The Meaning of Prayer in Human Experience

March 20, 1960
Akron

The Meaning of Prayer in Human Experience

What is the meaning of prayer in human experience? The followers of an obscure religious sect in the Far East pray as they stare at their own reflections in a mirror. Is this what prayer is, the worship of one’s own ego? When Albert Schweitzer was making his third voyage to Africa in 1929, a violent storm occurred while he was busily writing the last chapter of his book on Paul the Apostle. Because the ship pitched too violently for him to write at the little desk in his cabin, Schweitzer kept himself steady while writing by kneeling down with his writing board on his bunk, his feed wedged against the cabin wall. The steward happened to come in, and seeing him in this posture, said at once, “Oh, it’s not quite as bad as that yet, sir.” Is this what prayer is, assuming the posture and saying the words of prayer when dangerous events seem to threaten our lives or welfare?

Prayer means so many things in human experience that perhaps case studies of some famous prayers from both ancient and modern times may enable us to secure some greater apprehension of the meaning of prayer. These prayers are not reported on a chronologically progressive basis, but rather we will do a little moving back and forth historically.

There is a “show-me” prayer, variously attributed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Voltaire, Paine and Rousseau:

“Oh God, if there be a god, save my soul, if I have a soul.”

Nearly three thousand years before that prayer of theological sophistication, Moses, experiencing depressing adversity, prayed (Exodus 32/32):

“Alas, this people has committed a great sin in that they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now if thou wilt, forgive their sin; but if not, pray blot me out of their book.”

Robert Sherwood in his great drama, “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” re-created a prayer voiced by Lincoln on the prairie at the bedside of a sick child:

“O God, the father of all living, I ask you to look with gentle mercy upon this little boy who is here, lying sick in this covered wagon. His people are traveling far, to seek a new home in the wilderness, to do your work – work, God, to make this earth a good place for your children to live in. They can clearly see where they’re going, and they’re not afraid to face all the perils that lie along the way. I humbly beg you not to take their child from them. Grant him the freedom of life. Do not condemn him to the imprisonment of death. Do not deny him his birthright. Let him know the sight of great plains and high mountains, of green valleys and wide rivers. For this little boy is an American and these things belong to him and he to them. Spare him, that he too may strive for the ideal for which his fathers have labored, so faithfully and for so long. Spare him and give him his father’s strength – and give us all strength, O God, to do the work that is before us. I ask you this favor, in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who died upon the cross to set men free. Amen.”

More than forty years ago, the minister of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who, when required to deliver prayer at the inauguration exercises of the city government, spoke in so candid and unusual a style that his prayer created a sensation. Dr. Levi Powers, a minister of unusual courage, intellectual power and social passion, prayed like this:

"WE PRAY for the retiring mayor. He might have done better and he knows it and now we are sending him to the state house. Help him to be the representative he may be and ought to be.

WE PRAY for those who must guide our city in the coming year. There is Alderman Daniel Marshall. You know what a good fellow he is and how everybody likes him - the most popular man in town, though there are some who say he needs a stiffer backbone. If that is so, Lord, give him what he needs, and if it is a lie, help him to refute it.

THEN THERE IS Alderman Johnson who needs thy help, Lord. This is a new job for him. But everybody speaks well of him, and many who did not know him voted for him because those who know him best said he was all right. May he end this year with this good opinion confirmed and increased.

MOST OF ALL we pray for him honored in being chosen mayor. But we have given him a hard job, Lord. You know very well that the laws of this city have not been well-enforced. May he accept this responsibility and not only do his duty, but insist that all those responsible to him do their duty as well.

NOT ALONE for those we have chosen do we pray, Lord; we pray for ourselves. We confess, Lord, that we are a logy, grouchy set of citizens, most of us. We no sooner elect men to office than we find fault with them. Help us to see that good citizenship is an all-the-year job that cannot be delegated to others,

WE PRAY for the voters of this city; there are some too lazy to vote but not too lazy to grumble. Bless them. We pray for the citizens who want good streets, good schools, good fire and police protection and good health officers but who wish other people to pay their cost.

