Letters to Someone Else # 1

Dear M.,

Your talk of prayer dizzies me a bit. I think about how hard you’re praying and how hard you’re thinking about prayer, and I realize that my prayer life is in shambles. Which is an interesting thing to consider.

Prayer shambles . . .

I started praying when I was very young. . . It started with my father’s words, after story time. We said the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary.” Then, my favorite part… we said the “Thank you dear God” prayer, a family specialty, I believe, like my Grandmother’s meatballs. In this prayer, we made a long list of all the things we were thankful for. In the early years of this prayer, it was so wonderfully exciting, inventive, spontaneous, improvisatory. . . We would start down one train of thanks, and end up dredging up memories of old aunts and cousins, of good cars, long since traded-in, of dead pets and shrubbery. The world was wonderfully alive with thanks and praise.

At a certain point, my father stopped his nightly visits, as all fathers must, I imagine. And at that point I started praying alone. Prayer began to resemble calisthenics at this point. The words became mechanical, quick, efficient. The “Thank You Dear God” prayer ossified into a list. Same list every night. No more discovery.

To be honest, my biggest problem at this point in my life was this: when should I think about girls? I remember monumental struggles about this. Should I think about girls before I pray and then ask God for forgiveness, or should I think about girls after I pray and hope God doesn’t notice?

. . .

And now I don’t pray much at all. Why? The fact is simple. I don’t know how to pray when I’m not alone. I think I can honestly say that I’ve prayed just about every time I’ve been in bed alone. But when I’m in bed with somebody else—my wife—I just don’t think about it, I don’t know how to get into the proper position. Which raises other questions, one in particular. . . the romantic notion of the solitary monk. I’ve carried it around in my head, in one way or another, since high school. First it came from Jack Kerouac, whose writing is often tinged with spirituality. He ran away from society to pray, meditate…

And so there’s something here that does speak to life and against death. We can, I think, equate prayer, true prayer, spontaneous prayer, deeply considered prayer, childlike prayer—with life, a way of living, a way of staying alive as the body does its death dance.

Prayer in the ultra-modern age!!! Now that’s a great problem, isn’t it. I’ve noticed that my students have very little concept of inwardness, of stillness, of meditation, or reflection. Why? Well, there’s a simple answer. Technology. They don’t spend time alone, in their own heads. They communicate with each other, socialize, avoid boredom at all costs, build identities on Facebook, keep track of where their friends go on the Internet, text, talk, etc. . . and most of the kids that I teach, when they’re not doing that, are working their asses off, reading books, doing community service, learning math, science, playing the violin. So, at what point do they nurture their inner life. How does a technology addicted, action oriented, boredom averse generation learn to pray? I leave that to you, my friend.

-Merton