Introduction, Part 2

In Silence. Why We Pray
by Donald Spoto

(Page 2 of 6)

As regards the criticism that prayer is an isolating and self-absorbed exercise, are we in fact merely deluding ourselves and avoiding life's demands when we pray? Ought we not to arise from our knees and take our place within social, political and economic institutions, the better to effect the improvement of life for ourselves and others, instead of indulging inner fancies? Escapism is, of course, always a danger in prayer, and no less an authority than the 16th-century Spanish religious reformer, Teresa of Ávila, warns against seeking prayerful solitude merely to avoid the tensions, disturbances and obligations of life. She was a sharp-eyed woman and a gifted psychologist, centuries before psychology became a unique discipline - and she never relied on theories to substantiate her observations on human nature or the interior life.

Today, the objection of escapism often rests on a false assumption - namely, that prayer necessarily avoids or is opposed to the requirements of serious life in the world. On the contrary, as we shall see, genuine prayer has everything to do with real life. Politics, economics, science and technology and even the laudable achievements of humanitarians are never permanent solutions for the problems of the world, if for no other reason than the fact that it is the accomplishments themselves that always reveal what more remains to be done on humankind's behalf. There is an arrogance in those who protest otherwise, for humility demands that we recognize that our efforts and attainments must always remain incomplete.

It is precisely the necessity of a serious and caring life in the world that exercised the Spanish philosopher and literary critic Miguel de Unamuno in the first third of the 20th century. Speaking for many in his time, he finally found himself forced to acknowledge that the very nature of involvement in the commonweal led to a consideration that we may not be alone in the universe; from there, it was a short route to reflect on the notion of God. Unamuno was not especially at home with the classical idea of existential causality, but he was struck by the truth of a universe that nurtured human personality, which must logically possess the hidden resources to account for that personality - in other words, the ground and basis of the universe itself cannot be impersonal. Unamuno leaned heavily toward the affirmation of an ultimately personal Reality, and he was, at the last, deeply uncomfortable with a rank denial of meaning and, finally, of God.

The German philosopher-theologian Paul Tillich did more than lean in the direction of affirmation. Denied the right to teach in Germany under Nazism, Tillich found a welcome in American universities, where, until his death in 1965, he wrote and taught with a sharp focus on the renewal of religion and modern culture. The depth and ground of all being is God, Tillich asserted. If the word "God" was off-putting for some, he recommended that one reflect on the depths of life, on one's ultimate concerns, on what one takes seriously without any reservation. "He who knows about depth," said Tillich, "knows about God."

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But as Tillich and others have warned, there is a danger of infusing prayer with a self-centered, magical spirit that has nothing to do with the search for God; no one who believes in prayer is immune to the subtle contagion of this spirit of magic. Many well-meaning people pray in an effort to learn something about themselves or even to raise their self-esteem. Unfortunately, contemporary culture, perhaps taking its cue from some ideal of physical perfection, tends to see everything, prayer included, in terms of its value for self-improvement. As soon as prayer becomes a means to that end, the sense of transcendence vanishes, and with it the longing for God and the openness to His presence. Authentic prayer does not aim to become a comforting form of self-expression; it is about reaching within and beyond the imagined self to a greater purpose and power.

What of the objection that prayer is mere wish fulfillment or indulgence in narcissistic fantasies and daydreams? Anyone who seriously attempted to pray or who has known even a fleeting or rudimentary experience of a Beyond-in-the-midst can testify that this experience is inevitably characterized by a conviction of otherness - it is about response and contingency. However unclear or problematic the awareness may at times be, prayer is a consciousness that one has first of all been addressed. And for the most part, such encounters offer few immediate or facile emotional satisfactions.

The English scholar and mystic Evelyn Underhill, who contributed richly to the literature of spirituality in the 20th century, wrote that prayer "proceeds by way of much discipline, renunciation and suffering as it moves toward a total abandonment to God's purpose. . . . Experience of God is the greatest of the rights of man, and it should not be left to become the casual discovery of the few."

