Thoughts on prayer from the New York Times

Tonight I read an article on prayer in the New York Times. This is hardly what you would call a regular source for spiritual enlightenment, but I found the article quite interesting. If nothing else It showed me how far from the truth so many are. Something as simple as prayer has become something that many see as so complicated and so far removed from them that they need coaches and prayer retreats. The reporter was trying to figure out what prayer was all about. As an athiest he had a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept.

I liked what the Rabbi Marc Gellman had to say:

But really, when you come right down to it, there are only four basic prayers.
Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!”
“That’s it?”
“Yep. Wow! are prayers of praise and wonder at the creation. Oops! is asking for forgiveness. Gimme! is a request or a petition. Thanks! is expressing gratitude.

It can be that simple. The LDS Bible Dictionary has this to say about prayer.

As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7: 7-11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work, and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.

I think that in the end he was starting to get it.

There are some 300,000 churches in America, and I could have picked any one to attend on Easter morning, but I liked being in this one. Especially the kids. They didn’t need Reverend Henderson’s prayer techniques, or the high-tech mantras of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Their prayers weren’t Rabbi Gellman’s suburban Jewish prayers of Thanks! offered to whom it may concern. They didn’t pray to de-center their egos or find transcendence or to set off on a lifelong therapeutic spiritual journey. They prayed to a God with whom they were on a first-name basis, and they believed their prayers gave them power, which they used on behalf of their asthmatic sisters and infirm grandparents and a kid they knew with burns on his body. Sitting in church on Easter morning, I realized that I was probably never going to become a praying man. But if, by some miracle, I ever do, I hope my prayers will be like the prayers of the kids I met at the Love church in Berkeley Springs. Straight-up Gimme! on behalf of people who really need the help.