My introduction to any notion of what a prayer is, was at primary school when each morning we were required to stand and recite the Lord’s prayer.
Little children learn verses easily and they fell off my tongue without much real understanding of the words and their meaning. This was what prayer meant to me for quite some time.
Words that you are required to say. Words whose meaning and beauty have only relatively recently become apparent to me.
As my spiritual path has developed, I have come to understand something very different about the nature of prayer.
To begin with, this was a very private and internal form of prayer. I thank those teachers who let me in on the secret that sitting quietly in meditation or contemplation can indeed be a form of prayer.
Being in stillness and silence and allowing myself to listen to whatever stirrings might be moving in, or with or through me has become my core practice, one that is a profound and moving — and legitimate — way to encounter God.
My view is that anybody can pray. Perhaps the biggest and best lesson I have learned about prayer that it isn’t about getting what I want. It isn’t a shopping list.
Neither is it about appeasing any kind of God who needs his ego stroked.
Prayer is an expression of the heart… something that I realised I was doing all along without knowing that it was prayer.
Gratitude is a Form of Prayer
Showing gratitude for the earth, creation, food, relationships, and all the large and tiny blessings of life is right at the heart of prayer in most traditions.
Gratitude is one of the greatest forms of prayer we can have yet so few realize this.