Prayer is nearly ubiquitous, almost a synonym for being human. Wherever people are found, there you will find someone reaching out to the oneness, the cosmos, the divine, the mystery. Through words, meditation, movement, offerings, renunciations, charity, good deeds, protest, dance, incense, and a host of other ways, human beings from remote antiquity have stretched to create connections beyond themselves to something larger, someone more fundamental.

Often the act of prayer surges from a deeper source than any ideology can express. Despite our belief or lack of it, despite our skepticism and our desperation (or because of it) we cry out, we plead, we negotiate. Sometimes we are moved to tears by a joy so deep it almost hurts, and we blurt out thanks whether or not we think there is someone to listen. There are moments of sitting still, when listening to the quiet beyond words roots us and allows us to gain reservoirs of trust and hope we had not previously been able to access. We encounter seasons of sorrow so enervating that we can only curl up in the dark and enter the depths. From the depths I call you, God! Help, in such moments, is more embrace than action; simply feeling held in times of trauma is an answer

We Pray Better Than We Theologize

Of course, after the moment has passed, after the cry was released, the thanks expressed, we are left to wonder: what was I doing? Was that prayer simply giving in to magical superstition? Indulging a nonsensical childish dream? Distilling overwhelming emotion into words so I could release it? Perhaps. But I can't help suspecting that our acts of praying outstrip our understanding of prayer, that our moments of sincere outpouring are more real than the ideas we filter those acts through. Our philosophies complicate our praying and often make real prayer elusive. Why is that?

Most people pray with the hope/expectation that their prayers make a difference:  that God wants our reaching out, that our focus contributes to a different (and better) outcome. Often our prayers are formulated as requests, as though God needs a reminder, or persuasion to do the right thing. Or we grovel words of mollification, as though we can forestall a punishment or entice a reward if we only get the words right, feel bad enough, or crawl low enough to remain under the radar of God's notice.

Despite the real motives we bring to prayer, most people have been taught to think of God as unchanging (eternal), all knowing (omniscient), and in complete control (omnipotent). If God is unchanging, that means God must remain unaffected by our prayers. If God is all knowing, then God knows what we're going to say before we say  it, knows the situation we feel impelled to pray about, and knows the future before it becomes real in the present. And if God is in complete control, then whatever will be will be, whether or not we pray. 

If the situation is already known and the outcome is already determined, then perhaps the only role left for prayer is to stroke God's insatiable ego. We repeat "You are great! You are great!" to try to appease Divine narcissism. After all, our dominant theologies already precluded the possibility of God needing our prayers, changing because of prayer, or modifying the foreknown outcome because of us. The only remaining function of prayer seems to be abject fawning. Frankly, don't you often feel that sentiment is what  most of the prayers in the Prayerbook express

There is something undignified about the whole enterprise. And yet ...

As I said, people pray as though God does care about us and our sentiments, as if our words have an impact, as if the dialogue is real and the relationship transformative and desired. Our hearts already intuit what our ideology obscures. Perhaps the problem, then, is not with our practice, but with our ideas. Perhaps our challenge in prayer is to articulate the conceptual frame that honors the urgings of our hearts and the yearnings of our souls. 

Process Theology offers a different filter through which the reality of prayer seems much more straightforward. Recall that the Process understanding is that God is the one who makes all relationship possible, the one who generates all the options the future offers and empowers each and every one of us, as we are, where we are, to take the optimal next step if we so choose. Process Theology understands God as being so personal that God meets each of us in our immediate, concrete particularity: who we are at this moment, what we need now to take that best next step forward. That means that at every instant, God knows us (and every event in creation) not theoretically, not in a timeless theoretical mode, but as we actually are. Each of us. All of us.

God not only knows us as we are, but empowers us and all creation to reach for the optimal next step available to us from where we are. Each of us is offered our own optimal next step, and each of us retains the freedom to embrace that lure or to reject it.  No abstraction, that lure is tailored to our reality - our current context and our distinctive individuality. As theologian Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki says, "God works with the world as it is in order to bring it to where it can be." Because God works with the world as it is, when we transform ourselves, we transform the world by precisely that amount, giving God that much opening to work with us/through us/for us. 

