Friday, March 2, 2007

TEACHING OTHERS TO PRAY

This is Friday and one of my classes for this semester begins today. Teaching Others to Pray will be held on four Fridays and will be led by a team of brothers from a local monastery. I am excited about the course and can't wait to learn more about the hands on methods of leading others into a deeper relationship with God.

Part of me wonders, though, if prayer is something that can be taught. Riding a bike, crocheting a shawl, quilting a throw, installing a new transmission, or tuning up a motorcycle all seem like things that can be taught. Relating with God, however, seems more like something that just happens or it doesn't.

I tend to think about relating to God like one would a parent. There is new life and dependency on the one who is closest and most available to meet the needs one cannot meet oneself. Over time the parent-child relationship becomes less dependent and more interdependent. Perhaps that is how I think relating with God should be.

In reality I know that life is much different than my imagining. Life gets succeedingly more complex and the problems and challenges we face become more formidable. Rather than getting more interdependent, I see myself becoming more dependent on God - for support, for guidance, for lovingkindness, and for forgiveness. I cannot imagine what possessed me to think that my first tentative steps away from the guiding hand of God were a good thing and not a turning my face from God and God's will.

I find myself turning back to God again and again. Each time, God is patiently waiting for my return not matter the depths of my misdeeds or the pain I have caused.

Is this something that can be taught? Isn't this something that one just inherently knows? Perhaps not. Maybe we need the model of our earthly parents acting out this dance of free will and redemption again and again before the knowledge forgiveness truly lives in our hearts. Perhaps it is the forgiveness of God that illuminates the forgiveness that we might have received from our parents.

In any event, I wonder if this course, or others like it, will be a boondoggle of middle class, educated, elitism. Lining up in rows behind a monk or two, listening to the right way to pray to one's God, perfecting one's prayer technique seems like actions that might qualify as self centered rather than God centered.

I think about the women of color I see portrayed in movies and on television. The women I am thinking about are spiritual giants and they are physically large and imposing too. They are usually not well educated and they lack the polish of society and the styles of the most modern clothes. Underneath it all, however, they are people of prayer. They open their mouths and from their hearts flow the most wonderful, honest and affirming prayers.

I know in my heart that God listens especially for these prayers from black women who have no other person or place to turn, but to their God. I doubt many of them have attended a seminary class on teaching or learning to pray.

I will attend this class and work to learn new ways to lead others into a deeper relationship with God. I will, however, continue to stand with women of color who pray to God and bask in the knowledge this homeschooling provides me.