The Seven Kinds of Prayer
from The Book of Common Prayer (1789)
Adoration
Praise
Thanksgiving
Penitence
Oblation
Intercession
Petition
Call to Prayer
Every breath you take is a prayer.
There’s nothing you can do about it.
You only stop praying when you’re dead.
Then other people pray for you.
A human is a praying machine
Adoration
Lifting up the heart and mind to God,
asking nothing but to enjoy God’s presence.
Silence
Yeah, that.
What was before anything else
Way beyond the limits of mere hearing,
Of mere us.
We hear -
A biological mutation of survival value,
Which occasionally drives us nuts
When we can’t turn it off.
Most of the universe is deaf.
It doesn’t appreciate the peace and quiet
As stars explode and worlds crash into each other.
We do,
Or would
If we were out there to hear it all.
But we’re not.
The master works in silence,
Absolute silence.
If an entire universe implodes with the force of a billion atomic bombs
And there’s nobody there to hear it,
Does it still make a sound?
Hell, no.
There’s no oxygen to carry it for starters,
No little molecules bumping against each other.
And even if there were it wouldn’t matter.
Like I said, the master works in silence
No one around to talk to about it, no need for advice
Least of all ours.
And only in silence can we hear it -
What ...s before it is,
The purity of intention,
The word not yet made flesh,
The instant before the orgasm,
The trembling of what is to come,
The breath in before the breath out -
Held for an instant
Of pure
Absolute
Silence
From which all creation explodes.
Silence
The language of God
Hear it who dares
___________
Petition
In petition, we present our own needs, that God’s will may
be done.
Forget that “God’s will may be done” stuff.
We just talked about that.
This is the one where the foxholes come up in conversation.
When you’re face down in the mud
With bullets kicking up the dirt around the top of the hole
And bombs shaking the ground under your feet
And your buddy next to you bleeding out
And there’s nothing anybody can do about it
And you don’t know if those footsteps coming closer
Are our guys or the enemy
And you’re fresh out of bullets
And you’re wet, cold and terrified
And never felt more alone in your life.
You get the picture.
This is no time for “God’s will be done”.
This is the time for one thing and one thing only -
Time for
“Oh God, please God, get me out of here!
I’m sorry for all the bad things I’ve done.
And if you’ll only cut me some slack this once,
I promise I’ll be a good boy from now on forever.
I’m not a praying man
(a lot of prayers start like that – must confuse the hell out of the heavenly switchboard),
But please, please, please,
Save my sorry ass!”
Now there’s a petition for you,
As pure a prayer as there ever was.
No fooling around -
Theology with a vengeance,
Belief with live ammo.
I’ve been there.
Metaphorically, fortunately,
But the feeling’s pretty much the same.
Times when my whole game crashes and I realize I’ve got absolutely nothing,
That I’m just a bag full of wet organs whose tricks have stopped working,
Whose friends have gotten wise to him,
Whose bills have come due,
Whose bluff has been called.
And believe me,
When God calls your bluff,
Your bluff is f**cking called.
Who am I gonna talk to about it, the President?
Not taking messages.
My Mother?
She passed away the same year as that other guy’s mom.
The police?
They’d arrest me on the spot.
So who’s left?
The God of last resort, that’s who.
The only God there is
Or ever was
Or ever will be.
Time to pray, fool.
All the bills come due,
None of the games work indefinitely,
The water runs out of the organs
All your buddies bleed out,
The next bullet has your name on it
Or the one after that if it doesn’t.
So get your knees muddy.
That’s what they’re for.
Kneeling started out as a form of surrender.
An admission that you couldn’t fight any more
And the other guy could pick you off any time he wanted to.
Which is, in fact, our situation.
True for all of us, no matter how we dress it up.
Old Mr. Silence gets the last laugh
This time, every time.
His will be done.
Better to know it.
Much better -
Keeps us honest,
Keeps us human.
*
There’s only one thing we really want,
One thing we’re asking for
Prayer is nothing more than the song
We sing to a lover
Who may or may not know we exist,
Who may or may not ever hear the song,
Who may or may not ever love us back.
