other Pagans were practicing. It was fun to research and meditate and write prayers and poems while finding understanding for a modern life in our own fragmented past. Today, this study and reflect approach is the one that I take when I pray the Bible. I enjoy considering the historical context of Scripture and imagining what meaning Scripture had for the people who were living it, thinking about what it meant for them in their physical setting and what it meant for them spiritually. I also very much enjoy listening to what others think about various passages. We can learn much from listening to each other even if we don’t particularly agree. Finally, reflecting on all of this helps me to put Scripture into context in my own life…or to put my life into context of Scripture. (That’s a stop and think about it turn of phrase, huh?)
When you are trying to piece together a religious tradition from the remains of traditions long past, there is a lot of room for creative expression. Finding new ways to celebrate the divine was encouraged and, in many cases, a necessity for many Pagans. I worshiped in art, in song, in play. Divinity is everywhere, so everything you do is a chance to get closer to God. Creating rituals for worship was among my favorite things to do. Scripting, finding new symbols for the divine, interpreting old symbols in new ways, writing prayers, choreographing — these are all ways in which a modern Pagan can draw upon their own artistic spirit to create a special bond with God through their worship. While I participate in regular Sunday worship these days, I still enjoy what I suppose some would call “alternative” worship. For me almost anything can be a prayer…a drawing, a song, a poem. The act of creating something…whatever it may be…is in itself a prayer. The fact that I can imagine at all is reason enough to imagine all sorts of ways to pray.
This brings me to the topic of magic (or magick, as most Pagans prefer). As a Pagan, I worked spells. The definition that I would most often give for a spell back then…and even now…to someone who is not Pagan is that a spell is rather like an active prayer. This is a lot more difficult to explain than I thought it was going to be. Let me give some examples of how Pagan spells can be like Christian prayers. A Pagan might work a protection spell by creating a necklace of something like an eye pendant or maybe a tiger’s eye and various other beads that represent something meaningful. While creating it, he might light a candle and recite a prayer or a poem or just meditate on the divine and ask God to watch over him or whomever will wear the necklace. That is a very simple example of a spell to make a “magic” protection charm. A while back, our church was visited by a missionary who told a story of how some women from the village she visited created a shawl for her. They prayed over each knot as they crocheted the shawl and asked God’s blessing on their work. They gave it to the missionary as a gift of protection and comfort to help her through tough times. A Pagan might say that making that shawl was a spell. A Christian calls it a prayer. They are really the same thing. Phyllis W. Curott stated in her article (found on beliefnet.com), The Wicked Witch Is Dead, “From spiritual practice, witches know that magic is not about commanding and controlling, but about consciousness and communion; they have discovered that by living in harmony with nature, they live in harmony with the divine, and that real magic flows from our connection to that divinity.” Magic isn’t hocus pocus; it is what happens when you connect with that Divine Spark through prayer…whatever form that prayer may take. God is everywhere so everything you do becomes an opportunity to relate to God. This is what I call active prayer.
There is so much more that I can say on this subject. Mostly, I just wanted to point out that the rigid structure of religion in my childhood and adolescence made it difficult for me to relate to God. (No, I am still not blaming Catholicism…it did some good things for me, too…we’ll talk about those another day!) It was in walking a different path for a time that I was able to find ways to talk with God that weren’t obvious to me as a young Catholic. I continue to employ these methods of prayer as I strive to grow ever closer to God through His Son, Jesus Christ.