Even people who reject religion and would classify themselves as atheists often engage in concrete and very real forms of prayer as they seek to give of themselves, to transcend their own limitations, to work on behalf of human rights and to respond to the needs of others. Their dedication, their labors and their aspirations comprise their beliefs - and they can indeed be called beliefs. Thus, in a broad but true sense, they are involved in the enterprise of prayer.

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The English verb "to pray" comes to us from the Old French preier, modernized as prier; this in turn can be traced back to the Latin precari. In its original sense, it means to beseech or to beg, either of a person or God. The phrase "I pray you," dating from the Renaissance, is a good example of how the word developed in English, when it denoted a simple appeal to someone. But to speak of prayer today - to say "I pray" - implies a transcendent address.

We begin to engage in this address and to know something of God through our experience, but language is ultimately inadequate to the task of articulating that experience. It is for precisely that reason that all discourse about the divine is necessarily metaphorical and symbolic. We must take great care not to consider our poor written and spoken attempts with anything but an approximation of the Reality toward which they point. And as for concepts or hypotheses about the nature of God, that devout novelist C.S. Lewis was on the mark: "Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter."

This statement is very much in the classic Judeo-Christian tradition, which has long claimed that we know more accurately what God is not than what He is. In the 4th century, Gregory of Nyssa wrote compellingly of Moses' "meeting" with God in the cloud atop Mount Sinai. From this image, Gregory developed a notion that came to be called apophatic theology, which holds that whatever we say about God, we must immediately qualify by adding, "But He is not at all like that." Moses, we can state with utmost reverence, knew very well that he did not know much at all. In 14th-century England and 16th-century Spain, respectively, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing and the mystic John of the Cross brought the richness and advantages of this idea of "denial" to fruition.

Despite the impossibility of "knowing" God, and despite our own intellectual limitations and spiritual poverty, we humans have consistently felt compelled to write and speak of prayer throughout history. Our experience of finding our way to God has been so powerful or transforming that it has to be articulated, however inadequately. As Saint Augustine said in a sermon, "We are talking about God. What wonder is it that you do not understand? If you do understand, then it is not God." Among the great religions and philosophies in world history, prayer has been the particular genius of the Judeo-Christian continuum for more than four thousand years. It is not exclusive to these traditions, to be sure, but the phenomenon of personal prayer as a living dialogue and continuing relationship with a personal God is found in no other tradition with the force and contemporaneity that it is in the lives and testimonies of Jews and Christians from classical times to today.

The Far East has given us the ethical genius of Confucius, the transforming meditations of Lao-tzu, the wisdom of the compassionate Buddha, the mystical techniques of the many branches of Zen and of Hinduism - all of which enrich and contribute to acts of prayer and continue to provide significant contributions to our collective spiritual life. But these do not have traditions of prayer to one personal and loving God.

That said, it should be stressed that the profound teachings of the East must not be considered abstractly. When considered in terms of direct experiences of the ineffable, it becomes clear that for all their clear differences, Eastern religions are engaged in the same human quest and struggle as those in the West. Buddhism, for example, focuses on liberation from suffering, which, in Christian faith, is the reality forever achieved in the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Both traditions stress the importance of silence; both stress the inadequacy of human comprehension and expression for matters of the spirit. The goal of Buddhism is to reach, through meditation, that genuine state that lies beyond the conscious ego; the goal of Christianity is union with God. Both traditions propose as an ideal the conversion, or ultimate transformation, of what we variously call mind, soul or heart. And in all traditions, formal or obligatory exercises, cultic laws, ritual incantations and similar customs have nourished countless millions of lives round the world, but they are ordinarily not the expression of free and spontaneous love - and that, finally, is at the heart of prayer.

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© 2005 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Donald Spoto, author of The Hidden Jesus, taught theology, Christian mysticism, and biblical literature at the university level for twenty years. His other eighteen books include internationally bestselling biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, and Ingrid Bergman.