Is There a Better Way to Pray?
The difference between traditional prayer, Centering Prayer, and Integral Prayer
Prayer may be one of the oldest and longstanding traditions in all of humanity. Long before written history, humans were praying to the divine for help, guidance, and a change in the present circumstances in their lives.
But what does prayer look like for Christians today? As our views of God evolve, do we still feel comfortable asking for help and talking to God? Some do, some don’t. Some are confused or maybe even embarrassed about what they find themselves uttering below their breath in prayer—or maybe they’ve given all that up as childish or mythical.
Is there more? Is there a better way to pray?
Let’s look at a few common forms of prayer for Christians today to set the stage for how our understanding and practice of prayer might continue to evolve.
TRADITIONAL PRAYER IS TALKING TO GOD
Interestingly, Jesus was for talking to God — and also against it. It just depended on how you went about it. Praying with words is based on the way Jesus prayed at times and told us that we should pray that way, too. Traditional verbal praying today is often centered on making requests to God. It comes in all kinds of forms.
In a church, it can sound like the emotion-filled prayer of an African American pastor, the liturgy of a Greek Orthodox congregation, a priest officiating at the Roman Catholic Mass, or any other up-front, “performative” prayers. At home, it may be a woman praying the Rosary or a man in his personal devotions. Perhaps it is soldiers praying before they go on a dangerous mission. For many, it began in childhood at bedtime prayers.
Most people learn verbal praying by hearing church leaders in worship services or recited prayers from their traditions such as the Lord’s, or the prayers said in the Mass. Its various forms have been meaningful to many people down through the centuries. However, it has its limitations.
Talking to God Has Its Limitations
The lovely man I am honored to call my friend, Richard Rohr, has half of million people around the world who read and follow his Christ-centered teachings. Rather than me critiquing traditional prayer, I’m going to take the easy way out and let him do it in his insightful way. Here is his critique of traditional prayer:
“Jesus warns us about this verbal prayer when he says, “Why do you babble on like the pagans do? God already knows what you need” (Matthew 6:7).
“He also warns us against telling God what God already knows better than we do, (6:9), and I must say many times the formal prayers of the faithful at a Catholic Mass sound more like announcements than actual prayer, especially given the fact that they are done in the third person and not addressed actively as if God is in the room, which would lead us to pray in the second person. (You have to go to Pentecostal or black churches to hear that!)
And in that same Gospel, Jesus even warns us against too much public prayer, (6:5), since it has too many social payoffs. We must be honest and admit that we have not followed Jesus’s basic advice on prayer, and, in fact, often directly disobeyed it.”
CENTERING PRAYER IS NOT TALKING TO GOD
The beauty of Centering Prayer is that you don’t have to talk—or even think at all. Actually, that’s the point! You just sit quietly in the presence of God. What a relief not to have to think! We can literally do what the psalmist recommends “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).
Father Keating, the spiritual giant who teaches this method, said, “The centering-prayer method is simple: Find a quiet place to pray alone. Sit in silence with the intention of being in God’s presence. When you become aware of any thoughts or feelings, turn away from them and focus on a “sacred word” of your choosing. Let go of every kind of thought during prayer, even the most devout thoughts.” He famously said, “If Mary appears to you, tell her you are busy.”
Centering Prayer’s popularity can partly be seen as a reaction against the lack of spiritual depth of much traditional prayer. Centering Prayer has the potential to move people into deeper states of consciousness, usually after much hard work and many years of practice.
Another reason for the popularity of Centering Prayer may be that it is often the only acceptable form of Christian prayer among postmoderns.
As the postmodern cartoon says, “Pardon me. I’m talking to Jesus, and it’s embarrassing.”
Postmoderns tend to reject all forms of second-person prayer which directly address God, Jesus, and other spiritual beings in reaction against evangelicalism and other traditional forms of Christianity. So a postmodern can “pray” and by-pass the embarrassing “talking to Jesus” thing.
