What does prayer mean to you?

Do you pray?

If so, to whom?

Do you offer gratitude, praises, apologies, supplications?

Do you get a response?

Do you think it causes tangible results or does it just make us feel better?

I haven’t figured out yet exactly what to think about prayer.  When I pray, I often pray to God – that is, a wiser, older, masculine-ish figure who listens thoughtfully, forgives kindly, and offers gentle advice.  Now, I wouldn’t say that I “hear” that advice, so much as feel it.  If, for example, I have been trying to avoid doing what is clearly the right thing to do, prayer will always clear up those bad little voices telling me to do something else.  It’s almost like prayer puts me in intimate contact with my conscience…except I choose to believe that my conscience is a divine being.

The other way I pray is pretty weird.  I call it “Running with Jesus.”  What I do is this: during one of my daily runs, I envision myself running up alongside a bearded, Middle-eastern man in an uncomfortable cloth robe with sandles on.  I always have to speed up to catch him, because, of course, he is much more capable of holding a steady pace than I am (being God is really an unfair advantage).  Once I catch him, I run alongside him for a while, and just talk out the things that are going on in my life.  Sometimes I am trying to figure out how to handle a tough issue; other times I have a really complicated theological question that I need to talk through; sometimes I just want to have a talk with the Son of God.

I know, this is crazy.  I mean, I don’t see him, like hallucinating; I just pretend.  And it really works – I feel a much deeper connection than when I have my eyes closed, head bowed, hands folded.  I think a lot of it is because so many deep conversations with friends have happened on long runs.

The church I am at right now holds a weekly prayer session on Wednesday mornings.  The pastor, the adorable elderly associate pastor, the secretary, and one or two other women (and I) take cushions to the front of the sanctuary and kneel before the altar.  The pastor begins with a long prayer that addresses any of the praises, concerns, etc. of the church, and then everyone else takes a turn praying out loud.  After this, we join hands in a circle, sing the chorus of a hymn I can’t remember, and then have a group hug.  The hug is definitely the best part.

I like this ritual – it is straightforward, it is communal, it is an opportunity to create an intimate communication with the Divine and bring forth everything that is on our hearts.  Right up my alley.

A few days ago, on the other hand, I had the opportunity to spend about three hours at a church even more in the backwoods than mine.  It is another United Methodist Church, and the pastor is an older gentleman with whose son doubles as his program director.  The son is the most enthusiastic, passionate, wise, and book-smart person I have ever met.  He spent 2 minutes with me and then began to diagnose my personality for me – correctly – and tell me what that meant about my spiritual gifts and vocational direction.  I mean, pretty cool.

Before I left, the pastor did something for me that he termed “praying on me.”  You might have heard this term.  I think it’s the same as “laying hands on.”  Which reminds me of this time after my 8th grade baptism that one of my friends and his dad each put a hand on one of my shoulders.  The dad proceeded to pray the most poetic and beautiful prayer I have ever heard, and the son…spoke in tongues.  They were of the Church of God, I think, and it was something I had never experienced before.  Yet, it was also an extremely powerful moment.

Anyways, the laying hands/praying on thing is really just a focused prayer where someone prays specifically for the target person.  As a recipient of it, I usually feel a little uncomfortable being the center of attention, but generally grateful for the action.  It seems like a very generous thing, and I believe that it is extraordinarily meaningful for the people doing the praying.  For some reason, though, it’s just not something I relate to well.

I don’t know.  What other prayer experiences have you had?  I know of people who can get pretty creative with their praying.  My girlfriend just told me about how she is trying this new thing where she prays for every person she passes while running.  No wonder we wound up together, what with the praying while running inclination…