WE PRAY for the business men whose votes are always determined by the expectancy of special favors for themselves. Bless them, if you can. We pray for those who believe that all laws should be enforced except the laws which they do not like or which, if enforced, would trouble them.

WE PRAY for the comfortable who do not care for anything so long as they are left at ease.

WE PRAY for political managers who swap votes and sell out their friends and let their bad candidates go unopposed.

WE PRAY for the ministers who say what it is pleasant to hear rather than what is true. We pray for all connected with the newspapers who openly advocate civic righteousness and secretly promote crooked policies,

WE PRAY for the lawyers who use their knowledge to help those who wish to evade the law and so enable themselves and others to get something for nothing.

WE WISH, O God, that these people might be blessed, but perhaps we are asking too much. It may be that the only thing you can do is to let them go to hell.

INCREASE our love and devotion to our city. May we be zealous of its good name and prosperity. May wealth, happiness, intelligence and character so increase that the proudest boast we can make shall be that we are men and women of this city. Amen."

The occurrence of St. Patrick’s Day last Thursday is a reminder that within quite recent years, Father Joseph Manton, a Redemptorist Priest who is one of New England’s most skilled and eloquent radio preachers, delivered the invocation at the breakfast honoring Robert Briscoe, then Lord Mayor of Dublin. It was a rare occasion in Boston, when this city, so strongly touched by Irish immigrants and even now perhaps America’s most typically Irish-American cultural area, greeted the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The piquancy of the occasion was increased by the wonderful fact that the Lord Mayor Briscoe was a Jew.

This was Father Manton’s prayer:

“Almighty God, our good and gracious father, we find ourselves a bit bewildered this morning. You know that the first President of the Irish Republic was a Protestant; the present Lord Mayor of Dublin is a Jew; the news is going around that the lakes of Killarney belong to a Yank; and historians keep whispering in our ears that St. Patrick was a Frenchman.

“Help us then this morning to hold high the brimming cup of hospitality to a good and great man and to greet him not as a stranger, but a treasured friend. And dear God, stay the man up with monumental patience as he heroically endures a hundred toastmasters from here to the West Coast who will gaily imagine that the very fillings in their teeth are fragments of the Blarney Stone, as they ring all the obvious changes on a Jewish Mayor of Dublin. Help the poor man not to be banquet-weary of all these glib attempts to paint a green beard on Moses, or by the end he will be seeing little Leprecohens.

“Deliver him, O Lord, this real Irishman who risked his life for the land he loved, from any professional Irishman (with an angle) – these are mercifully very few – but spare him even these; the sham shamrocks, the bogus hogtrotters, the synthetic Sinn Feiners, and especially the extravagant psycho-Patricks who love too loudly through a green haze an Ireland that never was.

“Finally, dear God, bless this man, our friends; and his mean, our food and today let the blessings come down generously even on the English muffins and the orange juice, so that, having broken our fast at the top of the mornin’, we may rise to thank You from the bottom of our hearts. Amen.”

A final example of a notable prayer was uttered more than 750 years ago by the man whom many have described as “the only Christian since Christ,” St. Francis of Assisi:

“O Divine Master, grand that I may not so much to seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

In dealing with these prayers of human experience, there is no analysis of the origins and evolution of prayer. Prayers began with attempts at cosmic bribery, as well as cosmic communion. The primitive thought God could be cajoled, bribed or persuaded. But such motives should have no role in our kind of world.

But these prayer examples, as widely different in attitude as in historical placement, deal with some of the meanings of prayer that can touch the sensitivities of our personal experience. No one who has experienced shattering tragedy or terrifying injustice can blame Job’s wife for her prayer of condemnation, “Curse God and die.” there are times when under the overwhelming burden of events that seem utterly unjust, our prayers are neither thankful, interceding, nor adoring. they are protests of righteous indignation. This experience of anger against the cosmos is one of the meanings of prayer, too. It is a vehicle which asserts that the human soul has rights of protest.

