What is prayer?

It is often silent.  It is a conversation often held completely inside your head.  It is chewing on preferred outcomes, wants and desires, hope and dreams, fears and expectations, disappointments and sorrows.

Sometimes, when you are able to tamp down the ego, it is an honest discussion about yourself and it isn't particularly pretty but it is totally truth filled.  Messy,  embarrassing .painful truth. Beautiful truth.

It has a direction although not necessarily a resolution. It is unlike ear worms, those repeating loops that tell you over and over again about your failures, shortcomings and missed opportunities.  It is not one of those mental loops that exhaust you and beat you up and beat you down and wear you out.  They do not enlighten the mind, enrich the soul or lift the burden.  They bring no relief; they are not prayers.  They are demons, for they never bring life to anyone.

Prayer is a conversation which brings you somewhere; not necessarily where you wanted to go, but no longer where you were. Deep within these (largely unspoken) words are truths. Some are buried deep and require a daily scraping away of layers of protective covering. Some lay right near the surface, waiting for you to stumble over them.  Whichever they are, they are precious because they are the pearls of your true self.

Notice I didn't say your perfect self, because your true self is not perfect; at least no in the eyes of this world. But it is you.  When you get there, you unearth the hidden gem that is you and you experience peace. Notice I didn't say joy (although sometimes there is that too) I said peace.  Because, having dug this far and this persistently, having approached from all angles and laid out all the arguments, because having piled all the lies and falsehoods on the rubbish heap, you arrive at the reality of what it means to be you, a singular human being. Even if it isn't what you imagined or wanted or coveted in your imagination, it is truly you and at last you can stop chasing after that which is not real and has no value.

What makes this any different from the incoherent musings of a mad woman? Or the ramblings poured out to the soft spoken, non-directive therapist?? What makes this different from the tear soaked or sigh driven wondering offered up over a cup of tea or a cold beer?  Often, nothing.  They are much the same; a cry for help; a confession of weakness; a striving after wisdom; a search for truth; a hunger for authentic connection.

No matter to whom it is spoken, it is all a search for love and a longing for peace.

Then whispers the Divine Creator "You are beloved. You are not perfect, but you are mine and I will not let you go."

Then you know: this is the answer you've been longing to hear; it is the only answer that gives life and it can only come from God.