The ready-made modicum has its use. ... First, it keeps me in touch with "sound doctrine." Left to oneself, one could easily slide away from "the faith once given" into a phantom called "my religion."
Secondly, it reminds me "what things I ought to ask" (perhaps especially when I am praying for other people). The crisis of the present moment, like the nearest telegraph-post, will always loom largest. Isn't there a danger that our great, permanent, objective necessities — often more important — may get crowded out? ...
Finally, they provide an element of the ceremonial. On your view, that is just what we don't want. On mine, it is part of what we want. I see what you mean when you say that using ready-made prayers would be like "making love to your own wife out of Petrarch or Donne" (Incidentally, might you not quote them — to such a literary wife as Betty?) The parallel won't do.
I fully agree that the relationship between God and a man is more private and intimate than any possible relation between two fellow creatures. Yes, but at the same time there is, in another way, a greater distance between the participants. We are approaching... the Unimaginably and Insupportably Other. We ought to be — sometimes I hope one is — simultaneously aware of the closest proximity and infinite distance. You make things far too snug and confiding. Your erotic analogy needs to be supplemented by "I fell at His feet as one dead"....
A few formal, ready-made prayers serve me as a corrective. ... They keep one side of the paradox alive. Of course, it is only one side. It would be better not to be reverent at all than to have recourse to a reverence which denied the proximity.
(Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, no. 2)
Do you use 'ready made' prayers or exclusively 'home-made'? Why?
I use a mix. One of things I really enjoy about going to an Anglican church is the Book of Common Prayer - for precisely the reason that Lewis mentions, that it disciplines your praying - I remember to pray for the world, and for others, and for the work of the Church, and for our leaders... many of them things that I forget to pray for when I just pray in my own words. But the privilege of pouring out the desires of our hearts to God - in words or without words - is a real and precious one, and I think praying extempore reminds us of that.
ReplyDeleteI have never gone to a church that uses a formal, written down liturgy. Well, not for more than a once-off visit, anyway. So I don't have any general experience with "ceremonial", pre-written prayer.
ReplyDeleteBut I have really learnt heaps about prayer by reading the prayers in the Bible, especially some of those by Paul and Peter in their letters, and using them as a spring board for my own prayers. So when Paul prays, "I thank God for your love for all the saints" (in Philemon) I follow along the same line. I thank God for the love I see my husband expressing to others through his ministry as a Pastor, and thank God for the energy and willingness he has given me to serve my four pre-school children and thank God for the way my Christian friend encouraged me in conversation the day before ... you get the picture.
I have found this helps me to keep a biblical perspective on what I pray about and for. Paul prayed a lot about people's faith and very little about material needs. Definitely something I needed to learn before I began this journey into more biblical prayer.
~ Sharon