What is Prayer During Advent?

I ask you to read this poem by Mary Oliver with quiet openness.

     Praying

It doesn’t have to be

the blue Iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t 

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

Oliver has articulated the profound meaning of the act of praying. Recently, several people have asked me about praying and prayer itself, especially as we enter the season of Advent. Could I define this? Are certain methods of prayer and kinds of prayer more preferred, more effective? Exactly what is prayer? For a moment, I suggest, let’s put aside devotional prayer, congregational prayer, formulaic prayer, scriptural prayer, etc. They are very important prayer styles for us, but the kind of prayer Oliver is talking about is the deep-down human expression sometimes without words but never without feeling. 

Christians observe Advent as an opportunity to reflect on how we might form a new Christ in our lives, a Christ who is literally born again in us in perhaps different ways than he had been in the past. If we have made efforts to grow in our faith, the Christ we now live will be different; he will have been nurtured by our efforts and thus we will be more mature in our faith and, really, happier in it as well. 

Advent creates an environment for meditative prayer. Yes, despite the busyness and noise of the Christmas season, Advent fosters a quiet ether around us begging us to tune out all the distraction. We are inspired to seek a quiet place, light a candle, play inspiring music. In other words, Advent is like a gentle midwife pulling out of us the desire for peace forcing us to sit down and think and pray. God knows this desire is in us; we need only to respond. As Oliver says, everything becomes a source for prayer; we only have to “pay attention.”

I believe Advent offers a different paradigm for prayer than say, Lent. Prayer in Lent is penitential. It evokes confession, forgiveness, and tears. Prayer in Advent is hopeful. It evokes calm, movement, and peace. Think, for instance, of the serene couple, Mary and Joseph, making the approximately 90 miles to Bethlehem on their way to register as Jewish citizens under the census of Caesar. There is immense noise: merchants hawking their wares, animals bleating, snorting, barking, mooing. People calling out to others, children playing. But when night falls all is quiet. This picture is very much like our own right before Christmas and so we wonder: can we pray? 

Oliver’s poem says we might be deprived of getting inspiration from a flower but see something meaningful in “weeds in a vacant lot.” If we sit down where we are and let the cacophony of the world fall from us, we can find the weeds as inspiring as the iris. When the trains, trucks, and airplanes invade our space and leave us thinking we can’t find peace or prayer before Christmas and we let our hearts sag with disappointment, we are denying the gift of life that could be born again in us through a renewed love of Christ and self. At the moment we sit somewhere hoping for prayer, it will come if we “patch a few words together” in simplicity, without flourish, a few words like, “Help me God to be good. Help me to be a better person. Help my beloved (name) who needs you so much. Help all the countries at war to seek peace.”  When we do this, we are entering “the doorway into thanks” because this is an unselfish prayer and a humble one. Oliver says we enter “a silence in which another voice may speak.”

Reflection

Oliver’s poem encourages the simple prayer of the heart. Just sit, close your eyes, breathe in deeply, and enter the doorway which leads you to your heart – the place where God resides. Talk simply with God and then, very importantly, listen. Read the story of Elijah in 1Kings 19. After facing many trials, Elijah is the sole survivor of a persecution. While escaping, Elijah comes across a cave where he begins to pray for inspiration as to what he must do next. He hears God’s message to go outside and wait for the Lord who will be passing by. Outside the cave, a strong wind arrives crushing the rocks and the Lord is not in the wind. An earthquake occurs with fire and the Lord is not in the fire. But after the fire there was only a small whispering sound, and Elijah buries his face in disappointment and then stands before the cave. The whispering sound was the voice of God who then directs Elijah for the action to be taken.

It seems to me that Advent prayer is like that small whispering sound. One must be very quiet to hear this voice, this whisper, in the bursting noise of the holiday. Make it a point to put time and space aside, say a few simple words, and listen for a response. It will come from deep inside where God resides.

Please know that all of you – those who read this post every week, those who read it occasionally, you will be in my Advent prayers. Get ready for Christmas through prayer and an openness to that one small sound of a whisper.