What are we doing when we pray? At the simplest level, with spontaneous prayer or wordless prayer, we re-center ourselves with God at the core. When I was a child, I used to run my magnet through the soil in an abandoned field near my home. The magnet would attract the iron filings in the earth, and those filings would align themselves with the magnet as it passed by. With God as our magnet, prayer allows us to orient ourselves around optimal love, justice, experience, compassion. We elevate our own sense of what is possible, the significance of our choices and our capacity to make a difference. Since God works with the world as it is, that new/renewed energy and determination is now available for God's wondrous work. 

We don't turn to God as magician and rule breaker. God works with/in/and through creation as it is. But God is persistently, tirelessly luring creation toward its optimal expression  - greater love, greater justice, greater engagement. Rather than breaking the rules, our praying opens us to renewed expression of that lure, and fresh zeal for its advance.

Prayer as Reminder, Prayer as Script

For many people, the only prayer they encounter is a communal activity that consists of liturgical reading from a book. Please rise. Please be seated. Please rise. Please be seated.  Often the book is very old (the Siddur, Jewish Prayerbook contains prayers that range in age from thousands to hundreds of years old). How does reading someone else's words open us to a more attentive responsiveness to God's lure? Wouldn't we commune better if we prayed spontaneously and from the heart?

Of course, there is much to be said for the spontaneous outpouring of the heart. And it is noteworthy that in Jewish tradition two of the earliest biblical examples of prayer are exactly that: the distraught mother, Hagar, seeing her infant Ishmael about to die in the desert, calls out her sorrow to God, and God answers her not with a supernatural intervention, but by  opening her eyes to see a well of water that was there all along. In good Process form, the lure is the capacity to take Hagar from where she is to where she is capable of going. No rule breaking of natural law, God offers a life-affirming embrace made possible through self-determination and resilient hope. The next great unscripted outpouring of the heart takes place centuries later in the Sanctuary at Shilo, when the priest, Eli, is napping and overhears Hannah imploring God for a son. Again, no supernatural rule-breaking intervention is necessary - the young wife succeeds in bearing a son, whom she dedicates to the service of God. That young man, Samuel, becomes the greatest of Israel's judges and one of its earliest prophets. In both cases, spontaneous prayer is honored, and in both cases the Bible portrays it not in the mouths of the powerful and the privileged, but in the earnest entreaties of powerless, righteous women.

But the choice isn't limited to the dichotomy of one or the other, either spontaneous outpouring or scripted liturgy. Indeed, the weight of Jewish precedent affirms the symbiotic relationship between the two. We will be best prepared for the unscripted exclamation if we devote the discipline to regular scheduled prayer. And the resonance of that scripted communal recitation will be that much richer because of the trails blazed by unscripted moments of crying out, in anguish, need, or gratitude.

Liturgical prayer, then, is like reading a script. A great actor will allow the script to provide the content and context for their own personality as a character. The actor becomes the character portrayed in the script, feels the character’s feelings, the motivations anxieties and aspirations that shape the character’s personality. So to, the person at prayer becomes the righteous questing soul portrayed in the Prayerbook. 

We make ourselves into vessels to be sculpted by the values, aspirations, and memories provided by the Siddur. And in emptying ourselves to be so filled, we express ourselves not as discontinuous and solitary moderns, but as instantiations of klal Yisrael, children of Israel at one with our Maker. For the duration of our praying, those words become our words, those sentiments become our yearning. 

We expand beyond the confines of our own limited lives, the constrictions of our own age and place, and enter into a flowing stream of and ancient and timely tradition. Such praying can make us more than we are alone. We grow to include our people around the world and across the ages. And through that expansive sense of Yisrael, we take on concern for all humanity and serve as stewards for all creation.

