We Never Pray Alone

Learning to Pray: How We Find Heaven on Earth
by Wayne Muller

Many who seek comfort and healing from prayer are unsure about how to pray. They feel awkward or uncomfortable, not knowing the "right" way to pray. What should prayer feel like, and what is it supposed to accomplish?

In this illuminating book, Wayne Muller offers simple yet profound guidance based on the Lord's Prayer. It is the prayer most prayed in our culture - included in countless services, private devotions, and twelve-step meetings. Yet in its very familiarity we may underestimate its power to heal and transform our lives today. Now, in the same ecumenical spirit with which he approached the Sabbath, Muller gives us a fresh, new vision of this timeless prayer. "Every word, every phrase," he says, "reveals some potent teaching about prayer."

Starting with the word "our," which reminds us that we never pray alone, and continuing phrase by phrase, Muller leads us into the heart of the prayer, to the assurance of a heaven available to us here and now. He explores how God responds to our needs and wants, how we can seek protection in a world full of danger and evil, and how we are called to forgiveness. He also gently confronts the difficulties that some people have experienced with the prayer. Each short section ends with a Prayer Practice to bring these simple teachings alive in our hearts and lives.

Chapter 1

When we pray, we never pray alone.

Nowhere in the Lord's Prayer do we find the word I. Prayer is not a solitary practice; as prayer guides us inward, we are led into deep communion with everyone who has ever prayed. Beginning with the word Our, we cultivate a deep intention to pray on behalf of, and in the company of, the entire family of creation.

We belong to something larger than ourselves. Even in complete solitude, we remain part of a living community. When we pray - when we retreat to a still place of deep listening - even in our intimate seclusion, our prayers reverberate through the connective fabric of life.

When we pray, even as we lift up our own deep needs and yearnings, we also pray for grace, joy, and the alleviation of suffering for all beings. Prayer honors deep, unseen connections that place us in kinship with all beings. Throughout this prayer, we hear the echo of our collective yearning - our Father, our bread, our trespasses.

Sadly, our society seeks to deny the astonishing power of our deep interconnectedness by promoting a corrosive illusion of isolation and self-sufficiency. As we seemingly become more and more self-sufficient in our cars and on our computers, we are trapped by an insidious lie that we can somehow live apart from the subtle dance of interdependence. This is a terrible misunderstanding that does violence to the spirit, and promotes a feeling of being crushed by the weight of deep loneliness.

In truth, countless others accompany us each step of the way, and we do nothing without their assistance. Have we ever grown all our own food, built our own homes, woven the cloth for our own clothing? Every moment we live, we depend on the labor of countless farmers, teachers, doctors, carpenters, truck drivers, nurses, miners, parents, children, artists, loggers, steel workers, cattle, bees, worms, trees - numberless people and beings. When we proudly proclaim that we are "self-sufficient" we deny the nourishment and companionship offered us by the rich family to which we belong.

So when we pray for inner peace and healing, we also seek some benefit for all who are in need. But how can we pray for so many, when our own needs seem so immediate? Pulled by too many demands, committed to too many projects, we often feel overwhelmed by the needs of others, and seek in prayer to retreat, to remove ourselves from people, and take refuge in solitude. This is, for many of us, the attraction of prayer.

Why Do We Pray?

I often feel called to pray when I am weary and depleted, when I feel as if the weight of the world were on my shoulders. As much as I resolve to offer my best, to do my work, raise my children, contribute to my community, and be a good friend and useful citizen of the planet, I can feel overwhelmed and discouraged that I have not done more.

But if I look carefully at myself in these moments, I find I have taken on these things as if they were my work alone. Whenever I take on more than I can honorably do, or try to do more than I can honestly handle, something inevitably goes wrong. Then I feel like a failure, disappointed I could not do everything right. In the end, I feel isolated and lonely. It is in times such as these that I find myself needing some solace, seeking comfort and sanctuary in prayer. "In isolation," the Buddha cautions, "lies the world's great misery."

I was newly graduated from Harvard Divinity School when I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, a group of Plains Indians invited me to take part in a sweat-lodge ceremony. Although I had spent three years studying the world's religions, I had never participated in such a ceremony, and I was more than a little nervous. The temperatures in a sweat lodge can get very high, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stand the heat. What if I needed to leave? My hosts were gentle and understanding, and assured me that I could leave when I wished.

They took all day to prepare the fire and arrange the lodge in the manner prescribed by tradition. Willow branches were cut, shaped, and tied to frame the lodge, blankets covered the frame, a fire pit was dug and large rocks were gathered to be placed in the raging fire for several hours. When the time came to begin the ceremony, we all gathered around the lodge. It was winter, it was night, and it was snowing.

The one who tended the fire told me that as I entered the lodge, I must say aloud the words mitakuye oyasin - "to all my relations." When Native Americans say "all my relations," they do not mean only grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, although they do include these blood relatives. They also mean to encompass all our relations in the family of creation, the two-legged, the four-legged, the birds and fish and plants and even the trees who gave their lives to make this fire that heats these rocks that make the steam in the sweat lodge.

During this ceremony I learned that "all my relations" was a rich and magnificent acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of all life. We each took turns to speak as we went around the circle, four times in all, offering prayers in each of the four rounds to the four directions, for the earth, for those in need, for the animals on this land, for Father Sky and Mother Earth and all her creatures. In the intimate circle of the lodge, smoking the pipe of peace as a blessing for each prayer, I felt the palpable sacredness of that interconnection in ways I had never felt before. I also felt a creeping humility overcome any sense I may have had that my divinity degree was the culmination of my spiritual training. Clearly another spiritual adventure was just beginning.

Many indigenous peoples, when they begin prayer or worship, invoke the presence of their ancestors, honoring all those who have come before, confessing from the start that we cannot possibly do this work of living and loving, building and feeding, growing and healing, all by ourselves. We seek the wisdom and nourishing company of all who have gone before, and pray for the healing of all who will come after.

In the same spirit, the traditional Buddhist Metta, a prayer of loving kindness, is offered for the alleviation of suffering of all sentient beings.

May all beings be healed.

May all beings be at peace.

May all beings be free from suffering.

Copyright © 2003 by Wayne Muller.

About the Author

Wayne Muller is an ordained minister and therapist and founder of Bread for the Journey, an innovative organization serving families in need. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, he is Senior Scholar at the Fetzer Institute and a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He also runs the Institute for Engaged Spirituality and gives lectures and retreats nationwide. He is the author of Legacy of the Heart, a New York Times bestseller, and How, Then, Shall We Live? He lives with his family in northern California.