What is the Place of Silent Prayer in Open and Relational Theologies?

Photo: Thomas J. Oord

What is Silent Prayer, Anyway?

Any kind of prayer that does not rely on words.

Any kind of prayer in which non-verbal experience has primacy.

Photo: Thomas J. Oord

What can be non-verbally experienced in silent prayer?

A spiritual alphabet from Spirituality and Practice

Can Open and Relational Theologies

Affirm Silent Prayer?

Preliminary Notes for a Lecture Not Yet Given

by Jay McDaniel

Preliminary Observation:

Yes, they can and should affirm silent prayer. Silent prayer is a relatively universal form of religious experience found in almost all religiions annd many cultures.
Open and relational theologies can affirm silent prayer if they honor the bodily, non-verbal, affective sides of ordinary experience that are pre-linguistic; recognizing that these sides of experience, too, can be 'places" where God is experienced and known.
See the spiritual alphabet developed by Spirituality and Practice as an example of some of the experiential 'places' where a God of Love can be experienced and known non-verbally.
The understanding of experience developed by process theologians can help, because (in their version of open and relational theology) most experience is pre-linguistic. Conscious, verbal experience is but the tip of the experiential iceberg.

Two kinds of silent prayer in Abrahamic traditions:

Communicative Silent Prayer:
- Addressing a universal and inclusive You who is more than the world and yet within the world (nowhere in some sense, and everywhere in another). The “address” comes through feelings and gestures, but not words.
- Listening for response from the You through feelings not words.
Contemplative Silent Prayer:
- Resting in the presence of the inclusive You as you might rest in the presence of a loved one on an autumn night, with a sense of being loved and no need to say anything.
- The resting does not have an “agenda” and is not seeking “information” or “guidance.” The beauty is in the presence.

Open and Relational Theologies

What are they?
- theologies affirming that the encompassing You is essentially kenotic (essentially loving);
- theologies affirming that the future is not-yet-decided, not even by the universal You;
- theologies affirming that the very nature of the You includes “openness” (generosity, kindness, listening, love) that is characteristic of genuine love.
Two kinds of Divine Love
- Divine Empathy: Feeling the feelings of all living beings anywhere and everywhere, and being affected by what is felt. God as the Deep Listening.
- Divine Providential Action: Responding to what is felt with fresh possibilities that are healing, whole-making, empowering, and spiritually enlivening. God as Poet of the world.

Silent Prayer in Open and Relational Perspective

Feeling the Divine Empathy in a wordless way: recognizes that God “feels the feelings” of each and all, that rests in a feeling of God’s receptive love, God’s tenderness.
Feeling divine Providential Action in a wordless way: God communicates in people’s lives through fresh possibilities, not empathy, which can be felt in non-verbal ways.
Participating in the Divine Milieu in a wordless way. The many "qualities of heart and mind" offered in the spiritual alphabet above, when experienced in the intimacy of the heart, both individually and collectively, can be understood (in retrospect) as form of prayer: that is, ways of experiencing and participating in divine empathy and divine providential action.

So what about words?

Words are fine, too. The three forms of silent prayer noted above can be facilitated and talked about using words.
They can also be analyzed and discussed philosophically and scientifically. The field of positive psychology, for example, is quite interested in describing positive emotions that can qualify a life well-lived. See the Common Gommon Good Science Center at the Univerity of California, Berkeley, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
There is no contradiction in recognizig that "words" can be used to consider and evoke wordless states.
The arts and music can do the same. In our time much "contemplative prayer" is facilitated in this way.
Open and relational theologies can be enriched by open and relational theopoetics, for the sake of a better world and for the sake of prayer.

Photo: Thomas J. Oord