What would it look like to think about prayer as a kind of listening, to the world, to one another, to the Divine? How can we let go of our small agendas and listen for a bigger story, what Thomas Merton calls the "general dance?" How can we learn to pay attention, as an act of prayer, rather than just thinking about prayer as using words to address God?

Everything is energy. All energy creates vibrations at different frequencies. When we speak a word, it vibrates at a certain frequency. This is not psychology but physics. Now, what if prayer was no exception to this reality. What if prayer is not just about the horizontal but the vertical? What if our praying has been facing one direction for too long? What if prayer is more about sending and receiving energies with others and not trying to persuade or manipulate the Divine? What if we all had more power than we realize? 

What if prayer could be a practice of lament? An intentional time of ripping our heart open and giving language to that which lurks inside your internal universe. What if prayer could be naming the anger, rage, joy, and pain within you. Perhaps this type of expression could get us one step closer to finding release. This week we examine the most common type of Psalm from ancient Israel, the Lament Psalms. Perhaps it leads us to our own practice of lament.

What is prayer? What is the purpose of prayer? How does it work? Do you pray? What do you pray for? Can prayer change things? If not, why do we do it? Does prayer change Gods mind? Does God answer prayer sometimes but not all the time? Have you ever prayed for someone or something and it didn’t happen? Are miracles dependent on prayer? If so, what is the criteria? How sincere the prayer is? How often we pray? How many people we have praying? Is prayer about convincing, persuading, or manipulating God to do something? Is prayer an empty ritual that exist for a magical/mythical time of consciousness? Is there a way to approach prayer and talk about prayer differently than we have? Can prayer still be a meaning, helpful and transformative practice for us? Today we are simply opening the door to this complicated ancient practice called prayer.