I don’t identify as a super spiritual person.

This is a bit ironic of me to say. Half of my job is focused on prayer… I have a lot of thoughts about prayer… I could probably write some half decent academic essays about prayer… But this has absolutely nothing to do with me being an amazing person of prayer. I have decided that being an award-winning prayer person is not required to serve others in the pursuit of more and better prayer. But I feel myself settling and surrendering more and more to the vitality of prayer for me, and the desire to grow as a person of prayer.

So this post is something of a confession, a declaration, a faltering manifesto of sorts… about my intermittent yet incessant insistence on the infinite importance of this ancient spiritual practice we call prayer.

In my experience and understanding of human existence, we are always praying. To live is to pray. To think and distinguish between this and that, to make goals, to prioritise… This is prayer.

Whether we pray to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, or to the universe, or to another conception of a higher power, we all pray.

Even for those who may not have concrete moments, rhythms or conscious practices of prayer… We all pray.

It is psychologically impossible, for even the most convinced atheist, to rid themselves entirely of even the slightest trace of gratitude, expression of need, desire for a certain outcome or states of affairs, or reverence for reality. And we would be entirely mistaken to fail to mention those less obvious forms of prayer like confession and lament. The latter of the two, prayers of lament, can at times take aggressive form of accusatory prayers. These prayers express confusion, intense dissatisfaction, and disappointment with the way a particular situation (or the whole sum total of all situations… Reality itself) is going. What else is a hardened unbeliever doing when they dismiss the goodness or the existence of a God, but engaging in intense, sustained, accusatory prayers of lament?

We all pray. And we are always praying.

We pray for good, just and righteous things. But we are also praying when we are at our worst. The only difference in these moments is that we (knowingly or not) are praying to different gods. We pray to the gods of fame, fortune, lust, success, acquisition and distraction.

These are often very subtle prayers, especially for those who identify with faith or a religious tradition. When the church secretary, for the briefest moment (or for years in their role), wonders if people will notice the bit of extra work they did on that thing; they are praying – a little bit – to another god. When the good bishop checks the engagement of the social media account, it is very likely that prayers to another god are simultaneously being made.

In my few laps around the sun, I’ve gotten to know the basic impulses that push me to pray to these others gods. I know my anger, fear, lust, resentment, self-pity, victim mentality, rescuer complex and delusions of grandeur well enough to know… finally… that…

I have to pray or I’ll go insane.

Not just any prayers, but good prayers. Balanced prayers. Healthy prayers. Prayers that encourage me and challenge me. Prayers that comfort me where I am afflicted, and prayers that afflict me where I am too comfortable. Prayers that lift me up out of my insistence that I am insignificant or disregarded by God, and prayers that coax me down from the exalted heights to which I lift myself (so often to compensate for the times I feel low).

I cannot allow my constant praying to go untended, lest my prayers be pushed in the dual directions of apathy or vainglory. I cannot wait until I spiritual enough to pray – for it is by prayer that my spirituality is shaped. I cannot wait until I have my questions and puzzlings about various parts of the Bible sorted out – for it is in prayer that I continue this dialogue with God. I cannot wait until I feel morally ready to pray – for prayer is the pathway to joining my life to God.

Here I kneel. I cannot do otherwise. Amen.