Interestingly, the only form of prayer Father Keating taught publicly was Centering Prayer. Richard Rohr teaches what he calls contemplation, which is more varied than Centering Prayer, but does not usually address personal relationships with spiritual beings. However, they both personally practice intimate conversations with Jesus, which is a form of enlightened traditional prayer. So they both integrate traditional and Centering Prayer at the personal level!
Not talking to God has its limitations.
Talking to God is head-centered prayer. However, so is not talking to God. Centering Prayer seeks to use the mind to clear the mind. That can be like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. It takes a pretty foxy person to pull it off.
Centering Prayer’s roots in patriarchal Christian tradition contribute elements that are spiritually limiting. I hesitate to point this out because Centering Prayer has been so helpful to many people, but I do so because of what is possible beyond these limitations.
Let me begin by affirming that the beauty and transforming power of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church Mass has been meaningful to many people. At the same time, every branch of Christianity has its challenges. Integral transcends the worst and includes the best. No matter how much these churches mean to us, I am going to point out a part that most of us probably want to transcend. This is their intentional investment in the patriarchal mindset, which shows up in their leadership and language.
Almost all forms of traditional meditation, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian—including Centering Prayer—come from the deeply patriarchal culture of previous eras. Christian versions come from the even more patriarchal culture of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. And in particular, from the predominately male-only monastery setting where Christian meditative prayer originated. So you have three layers of patriarchal, excessively masculine oriented values which are unbalanced by feminine values. Here are five of these unbalanced values that psychologists point out are seen as abusive in today’s culture.
1. The spiritual leadership of both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches is restricted to men, which devalues women and the feminine.
2. The Roman Catholic priesthood and monastic culture prohibit marriage and have an ascetic tendency to regulate and control the body and especially sexuality. The requirement of chastity rules out marriage and all sexual activity as one “forsakes all carnal knowledge and pleasure.”
3. The patriarchal culture seeks to regulate and control the emotions. Feminine values are more fluid and open to a wide range of emotions. Tony Soprano defined the perfect form of masculinity as the “strong, silent type.” Humorist Croft Penz says, “A woman likes a strong, silent man because she thinks he’s listening.
4. Men tend to frame love in terms of good behavior. “I love you if you act in acceptable ways.” Females tend to see love as unconditional. “I love you, no matter what.” Therefore, the God of these groups historically tends to be a harsh, male, macho God. That is patriarchy.
5. Masculine values of independence and separateness dominate the more feminine values of relationality. Centering Prayer settles for praying alone, even in a group.
All of this has resulted in at least five limitations in most forms of Christian meditation and Centering Prayer in particular:
1. It is mind-focused in a traditional masculine approach. This outweighs other centers of spiritual knowing. According to leading author and teacher, Robert Masters, spiritual by-passing is a very persistent shadow of spirituality. Lopsided development, such as cognitive intelligence, is often far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence and is a form of spiritual by-passing in religion.
2. It often results in a spirituality that suppresses emotion, denying a vital aspect of humanity an integrated place in spiritual practice.
3. It is detached from the body. Here is the Disembodied Man who can barely feel or see his body.
4. It intentionally rejects a Trinitarian second-person relational connection to God while doing Centering Prayer. If this is one’s only or primary form of prayer, it is limited indeed!
5. It intentionally rejects the presence of others in the collective spiritual energy field. This results in a solitary practice that is individually focused, even in a group that is doing meditative prayer.
Despite these limitations, Centering Prayer has been a blessing and life-changing practice for many Christians. It will continue to be so. But there is also more! Can we balance this by integrating more feminine values like greater relationality, embodiment, and spiritual energy?
INTEGRAL PRAYER KNITS TOGETHER TALKING WITH GOD, NOT TALKING WITH GOD, AND MUCH MORE
The great thing about an integral approach is that it integrates the best of everything, and moves on beyond the worst. So, of course, Integral Prayer integrates talking to God and not talking to God, plus a whole lot more. We aim for an integrated, embodied spiritual practice, with a whole-body mystical awakening meditation and what we’re calling, “Integral Prayer.” We see this as another step forward in the evolution of our spiritual practice as Christians, in how we practice waking up currently available today. We’ll explore more about Integral Prayer this next month.