Prayer of the Possible

When we pray for someone else, a form of intercessory prayer, a prayer for healing or for the diminution of pain, what are we doing? Particularly since we’ve abandoned the notion of God as magician and prayer as insurance policy, what does it mean for us to pray for someone’s recovery? 

We live in interdependent relationship to each other and the world around us. Process Thinking highlights the reality that we are not solid, solitary substances, but rather relating patterns of energy that weave our interactions with each other into the very fabric of our becoming. The foods we eat and the music we dance weaves our neurons uniquely, and constitute our muscle and bone, as do the people we love and the faces we learn to recognize. Each of us are dynamic composites of everyone we’ve known, every place we’ve been, in expanding circles of family, community, species, and planet.

One thing prayer cannot do is vanquish mortality. All things come into being, flourish, decline, and expire. All becomings end. To pray for health and intend that a person should not die, should never die, is vain prayer. It is not the way of the world. Indeed, prayer cannot eliminate illness. 

Woven into the fabric of life are the viruses and bacteria that share our bodies and form the communities that we are. They sustain us, and they feed on us, and the rhythm of life and dying includes copious expanses of sickness. To pray for the removal of all illness is to pray for delusion. That too is vain prayer.

Yet we persist. 

Knowing that illness and death are part and parcel of the human condition, we feel the need to do something, to speak hope and determination in the face of our own and each other’s suffering, to strengthen our connections and to affirm our shared becoming. God works in/with/through us. As we lift up another in our prayer, we focus our attention and energy on them, offering God and the world this new level of focus as a tool for renewed connection and integration. 

The Hebrew world “davar” means both deed and word, and the davar of prayer is a worded action and a doing speech. We put those words out into the world, hone our energies as tools for wellbeing and affirmed belonging. We elevate and focus our kavanah, our intention. Prayer gives God the gifts of our intention, our energy, our hope to use to create deeper human belonging, greater engagement, richer connection.

In such a world, prayer for healing is meeting in a depth more resonant and aware than our normal consciousness. Affirming that God knows each of us as we are, and that God eternally internalizes each instant as it becomes the present, the act of prayer is the word/deed of meeting each other in God, in strengthening the link that connects us to our loved ones, to those far away, to communities in trouble or danger. 

We focus the vibrations of our minds and hearts and direct that intention to God and, through God, toward the resilient, vibrating patterns of energy that are our loved ones, the objects of our concern. We strengthen the us-ness of them. We raise to explicit consciousness the vague concern for the other and we sharpen that concern into praise, petition and empathy.

Perhaps such prayer can nudge the trajectory of a disease; the scientific studies of such matters are ambivalent in their findings. Prayer can speak to the depths of the sick, the struggling, the sad, affirming that they are not alone, not abandoned, and making it possible for us to meet them in God and mobilize untapped resources on their behalf, their own, ours, and God’s.  

In such praying word/deeds, we not only offer our prayers as words and deeds, we become our prayers. V’ani tefillati, I am my prayer (Psalm 69:14).

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Note from the Editor: Prayer is too important a topic to be left untranslated. JJB is grateful to translator in chief, Han Sun, who offers a translation into Mandarin below. Han Sun is with the International Institute of Education and Culture & Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, P.R. China.

 祈祷几乎是无处不在的活动，所有的人差不多都有这种行为。你不论在哪里，都会观察到有人通过话语、冥想、活动、施舍、把人们聚集起来、慈善活动、好的行为、示威活动、跳舞、鼓励和其他等等方式来接触到世界上唯一的东西，接触到宇宙，接触到神灵和神秘，人类从远古时代就开始创造超越自我的各种联系，把范围扩大到更深更广的层面。


 祈祷行为通常是超越了意识形态能够表达的形式，从更深层的源泉产生的。尽管我们的信仰不同或者是没有信仰，尽管我们持怀疑或绝望的态度(或者正是因为这个态度)，我们大声地说出来、不断恳求、不断协商。有的时候喜悦把我们感动得落泪，这种喜悦如此之深刻让我们的心都受伤了，不论是否有人在听，那些感谢的话从我们这里脱口而出。还有那些我们静静坐着的时候，当在超越话语的那种安静中认真倾听的时候，我们找到了自己的根，让我们产生信任感，同时也希望自己先前接触不到这些。我们在悲伤的季节感到如此的脆弱，自己就只能蜷缩在黑暗里越陷越深。在黑暗里我大声呼唤着您，上帝! 帮助我吧，在这些时候，要更紧的拥抱而不是其他动作；在受到伤害的时候那种被关怀的感觉就是答案。


