How Does a Priest, Who Cannot Pray, Pray?

Once when I was severely depressed, I had a psychiatrist who did not return calls. She had an answering machine, which led me to believe that she would answer my more and more desperate calls about the more and more dangerous side effects of the meds she prescribed. But she did not. She later acknowledged that she did not listen to her answering machine.

She didn't answer the frantic requests for a call back that I left with her secretary either. Several requests. She expressed surprise that I did not trust her. She explained that she did not do relationships.

I would soon leave what I had thought was a relationship with her. I am talking about a doctor/patient relationship. Meanwhile, I changed my behavior accordingly. As I got even sicker, I did not go to my psychiatrist for help.

I drew a sketch of a telephone receiver. I drew words going into the mouthpiece. I drew scissors cutting the cord. I drew words falling onto the floor from the cut end of the cord. I realize that this sketch dates me.

During that time, I wasn't doing so well with my relationship with God, either. I stopped going to God for help. It may seem natural to draw a connection between the two, but I wouldn't say that one caused the other, nor that they had the same cause. They simply shared the occasion.

I have come to trust other caregivers since, though I generally have laryngitis in any first session. As far as God goes, let's call it a truce. When I anthropomorphize God, I imagine that God laughs at that word truce. I have simply stopped arguing. Maybe I still have laryngitis. I have concluded that I just don't know as much about God as I used to.

Waiting and Watching refers to an old acronym, ACTS. It stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. The traditional teaching is that a healthy prayer life includes each of these in turn.

I know some master pray-ers. I have a friend I call on when the need for supplication is dire. When my wife had cancer, Nell hounded heaven. She had camino pilgrims praying as they walked. She went to a holy well and bid the old women say the ancient prayers in Gaelic. She knows the words, she said, but doesn't have the spiritual authority to say them. She wore out her beads. Who could be surprised that after surgery, the doctors said, We got it all?

But me, I just smile and nod when people ask me to pray for them.

How does a priest, who cannot pray, pray? Well, not in the ways we are traditionally taught to pray. 

I do pray, in a sense. I guess it's like being present.

• Adoration - It's a political act for me -- against all that is wrong in the world, the injustice, the degradation of creation, the corruption of power and idolatrous claims of politicians to God's favor, I am present to both the vastness of creation and to what lies beyond it, what makes human beings puny. God is God, and everything and everybody else is - not.

• Confession - I am present, I sit, to the extent that I am able, with my failings, my limitation, my regret. I am mindful that I simply am not as wonderful as I like to think I am.

• Thanksgiving - What on earth does thanksgiving mean? That I give credit to God for giving me stuff that other people don't have? Thanksgiving is theologically treacherous. Nevertheless, even people who don't bring the God-thing into it feel gratitude. Again, I am simply present to what I have, aware of it, mindful that I have everything that I need.

• Supplication - I remember those who have asked for my prayers. I hold them, I sit with them in my heart. I do lift them to God and I leave it to God.

Are my ways helpful to others who also don't know as much about God as others seem to? Are they helpful to you?

Do you find it ironic that a person who has a gift with words cannot seem to turn those words into a gift of prayer? Well, it is what it is.

Bottom line, I guess, is that the telephone line is not cut. When I pray, at least I am at the other end of it. I am present.