Prayer: The Common Thread

Prayer is the universal and ubiquitous staple of every world religion. Sung, danced, or drummed, performed in a group or in solitude, with props or just plain mindfulness, the act of talking to, begging or honoring God is religion's essential component. Prayer is our means for shortening the distance between God and ourselves. Different faith communities go about it different ways, but in every prayer lies the same basic desire--communing with the Divine.

That doesn't mean all prayer is alike. In "The Way We Pray: Prayer Practices from Around the World," Maggie Oman Shannon explores prayer from different faith traditions. "The Way We Pray" (Conari Press, 2001) is an alphabetized guidebook of prayer practices. Shannon delves into 50 different prayer rituals, providing guidance, examples, and suggestions for exploring prayer, from working with angels to journal-writing to the ecstatic chanting of Taize.

With each prayer practice, "The Way We Pray" provides historical background on the development and original intention of the prayer practice. Written in a simple, direct style, Shannon offers readers a lesson plan in the mystery of prayer in the amulets of the Hindu Ganesh, the prayer flags of Tibetan Buddhism, and the vision quests of Native Americans. Some of these cultures distinguish little between religion and prayer; you can't study one without learning about the other. In this way "The Way We Pray" becomes a great overview of world religion.

It also invites the wandering soul to graze from a multi-faith prayer menu. "Everything we do has the potential to be prayerful," writes Shannon, and her compendium proves her point: fasting, writing haiku, walking a labyrinth and fingering prayer beads all are equally practical, if not necessarily popular, ways to savor one's connection to the Divine. Shannon is sometimes a bit insistent on the uniformity of the Spirit and too often connects non-Christian practice to a Bible verse, as if to justify the spiritual validity of the practice. This compromises the integrity of non-Christian faiths. But overall, "The Way We Pray: Prayer Practices from Around the World" is a great resource for adding some spice into one's contemporary prayer ritual.

Prayer never loses the promise of comfort, but we can lose our ability to access the comfort. Most of us inherit our prayers by rote learning when we were young. Sharing prayers with all others in our tradition is part of the majesty of prayer, and the meditative quality of repeating familiar words may even have medical benefits. But like all routines learned long ago, the wonderment and intention behind prayers can fade with familiarity, or with a sense of obligation--like flossing.

If the standard prayers have become meaningless mumblings, it maybe time to re-examine your practice. "Surrendering to God," a new book by

addresses the intention (why we pray) and the attention (how we pray). Beasley-Topliffe has adapted his own introspective journal on his struggle to surrender to faith, using a prayer of submission, the Covenant Prayer, as a guide to reflect upon the travails of his spiritual formation.

is a traditional Methodist prayer developed in Britain from the words of the 17th century Puritan minister, Richard Alleine.

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