 我们祈祷要比把神理论化更好


 在那种时刻过去、哭泣被释放以及表达谢意之后，我们当然会思考：我刚才一直在做什么？祈祷就是那种带有神奇色彩的迷信举动吗？沉迷在没有意思的幼稚的梦境里？把强烈的感情提炼成话语这样我就能把它释放出来？也许吧。但是我不禁怀疑我们的祈祷行为超越了对于祈祷的理解，我们虔诚释放出来的时刻比我们行为的准则更加真实。我们的哲学观让祈祷复杂化而且经常使得真正的祈祷让人难以捉摸。为什么会那样？

 大多数人都是带着希望或期待去祈祷，让自己的祈祷与众不同：上帝想让我们主动沟通，我们的专注会让结果不同（而且更好）。通常我们的祈祷都是一种要求，就像上帝需要一个人来提醒或者是劝说来做正确的事。或者我们一直用缓和的话语，就像如果我们仅仅用了正确的话语，感到自己做了足够多的坏事或者在上帝的关注下匍匐前进的话，就像我们能够事先知道哪种惩罚或者是得到奖励似的。

 虽然我们在祈祷的时候有不同的真实动机，但是大多数人一直以来所学到的是把上帝当成永恒不变的、无所不知的并能够控制一切。如果上帝是永恒的，那就意味着上帝不要受到我们祈祷的影响。如果上帝是无所不知的，那么在我们说话以前上帝就知道我们想说什么，知道我们身在不得不祈祷的处境里，并且在还没发生之前就知道未来是什么。如果上帝能够掌控一切的话，那么我们要祈祷什么或者是否祈祷都无关紧要了。

 如果事先就知道了是什么情况而且也早已做出决定的话，那么或许祈祷所剩下的唯一角色就是为了一己私欲来哄上帝开心。我们重复说“您很伟大！您很伟大！”来试图让上帝开心。毕竟，我们的主流神学已经开始阻止这种可能性的发生，那就是上帝需要我们的祈祷，因为祈祷而改变或者因为我们来改变事先已经决定的结果。祈祷所剩下的唯一的作用似乎就是卑鄙的奉承。坦率地说，你难道没有经常感觉到大多数祈祷者在书籍中所表达的那种不太合适的感情吗？


 对于整个事情有一些不体面的层面


 正如我所说的，人们祈祷就像上帝确实关心我们并在乎我们的感情，就像我们的话会有效果，就像与上帝的对话是真实的，这种关系是可变化也是大家都需要的。我们已经察觉到我们的意识形态所表达的不是很清晰。或许这个问题与我们的实践无关，但是与我们的想法有关。或许在祈祷时我们的挑战是来诠释一种概念的框架，这个框架可以给我们心灵和灵魂强烈的主张以荣誉。


 过程神学提供了一个不同的审视方式，通过这个方式祈祷的现实性似乎更直截了当。要记住从过程角度的理解是上帝会让各种关系成为可能，上帝创造未来的各种可能的机遇，上帝给我们每个人各种能力，如果我们以此做出选择的话，就像我们一样，不管我们在哪里，都会坚实地走出下一步。过程神学把上帝理解成非常人性化，上帝在我们特定的身份和状况下和我们每个人见面：我们当时是什么样，我们现在需要什么来继续前进。那意味着每个瞬间，上帝都了解我们（和现实中的每件事物），这并不是带着神学角度的，不是没有时间观念的神学模式，而是我们真实的存在。我们每一个人，所有人。


