Prayer can involve listening as well as speaking

Did you hear the one about God creating us with two ears and one mouth so we would listen twice as much as we speak? I wish we would pay attention to this bit of wisdom when it comes to prayer.

Before I say another word, a confession: I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to using prayer to speak to God far more than as a way to listen to God. So many of our traditional prayer practices reinforce prayer as an act of telling God what’s on our minds, or asking him to grant us what’s in our hearts.

A few days ago, I conducted a memorial service for a dear lady in our community. The first prayer in our “Service of Death and Resurrection” ritual addresses God this way: “You are ever more ready to hear than we are to pray. You know our needs before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.”

I’ve used this prayer so many times for funerals or memorial services.

It is true that we are ignorant about what our hearts need in a time of grief from losing a loved one. It is also true God is more ready to hear our prayers than we are to pray.

But I have to wonder if the prayer I quoted – for all of its truth – also reflects one of the difficulties we have with prayer in the first place.

It begs a question for me: If we are indeed ignorant about what we need, why don’t we just sit quietly and let God help us realize what that is?

We don’t need to speed our words to God’s ears. We need to be more open to hearing God’s desire in our hearts.

That takes shutting our mouths until well after we have opened our ears! So easy to say, so difficult for most of us to do.

Jesus knew well that his disciples had a difficult time really hearing what he tried to teach them. We see five times in the Gospels where he says, “Let anyone with ears to hear, listen!”

In light of today’s topic, I offer an interpretation of this powerful saying that you may not see anywhere else: Jesus’ words may be an invitation to contemplative prayer.

He doesn’t ask his disciples to speak. He doesn’t ask them to think about anything.

He simply asks them to listen, deeply listen.

Contemplative prayer is about deep listening to God’s deepest, most radically hospitable desires for you, for other people, for the world.

Father David Rosage, a beloved priest at Immaculate Heart Retreat Center in Spokane, wrote a book called “Discovering Pathways to Prayer.” He tells of a friend who describes contemplative prayer this way:

“In my prayer I consider myself a little child again and I climb up into my Father’s lap. I feel His strong arms about me, protecting, loving me.

“I do not have to speak a word. I just rest, relax and enjoy my Father’s loving embrace.”

In contemplative prayer, Father Rosage says, “Our lips and minds are quiet, but the heart reaches out in wordless prayer and the will seeks to be one with God. We strive to experience His presence.”

This kind of prayer has no agenda other than being in God’s presence. In this prayer, God is “in charge.”

God doesn’t need to listen to our words, be they carefully formed or ecstatic utterances or faddish jargon. We invite God to simply and purely love us as we are, where we are on our journeys.

Over the years, I have sporadically tried to develop my contemplative prayer life. It hasn’t been easy for me.

I want to be more in control of my prayers, so thinking prayer (meditation) and speaking prayer (my professional pray-er posture) have been easier for me. Yet I yearn to simply be in God’s presence, on God’s terms.

So I am learning more and practicing more about contemplative prayer. One of things I am reminded of is that it really needs to be embraced as the most primary of prayer functions.

When it is most effective, contemplative prayer brings us into God’s presence so that he can form and re-form the other kinds of prayers we are more adept at offering.

After significant times of letting God hold us as children in his arms, we will better know his yearnings for us in those moments. So our spoken prayers will focus more on those persons and those issues that God wants us to focus upon.

Our action prayers likewise will be focused beyond our own personal agendas. We will see the world more from a God-view, and our hearts will be stronger to do God’s will rather than serve our own interests.

During Lent, I invite you to look for a time each day to set yourself apart from your daily routine.

Do what you have to do so you can simply let God love you for a brief time.

You may not notice immediate change. You initially will be quite self-conscious.

But soon you will relish that time alone. For you will know you aren’t really alone.