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You might wonder why a study on contemplative practice has taken so long to get around to the topic of prayer. The reason is precisely because our focus is on the larger issue of contemplative practice and lifestyle rather than on prayer, per se. Prayer certainly has a role to play, here, but the quality of one's prayer is deeply influenced by the quality of lifestyle one is living. Where practices such as solitude, silence, awareness, honesty, and benevolence are lacking, prayer will be shallow and characterized by distractions of all kinds.

I think it was William Johnston in his book, The Inner Eye of Love, who really brought home to me the connection between lifestyle and prayer. He explained how spiritual writers often justify prayer in terms of the improvements it helps to effect in one's overall lifestyle, and that is true. Even more true, he noted, is how one's lifestyle affects one's prayer. He went on to stress how prayer is a kind of barometer of our state of union with God just as surely as our service--maybe even moreso. Coming into that "inner Eye of Love," our lives are laid bare, and we are revealed to ourselves in the spotless mirror of the Divine Image within. All those distractions we often experience are symptoms of our inner brokenness--each thought consisting of a fragment of our spirit, as it were, needing to be re-integrated. Where our lives are fragmented, we can't expect our prayer to be focused, deep and peaceful. That's why ongoing practice outside of the context of prayer is so important.

This will be the first of two threads on prayer. It will speak of prayer in general and introduce some basic terminology. Our next prayer thread will focus on prayer as contemplative practice.

The material which follows is exerpted from my book, Here Now In Love, Chapter 2.

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This is an important spiritual law to remember. If you spend lots of time attending to television programing, it will influence your development. But what if you were to spend more time attending to God? That’s really what prayer is supposed to be about.

All through the day, you are invited to be lovingly attentive as you drive a car, talk with a co-worker, do your work, etc. But in prayer, you drop everything except loving attentiveness to God. By doing so, you deepen your capacity to be here now in love after you arise from prayer to go forth and do what ever it is you need to do. Your quality of presence is thus formed and deepened in prayer. Without prayer, it is difficult to be here now in love through the day.

Almost any kind will do, provided the focus is on loving God, and being loved by God. Obviously, you couldn’t do this if you spent all your time in intercessory prayer, asking God to do this or that, or to help out someone or another. There is no problem with saying such prayers, only it is doubtful that one comes away with a deeper love of God if that’s all that goes on.

Two general types of prayer are emphasized in all the world religions. One of these types is called kataphatic prayer, and it refers to our seeking God through the medium of forms. Such prayer recognizes God to be a relational partner, and addresses God using various images and concepts, including here God’s presence to us in the form of a person, such as Jesus. Praying with Scripture is also kataphatic prayer, as is saying the rosary. By focusing on some “symbolic” manifestation of God’s presence, you are thus able to direct your attention more fully to God, and find God speaking to you through this medium. Our human consciousness needs this kind of prayer, for it leaves us with a sense of “being in relationship” with God.

The other type of prayer is called apophatic prayer, and it refers to prayer without images. Here, you simply call to mind that God’s loving presence saturates all things, and so you simply rest in a kind of general attentiveness to God, open to receiving whatever God wants to give. You come to know God as the Ground of your own being, and the presence at the heart of all things. No words can express this, and so apophatic prayer emphasizes loving silence and “unknowing” as distinctive features.

The Church has long recognized the validity of these two kinds of prayer, and I believe a healthy spiritual life requires both. Generally, it seems most natural for us to use kataphatic approaches when beginning prayer. We read Scripture, pray for our needs, and relate to God as an-Other, or to Jesus, etc. After awhile, the presence of God, which transcends all concepts and images, leads us to the general loving attentiveness of apophatic, contemplative prayer, which we might rest in for awhile, returning to kataphatic prayer a little later.

The most important thing is for you to take time each day to pray. If you are new to the spiritual life, I recommend at least two 20 minute periods each day. If you’ve been at it awhile, then you know the importance of prayer, but perhaps you’ve lost the focus of using prayer times to be present to God. I’ve certainly had this happen in my own life. There have been days when, in prayer, I spent a great deal of time meditating on the meaning of the Scripture, or praying for people on my prayer list, only to discover, after awhile, that I was losing a sense of God’s presence in my life.

What I am recommending, then, is that you find whatever approach in prayer works best for you, and that you use it to give your attention to God. Pray for your needs and for others: that’s fine. But after that is done, just “look at God,” and invite God to show you how to do so.

What you will surely discover is that you have a very difficult time giving God your full, undivided attention for very long. Your mind will carry your attention this way and that. Don’t worry about that. Everyone has this problem for a long time. It is only when apophatic contemplation becomes deeply established that you will find your mind mostly quiet. Just bring your mind back when it strays, doing this again and again. Use a simple word like “God,” or “Jesus” to bring your attention back, letting this word express your consent to God’s will and action within (this is called centering prayer).

Every time you choose to give God your attention instead of getting involved in a distraction, you grow spiritually stronger. Every time! Note, however, that I am making a distinction between having distractions and getting involved in them. As mentioned above, you will surely have distractions, and so that’s unavoidable. Each distraction “owns,” as it were, a “piece” of your attention, if we might speak thus. When you give yourself over to a distraction, you give it more attention, more energy, and become more involved in its agenda. When you note the distraction without getting caught up in it, turning your attention again to God (using a prayer word or a short intercessory prayer for the concern raised by the distraction), you give yourself over to God and become more like what you see, which is God. Also, your attention and energy become freed from the distraction. That little “piece” of yourself which was out of your control now becomes more integrated as part of your true self.

And so you must pray if you would grow in the Spirit. No excuses! Get up earlier in the morning if you must. Let the primary focus of your prayer be to develop your conscious contact with God (Step 11 of the Twelve Steps). Don’t evaluate whether your prayer time was successful according to the level of distractions you experienced. Sometimes, distractions signify that the Spirit is hard at work within. Other times, you might find yourself so enraptured with God that you don’t want to leave your prayer. That’s good, too, of course! We need such times, or else we would get discouraged. But don’t think your time a waste when that doesn’t happen. As someone once said, the “success” of prayer is primarily evaluated according to one criterion: you showed up.

Prayer in the Christian Tradition. Introduces a few methods of prayer and even the idea of stages of prayer from the Christian mystical tradition.
The Prayer Guide. Over 100 pages of answers to questions on Christian prayer and intercession...
Catholic Encyclopedia on Prayer. More basic information. Very substantive.
Daily Spiritual Seed. Published by this ministry. Provides guidance on prayer and material for daily spiritual reading and reflection.

4. How important do you think it is to take time for formal prayer? Please explain.