Prayer is both central and essential to our relationship
with God. Corporate prayer is a crucial
element in our participation in the Church, sometimes described as the Body of
Christ. However, it is also an intensely
personal thing. Prayer is always
something that we can take deeper and, though prayer is best understood and
taken to deeper levels by engaging in it, it is also true that we can learn
from what others say of it. Such
learning will most commonly come from "spiritual" writers, but it is
also interesting (and often of benefit) to look at the understanding and
description of other writers.
I have been reading Eleanor Catton's Man Booker
prize-winning novel "The Luminaries" and was struck by a passage in
which she talks of prayer, first describing it as remembering others - and
surely much of prayer is remembering others before God - and secondly
identifying hope as a key element in prayer - and, as people of the
resurrection, we clearly live by hope.
“Prayers
often begin as memories. When we remember those whom we have loved, and miss
them, naturally we hope for their safety and their happiness, wherever they
might be. That hope turns into a wish, and whenever a wish is voiced, even
silently, even without words, it becomes a supplication. Perhaps we don’t know
to whom we’re speaking; perhaps we ask before we truly know who’s listening, or
before we even believe that listener exists. But I judge it a very fine
beginning, to make a practice of remembering those people we have loved. When
we remember others fondly, we wish them health and happiness and all good
things. These are the prayers of a Christian man. “
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