Involving Ourselves in Prayer

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to involve oneself in prayer?  Often we have things on our mind, spend time checking our watches to make sure we will get to our next scheduled appointment, or lack an understanding of the words we are saying.   As a result the quality of our prayer experience leaves us lacking. 

What about prayer makes Judaism feel it is so important, that it is considered one of three things that supports the world; the other two being Torah and gemilut chasadim (acts of loving kindness)? 

The Hebrew word for prayer is tefillah, whose root means “to bond.”  It is the method that we have been given to bond with G-d. Rabbi Abraham Twerski wrote “We bond with G-d when we make a request of Him or voice a complaint.  We bond with Him when we thank Him or praise Him.  …Communication can take the form of verbalization, by word, by song, and by wordless melodies.  We communicate by action and by body language.  In as much as G-d has access to our thoughts and feelings, we communicate with Him by thinking and feeling.  And yes, silence, too, is a method of communication.”

And of course you know from your own experience, that you can have loose bonds or tight bonds with G-d depending on your situation, but in order to form a bond at all, you have to try to communicate. 

When I was young, I would go to bed each evening and recite the beginning of the Shema, but that never seemed enough for me.  I felt that I wanted to add my own thoughts and express them to G-d.  So every night I would talk to G-d expressing my hopes, desires, and thankfulness.  I might have been a child, but those prayers also led me to self-reflection and goal setting.  For example, when I prayed that my brothers would react peacefully toward me, I knew what I would have to do in order to make such a relationship take hold. By allowing myself to take the time to offer my personal prayers I discovered that the fixed bedtime ritual of saying the Shema became more meaningful.

We have to be able to understand that just as the ways we feel change, our approach to G-d can be in different ways at different times.  The prayers in the siddur and the machzor may be fixed, but that was done on purpose by our Sages.  They wanted to give us a central point from which we could all connect with one another.  Being together in a Synagogue, facing Jerusalem as we face the Ark, allows us to feel as if we are one people.  It provides us with something to share.  Fixed prayer actually helped reconstitute the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple and we were sent into exile.  It is no less powerful today when we travel from Jewish community to community and find a common bond through prayer.  Being involved in prayer does provide us with a sense of relationship, commonality, and community when we utter the same words at the same time as the others in our midst.  But if prayer is only fixed…it is likely to be less than a profound experience. 

This summer one of my teachers at the Pardes Institute said, “If prayer is boring to you, ask yourself how is your life? Are you experiencing your life fully?  Do you want to involve G-d in your life?  If you do…you have to make it happen.”

We have three models of prayer available to us from the Patriarchs each of whom related to G-d each in his own way.  Abraham awakened early in the morning, stood up and was ready to take on the world.  He challenged G-d and G-d’s sense of justice and mercy.  His attitude while arguing with G-d was that he needed to take a stand about the prime value of human life.  His prayers took place in the morning.  Isaac on the other hand, was a man of the field who planted his crops and then knew that he had done all that he could do.  Isaac prayed that G-d would do G-d’s part to make his actions come to fruition. Isaac’s prayers were offered in the afternoon. And Jacob’s encounter with G-d came out of a sense of fear and lack of control.  He was having an existential crisis when he wrestled with G-d and was worried that his brother wanted to kill him.  His prayers were offered in the evening.

We have varying models for spontaneous prayer that can be combined with our fixed prayers, but in order to find ourselves ready to pray we have to learn to see the interaction of humans and G-d.  Our world is filled with what Rabbi Harold Schulweiss calls “sign-miracles.”  They do not violate our sense of reason, or our knowledge of nature.  They occur when we watch the birth of a child, see a child grow, and watch a wound heal.  When a child is born, one is transformed into a parent.  Suddenly spiritual significance attaches itself to a biological process.  When a child grows, nature is influenced by the human energies of providing nourishment that will allow for growth.  And when a wound heals, we can point to the “human as well as to that which is beyond human powers.”  When you look for the sign-miracles that are with us daily, it can help you realize your connection and use prayer to continue that bond.

May we all find our prayers meaningful and use the time during the next several days to not only feel a sense of community with one another but a sense of connectedness with G-d.  May we use our prayers to set goals for our own behavior and to reflect upon the ways in which we can help perfect this world.  May we not fall into the rut of simply reciting words by rote.

Amen