The prayer of Moses is another aspect of the experience of prayer. Moses had tried to lead his people in ways he believed good; he had tried to persuade them to the worship of Yahveh and to abandon idol worship. When he encountered their falling away from the high ideals and good practice, Moses’ prayer faced facts. Moses felt responsibility for those he was leading. He did not say, “O God I have not made an image unto thee, like these sinful people.” He prayed, “forgive their sin or blot me out of thy book.” In such self-honesty and sharing of responsibility, prayer exalts even moments of sorrow and despair.

Robert Sherwood’s beautiful Lincoln prayer illustrated another poignant aspect of the meaning of prayer in human experience. Those who have known the sorrow of those pioneer parents can participate in Lincoln’s passionate petition. In a new, adventurous, beautiful country of fertile plains, who can not pray that the boy will grow strong and wise in a country challenging humans to the utmost of their skills and resources? Life is so fine. Yet that prayer of petition concludes with acceptance and resolution, “Give us all strength, O God, to do the work that is before us.” Prayer means acceptance.

When Levi Powers astounded and shocked those gathered at the Gloucester inaugural, he illustrated vividly prayer as an experience of social power. He did not pray for the Prophets of Israel, but for the politicians of Gloucester; he did not confront the children of Israel with their sins, but bluntly prayed that Gloucester men and women in the 20th century would face up to the conditions of good citizenship. Prayer can be a relevant experience. Unless it is relevant, it is probably idle exercise. Whether in the meditation of solitude or the eloquence of public invocation, prayer as a meaningful experience must be relevant to the condition of the individual and the well-being of all.

Father Manton’s prayer at the breakfast for the Lord Mayor is an appealing example of another aspect of the prayer experience – graciousness. Prayer can illuminate the quality of our experience with words and ways that might be embarrassing in direct dialogue. Prayer helps us build bridges between our differences so that our encounters in human affairs are gentle and appreciative, with a proper leaven of laughter.

Halford Luccock reminded his readers that the prayer of St. Francis to console rather than be consoled, to love rather than be loved, is a marvelous example of movement from the passive to the active, “We love, we serve, we give.”

A fishing fleet sails annually from Portugal to the Grand Bank. During the season, the fishermen fish from dories; then work back on the vessel slitting and salting the catch. Danger is commonplace and hard work daily fare. One of these expeditions, Antonio Rodrigues Chaloa, a good doryman from Oporto, was separated from the vessel by the closing in of fog. When a gale blew up Antonio was blown far from the vessel. When five days passed, the captain and the shipmates gave him up for lost – one more good man who had gone down to the sea in ships never to return. Then on the fifth day, Antonio’s dory came into view. So exhausted was he that he had to be lifted from the dory to the vessel, but he was smiling and after rest was fishing again that same day. An observer on the voyage asked Antonio about those long, lonely days and nights of danger, storm-tossed and fog-bound. “What did you do?” Antonio replied, “I prayed. I did what I could. Then I prayed and I thought of my wife and seven children back in Portugal. The compass was out – that’s why the fog got me. Then during the storm, I anchored and rode to the wind, using my oars to keep the dory headed into it. Often I had to bail for my life when the heavy seas broke aboard. I was afraid, for my anchor line was only a piece of rope. If it broke, I would be drifted off the banks and out into the open straits. Then I knew I’d be finished.”

“But the anchor rope didn’t carry away. I had to row plenty, to keep the dory headed to sea. I made a bit of shelter with the sail. I ate raw cod and drank the fog moisture wrung out of my woolen cap.” That was all he said after rowing five days and four nights against a gale in order to keep a fourteen foot dory headed to windward in waters beyond the Arctic Circle.

He prayed; but he kept the dory headed into the wind. Prayer must include the willingness to struggle as well as to be thankful.

Whether called meditation, prayer, inward determination, coming to terms with oneself, or seeing ourselves as we really are and as we should be – prayer is an experience of illumination, communion with the highest we know, a confident step toward mysteries never to be revealed and a confrontation of our human condition in all its grandeur and all its misery. It does not matter whether the experience occurs in solitude on one’s knees, striding a busy street or working at some needed service. The experience of honest prayer will sharpen our consciousness of essentials, recall us to those vital things of most value to living and touch us with both the knowledge and the mystery of the great tides of life of which we are a part.