Prayer As Communion With Pure Being

"How long, O God, must I call for help, but you do not listen? [God replies]...’though the answer linger, wait for it; it will surely come...’" Habakkuk 1.2; 2.3

We’ve all had the experience of wishing for something only to have the wish not come true. As long as we think of God as Something (or Someone) “out there” (or “up there”), we will feel separated from God and will doubt that God is truly present in our time of need. As long as we treat God as a judge before whom we must beg for mercy or as a cosmic Kris Kringle who occasionally distributes goodies to those who have been “good,” our prayers will often disappoint.

But if God is the “ground of being,” ultimate reality, the mystery of life, then our prayers aren’t meant to persuade God to do what God otherwise would not do; our prayers are meant to remind us of our place in God. Prayer, then, doesn’t change God, it changes us, and as we change we become channels of hope that can improve the situations in our lives.

Once we see God as that omni-Presence in which we “live and move and have [our] being,” and we see prayer as the process of reminding ourselves of our unity with Pure Being, then we find that more and more we simply trust life to unfold as it should, and more often than not we aren’t disappointed. Good things happen frequently, the bad things can’t keep us down, and in all things we are learning and growing.

Let’s not give up on the process of prayer…the process really can change us and we tend to project what we are becoming. If prayer improves us, it will surely improve our experience of life.

(c) Durrell Watkins, 2007