“We should not judge the effectiveness of our prayer by how prayerful we think we are. Our very attempt to pray is, in fact, prayer.”
So advises Rev. Paul Witmer, minister at the Central Presbyterian Church in Des Moines, Iowa. He convenes the prayer group to which my friend, Nick Tormey, belongs. (The latter has shared the pastor’s words with me.)
On a visit to Des Moines last week, I did not have the opportunity to meet with the prayer group because members have taken a recess until August. Nick Tormey misses the meetings during this break. “I like the regularity of knowing that on Friday noon I would be spending some time in silence.”
He expresses appreciation of the meetings despite experiencing ups and downs in prayer. “Sometimes my mind would shut down,” he explains, “and I would feel at peace, while at other times I would feel distracted but I still value that time apart.”
The peaceful atmosphere of the place where they meet counts a lot. “The quietness of the chapel,” Nick observes, “the picture of Jesus and the rich young man in the fancy hat; the light streaming through the tall rectangular window.”
He also values the bonding with other people. One other participant shares with him the pain he feels as he goes through a divorce.
Summing up the experience, Nick says: “I always feel as if I’ve done something, even if it wasn’t very prayerful.”
What Nick reports of his group sounds much like the spiritual benefits I have derived from the prayer group to which I have belonged over the past three years. It is representative, I suspect, of what people experience in many other such groups across the country. People in search of spirit come together and find much value even when they encounter distraction, dryness, and only intermittent peace of soul.
Anglican priest and theology professor Sarah Coakley, in the current Harvard Divinity Bulletin, writes about the prayer group that she has run for eight years. Right from the start Prof. Coakley discovered two practical advantages of silence: first, it bridged the sometimes wide religious and political differences among members, and secondly it created “a brief haven of rest from our (often frenzied) intellectual activities.”
After not using rituals in the early days, the group soon discovered the need of at least a few. Now, they begin with the sound of a bell and they light a candle to focus attention. They also instituted the practice of exchanging the kiss of peace at the end of each session, a gesture that has evolved from a mere handshake to a more emotionally expressive sign of friendship.
In assessing her group’s experience, Prof. Coakley lists five features:
- It has led members to adopt other spiritual practices such as liturgical prayer and the prayer of intercession. Thus they have discovered a fuller spiritual life through the habit of praying regularly.
- They have found their group to have a life of its own that goes beyond that of individual members. As Prof. Coakley puts it, “Its sum is mysteriously more than its parts,” a reality that produces “a deep sense of communion, trust, and peace between the participants.”
- The group has traveled beyond ecumenism and, with the addition of Jews and Buddhists among others, has become inter-religious. This sometimes leads to a “level of mutual regard and trust beyond words.”
- Members now welcome requests to pray for certain requests and intentions. Before the bell rings for prayer, these intentions are quietly mentioned.
- Some members have carried over their prayer into social action. Thus some students are engaged in work in prisons, hospitals, and other places where people are in dire need of help.
Summing up, Prof. Coakley writes: “I like to think of the group as providing an open-ended invitation to such ‘wasting of time’ before God in a School (and culture) of obsessive busyness.”
One hopes that prayer groups can share this kind of experience with one another. The Des Moines group, at least, will profit from what the Harvard group has learned. Having read Sarah Coakley’s article, my friend Nick plans to ask his fellow members to add two features. “I am going to suggest intentions and the kiss of peace at the end,” he says. “I think this will help solidify the group.”
Richard Griffin