Is prayer still a thing?
Like so many others on this faith deconstruction (and sometimes reconstruction) journey, my beliefs and practices look almost nothing like they did 15 years ago. You could find Young Jon using colored pencils to mark up his NASB Bible, making charts and graphs and diagrams and journal entries and key word lists (you get the point, there were a lot of colored pencil markings).
There I was, wearing a hoodie—some things haven’t changed—while memorizing scripture, evangelizing strangers, listening to worship music, reading sermons, and praying all the time about all kinds of things.
Most of this stuff was eventually demolished in the journey that followed. But what about prayer? Of all the things I did in my evangelical heyday, is that the exception, the thing that I should keep holding on to?
The answer is, as we used to be able to officially say about relationships on Facebook, complicated. I have written on this blog about something I started doing a few years ago (and still do!): body prayer, i.e. using specific body movements as a form of prayer.
In the three years(!) since I wrote that post, yes I have continued to engage in body prayer, but have I been praying any other types of prayers? Like I said…
It’s complicated.
And now for an embarrassing confession. There was a period of time when I wanted to keep thinking of myself as a praying person, but prayer was a bit too theologically confusing for me. So I started to just label everything as prayer. That walk in nature was a prayer. I drank that milkshake very prayerfully. Surely I played that video game unto the glory of God. Problem solved!
I am no longer in that season, and I do pray now outside my morning body prayer. I do still label a few activities (but not all of them!) in my mind as prayer. I draw the line somewhere between nature walks and video games.
Which is to say that when something brings me to awe, when it fills me with gratitude, when it provokes lament, when it nourishes empathy—and when I am able to connect that moment to the Divine, the transcendent, the mystery we can trust—for me, it is prayer.
One example of this is at night when I am about to fall asleep. As my head hits the pillow and I sink down into the amazing comfort of our memory foam bed, I am so grateful for safety and our house and my wife next to me. Most nights I try to take a conscious moment to shape that gratitude, either as a “Thank you, God,” or a grateful smile.
Amen.
If you’d like to discuss prayer, you can schedule a call with Dottie, with Jon, or with Dawn.