But the song -
The making of it,
The singing of it,
The sound of it in our own ears
Enriches our lives beyond words
Enriches our lives beyond words
Enriches our lives beyond words -
Our answer to the silence
And its gift to us,
Amen.
from The Book of Common Prayer (1789)
Adoration
Praise
Thanksgiving
Penitence
Oblation
Intercession
Petition
Call to Prayer
Every breath you take is a prayer.
There’s nothing you can do about it.
You only stop praying when you’re dead.
Then other people pray for you.
A human is a praying machine
Adoration
Lifting up the heart and mind to God,
asking nothing but to enjoy God’s presence.
Silence
Yeah, that.
What was before anything else
Way beyond the limits of mere hearing,
Of mere us.
We hear -
A biological mutation of survival value,
Which occasionally drives us nuts
When we can’t turn it off.
Most of the universe is deaf.
It doesn’t appreciate the peace and quiet
As stars explode and worlds crash into each other.
We do,
Or would
If we were out there to hear it all.
But we’re not.
The master works in silence,
Absolute silence.
If an entire universe implodes with the force of a billion atomic bombs
And there’s nobody there to hear it,
Does it still make a sound?
Hell, no.
There’s no oxygen to carry it for starters,
No little molecules bumping against each other.
And even if there were it wouldn’t matter.
Like I said, the master works in silence
No one around to talk to about it, no need for advice
Least of all ours.
And only in silence can we hear it -
What ...s before it is,
The purity of intention,
The word not yet made flesh,
The instant before the orgasm,
The trembling of what is to come,
The breath in before the breath out -
Held for an instant
Of pure
Absolute
Silence
From which all creation explodes.
Silence
The language of God
Hear it who dares
___________
Petition
In petition, we present our own needs, that God’s will may
be done.
Forget that “God’s will may be done” stuff.
We just talked about that.
This is the one where the foxholes come up in conversation.
When you’re face down in the mud
With bullets kicking up the dirt around the top of the hole
And bombs shaking the ground under your feet
And your buddy next to you bleeding out
And there’s nothing anybody can do about it
And you don’t know if those footsteps coming closer
Are our guys or the enemy
And you’re fresh out of bullets
And you’re wet, cold and terrified
And never felt more alone in your life.
You get the picture.
This is no time for “God’s will be done”.
This is the time for one thing and one thing only -
Time for
“Oh God, please God, get me out of here!
I’m sorry for all the bad things I’ve done.
And if you’ll only cut me some slack this once,
I promise I’ll be a good boy from now on forever.
I’m not a praying man
(a lot of prayers start like that – must confuse the hell out of the heavenly switchboard),
But please, please, please,
Save my sorry ass!”
Now there’s a petition for you,
As pure a prayer as there ever was.
No fooling around -
Theology with a vengeance,
Belief with live ammo.
I’ve been there.
Metaphorically, fortunately,
But the feeling’s pretty much the same.
Times when my whole game crashes and I realize I’ve got absolutely nothing,
That I’m just a bag full of wet organs whose tricks have stopped working,
Whose friends have gotten wise to him,
Whose bills have come due,
Whose bluff has been called.
And believe me,
When God calls your bluff,
Your bluff is f**cking called.
Who am I gonna talk to about it, the President?
Not taking messages.
My Mother?
She passed away the same year as that other guy’s mom.
The police?
They’d arrest me on the spot.
So who’s left?
The God of last resort, that’s who.
The only God there is
Or ever was
Or ever will be.
Time to pray, fool.
All the bills come due,
None of the games work indefinitely,
The water runs out of the organs
All your buddies bleed out,
The next bullet has your name on it
Or the one after that if it doesn’t.
So get your knees muddy.
That’s what they’re for.
Kneeling started out as a form of surrender.
An admission that you couldn’t fight any more
And the other guy could pick you off any time he wanted to.
Which is, in fact, our situation.
True for all of us, no matter how we dress it up.
Old Mr. Silence gets the last laugh
This time, every time.
His will be done.
Better to know it.
Much better -
Keeps us honest,
Keeps us human.
*
There’s only one thing we really want,
One thing we’re asking for
Prayer is nothing more than the song
We sing to a lover
Who may or may not know we exist,
Who may or may not ever hear the song,
Who may or may not ever love us back.
But the song -
The making of it,
The singing of it,
The sound of it in our own ears
Enriches our lives beyond words
Enriches our lives beyond words
Enriches our lives beyond words -
Our answer to the silence
And its gift to us,
Amen.