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The Nature Of Prayer

Thursday, January 5, 2012 23:20

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There are many forms of prayer. In the words of an old hymn, ‘Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.’ Thus, if you really want good health for yourself or some other person, that is your prayer. Simple as that.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (pictured left), the great Unitarian and Transcendentalist, wrote, ‘All honest work is prayer.’ (I think the great Saint Benedict said something very similar.) So, all who do their work well, and honestly, are praying. I like that.

I tend to eschew all forms of petitionary prayer, yet, when I find myself in a seemingly helpless situation, I am often amazed to see myself ‘lapsing’ back to my old way of praying … to a personal God. However, most of the time I am more than content to sit in the Silence and feel a sense of at-one-ment with the One Presence and Power that is Life itself – all things, as well as being the very life, indeed livingness, of all things.

One of my favorite novels and movies is How Green Was My Valley. Richard Llewellyn (pictured below) wrote the book, which concerns a Welsh coal-mining family and life as seen in the village through the eyes of the youngest son Huw Morgan. (Many of my ancestors on my father’s side of the family were Welsh, and my name is very Welsh.)

In the following excerpt from the book Mr Gruffydd, the new parson, visits the young lad Huw who has been badly crippled in a mishap while trying to rescue his mother in an ice choked mountain creek. Huw, surrounded by good books, has nevertheless been treated, albeit lovingly, as an invalid by his beloved family. The parson encourages the boy to imagine - indeed know – that he will walk again. Let’s pick up on the conversation at this point:

‘Men who are born to dig coal,’ Mr Gruffydd said to me, ‘need strength and courage. But they have no need of spirit, any more than the mole or the blind worm. Keep up your spirit, Huw, for that is the heritage of a thousand generations of the great ones of the Earth. As your father cleans his lamps to have good light, so keep clean your spirit.’

‘And how shall it be kept clean, Mr Gruffydd?’ I asked him.

‘By prayer, my son,’ he said, ‘not mumbling, or shouting, or wallowing like a hog in religious sentiments. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that strength shall become part of you, mind, body and spirit. Do you still want to see the first daffodil out up on the mountain, my son?’

‘Indeed, I do, Mr Gruffydd,’ I said.

‘Pray, my son,’ he said, and left.

Prayer is ‘good, clean, direct thinking.’ You make your thoughts ‘into things that are solid.’ That way, your prayer will be strong, and you will become strong. Well, by that definition even the most militant atheist who engages in ‘good, clean, direct thinking’ is praying. They may not think they’re praying, and would almost certainly resent the that imputation or suggestion that they are engaged in praying, but be that as it may I think Llewellyn is on to something quite simple yet also quite profound.

There is only one ‘way of being’ – one order or level of reality. As I see it, all things exist on the same plane. There is nothing beyond us that is not otherwise in us … as us. When you have a problem, use ‘good, clean, direct thinking.’ Think honestly, work honestly, act honestly. Whatever is your strongest, most sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed, will tend to actualize. Yes, we invariably do whatever is our strongest desire.

It is written, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’ (Jn 3:16) [NKJV]. Is Jesus God’s ‘only begotten son’? If you think that, you have carnalized a ‘myth’ (the latter being, not something which is untrue, but something which is supremely and universally true beyond all notions of literalness). The really ‘good news,’ as I see it, is that we are all ‘begotten’ of the Only One. There is Only One, and everyone and everything is the ‘only begotten son.’ We are all ‘sparks of the Divine.’ We are all part of Life’s Self-Expression. Never forget that.

The verse from John’s Gospel encapsulates an important metaphysical truth, namely, that one’s ‘only begotten son,’ creatively expressed, refers to a creative and saving thought, idea or desire, the ‘father’ being thinker, mind or consciousness. If, for example, you are sick, your desire for health is the ‘son.’ Your mind – or, rather, you, the person who desires and thinks – is the ‘father.’ When your desire (prayer) is realized, you are ‘saved,’ so to speak. The word ‘salvation’ comes from the same Latin root as the word salve, and refers to a healthy kind of wholeness. Health, holiness and wholeness – three words, and they are all inter-related.

So, think well, and make your thoughts into things that are solid … for such is the nature of reality. ‘Pray, my son.’

How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn, ©1939, 1940
by Richard Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd; copyright renewed 1967
by Richard Llewellyn.

Image courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.

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