 上帝不仅了解我们，而且给我们和所有他创造的生物能力来从目前的状态迈出更好的下一步。给我们每个人提供了自己的下一个步骤，每个人都有自由来接受或者拒绝。并不是虚幻的，这个好事是为我们的现实量身定做的——我们目前所处的环境和我们不同的个性。如神学家马乔里·休伊特·苏霍茨基所说的：“上帝就在这个现实的世界上，就是为了让世界在现实中变化。”因为上帝在现实的世界上，当我们改变自己的时候，我们也用同样的程度来改变世界，给上帝足够的空间来与我们一起工作或通过我们工作。


 当我们祈祷的时候都做些什么呢？在最简单的层面，带着由心生或者是无语的祈祷，我们重新把自己与上帝联系起来。当我是小孩的时候，我经常在家附近废弃的土地上用磁铁在土壤上来回移动。磁铁会把土里的含有铁的物质吸起来，当磁铁划过的时候会把那些铁屑集中在一起。上帝就是我们的磁铁，祈祷可以使我们聚集在爱、公正、经历和怜悯周围。我们提升自己可能做到的意识，提升我们选择的重要性，提升我们与众不同的能力。既然上帝与世界本源在一起，那种新的能量和抉择对于上帝完美的做法是可能的。


 我们不能把上帝当成魔术师和破坏规则的人。上帝就在所创造的世界里。但是上帝一贯并不知疲倦地把所创造的一切用好的形式表达出来——更伟大的爱，更好的公正和更执著的参与。我们的祈祷让我们更开阔到吸引我们的东西的全新表达方式以及对于进步的热情上，而不是改变规则。


 用祈祷来提醒人们，把祈祷看成剧本


 对于很多人来说，他们遇到的仅有的祈祷是一种交流的行为，这种行为包括从书中读到的宗教行为。请起立。请坐下。请起立。请坐下。通常这书是很古老的（犹太祈祷书包括了有千年到百年历史的祈祷方式）。读其他人所写的内容怎能让我们更加开阔来回应上帝的恩惠？如果我们从心里自发地祈祷难道不会交流得更好吗？

 当然了，对于发自内心的自发感受有很多要说的。很值得来借鉴的就是在犹太传统里，关于祈祷的最早的经文例子中有两个是很精确的：悲伤的母亲夏甲看见自己的婴儿易赛马利在沙漠中马上要死去了，把自己的悲伤告诉了上帝，上帝没有通过超于自然的手段来回应她，而是让她看到了一口一直在那里的井。在好的过程形式中，恩惠就是那种把夏甲从自己所在的地方带到她能去的地方这种能力。没有违背自然规律，上帝通过自我决定和希望让拯救生命的恩惠成为现实。另外一个无法照本宣科的例子几个世纪以前在一所圣殿里发生，当牧师艾利在午睡的时候偶然间听见汉娜向上帝祈祷想要个儿子。没有打破自然规律的事情有再次发生——这个年轻的妻子怀上了男孩，她让儿子致力于为上帝服务。那个年轻人撒 
  母耳，成为以色列最伟大的法官同时也是最早期的先知之一。在这两个事例中，发自内心的祈祷得到了尊重，在两个事例里圣经并没有通过有能力或者是有特权的人嘴里说出来，而是从比较弱小而且正直的女性那里真实地表达出来。

 但是这不是二者必选其一的选择，要么是发自内心的倾诉，要么是照本宣科。实际上犹太先例就宣称这两者是可以共生的。如果我们把这些规定使用在日常的祈祷上那么我们要准备好做出没有事先写好的声明。那种照本宣科似的共鸣会更加丰富因为人们是在苦恼、需要或感谢的时候即兴表达出来。

