Dance of Prayer
November 12, 2008
“One is not really dancing if your still counting the steps.” These are the words that C.S. Lewis shared with his fictional friend Malcolm in the pithy little book, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. Lewis is discussing the changes in the liturgy of the Anglican church and how they negatively impacted his experience of worship. According to Lewis, the best worship experience, finest liturgy, is the one that allows the worshiper to participate with as little self-consciousness as possible. The continual changes in liturgy forced him and others to think most about what was next in the service, the external form of worship, rather than centering their minds upon God, the object of their worship.
Prayer is similar. The best prayer is that which we enter into with little or no self-consciousness. Prayers from the heart, from the top of the head, unvarnished and primitive are best. However, there are times when these basic forms of prayer are beyond us. We simply don’t have the words, the energy, or the ability to form the words that need to be said. At times like this we need to re-enter prayers that were originally prayed by someone else. The perfect prayer life includes a healthy dose of our own extemporaneous expressions of prayer coupled with the words of others. These are prayers upon which we ride piggyback.
Entering into a Sacred Rhythm through praying the hours of Celtic Daily Prayer is one way that we can pray the words of others, making them our own. The repetitive nature of the CDP doesn’t make prayer less meaningful but more so as we pray the already familiar words. Praying the words of others, such as the Psalms, the Lord’s Prayer and the Jesus Prayer is valuable because when we do we pray with those who have gone before. As Scot McKnight puts it, we are praying “with the Church”. Around the world, three to four times a day, hundreds if not thousands join in praying the hours from CDP. Our voices join in concert with them through a fellowship of worship.
“Therefore since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us…” - Heb 12:1 HCSB
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