 那么礼拜似的祈祷就像在读课本似的。伟大的演员会让台词来为自己的性格和角色提供上下文和内容。这名演员变成了台词里所描绘的形象，感受形象的感受、动机、焦虑和期望，这些会让形象的性格更加鲜明。所以，祈祷的人成为在祈祷书里描绘的有正确需求的人。我们把自己变成船舶，这些船舶是由犹太祈祷书里所提供的价值、期望和记忆来塑造的。在是自己变得空虚然后又丰满的过程中，我们不是像不连续的和单一的形式来表达自己，而是通过我们在祖先创造我们的实例。对于祈祷的时限，那些话语变成了我们的话语，那些感情变成了我们的渴望。我们超越有限的生命，超越我们的年龄和所处位置，进入一个充满古老和时代传统的激流中。这样的祈祷能够让我们不是依靠自己。我们要吸纳全世界的自 
  己人并跨域年龄的界限。通过犹太人的这种拓展意识，我们关注所有的人类并为所上帝创造的服务。


 为有可能实现的事情来祈祷

​
 当我们为别人祈祷的时候，一种代人祈祷的形式，为了治愈某种创伤或者减少痛楚，我们做什么？尤其是既然我们不再认为上帝是魔术师，祈祷也不再是保险的策略了，我们为别人祈祷对我们来说意味着什么？

 我们生活的世界存在相互依存的人际关系。过程思想突出了一个现实，那就是我们不是单独存在的个体，而是把不同的能量形式联系在一起，这些能量的不同形式把我们彼此的联系汇集在一起变成我们未来的各个部分。我们所食用的和跳舞时候的音乐通过与众不同的形式把我们的神经联系在一起组成了肌肉和骨骼，我们爱的人和学着认识的不同人也是这样。我们每个人都是我们认识的人的组成部分，每个我们曾经去过的地方，在家庭、社区、种群和星球的不断扩展方面。

 祈祷不能达成的一件事就是战胜消亡。所有的事物都要经历出现、繁荣、衰落和灭亡。所有的都要终结。祈祷健康并且希望人不会死是徒劳的。这是不符合自然规律的。从实际上来看，祈祷不会消除疾病。深入到生命中最基本成分的是那些病毒和细菌，这些在我们的体内形成了我们现在的形态。它们让我们生存，靠我们生存，生命与死亡的节奏就包括了大量的疾病。祈祷着把所有的疾病赶走仅仅是幻想。是徒劳的。

 然而我们要坚持


 知道了疾病和死亡是人类的一部分，我们就会感觉到自己需要做点事情，在自己和别人遭罪的时候说一些希望和坚定的话来加强我们之间的联系并有更清晰的认识。上帝借助我们来行事。在我们祈祷时我们会提到他人，那么我们就把注意力和能量都放在他们身上，为上帝和世界提供了新的集中点来作为重新联系的工具。希伯来语有个词意思包括做法和话语，祈祷的做法和话语是一种带有话语的行为和在做的基础上再表达。我们把这些词投放到世界上，磨练自己的能量作为能使自己变得更好的工具。我们提升并集中自己的意愿。祈祷把我们意愿、能量和希望这个礼物给了上帝，这样就能够创造更深层次的归属感，更执着的投入和更丰富的联系。

 在这样一个世界上，祈祷治愈病痛是比我们正常能意识到的领域更深层次的意识。要知道上帝了解我们每个人的本性，上帝永远把每个瞬间变成现实的时候都联系在一起，祈祷的行为是通过上帝、通过加强我们和爱的人、远离我们的人以及那些有麻烦或危险的社区联系的纽带，彼此沟通的话语或行为。我们集中自己思想和心灵的震颤并把这种意愿指向上帝并通过上帝来快速恢复我们爱的人和关心的事物的能量。我们加强他们身上的自我意识。我们上升到更清晰的意识我们把这种模糊的关心变成鲜明的表扬、恳求和感同身受。


 或许这样的祈祷能逐渐的是疾病愈合；相关的科学研究在各自的发现中都有两面性。祈祷能够与患病的人、挣扎的人和伤心的人的内心深处交谈，确定他们不是无助的，没有被抛弃，让我们通过上帝与他们见面成为可能并代表他们、我们和上帝来调动各种资源。

 在这样的祈祷话语或行为中，我们不仅用话语和行动展示了自己的祈祷，而且我们成为自己的祈祷者。（诗篇69:14）