THE PROPER WAY TO PRAY
By Sam Walter Foss

"The proper way for a man to pray,"
Said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
"And the only proper attitude,
Is down upon the knees."

"No, I should say the way to pray,"
Said Reverend Doctor Wise
"Is standing straight with outstretched arms
And rapt and upturned eyes."

"Oh, no, no, no," said Elder Slow,
"Such posture is too proud.
A man should pray with eyes fast closed
And head contritely bowed."

"It seems to me his hands should be
Austerely clasped in front,
With both thumbs pointing toward the ground,"
Said Reverend Doctor Blunt.

"Last year I fell in Hidgekin's well
Headfirst," said Cyrus Brown,
"With both heels a-stickin' up
And my head a-pointing down.

"And I prayed a prayer right then and there,
The best prayer I ever said.
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed,
A-standin' on my head."

I was raised in a tradition that prayed. We prayed before meals, before meetings, before bed-times, before football games, and before rodeos. We even had morning prayers at my public school, which gives you some idea of how far back I go.

I had no doubt then that prayer did something; I was never sure, however, what it did. And, I must confess, after all these years, I'm still a bit confused. Prayer "is a puzzlement for me," as Winnie the Pooh would say. I pray, but I’m not always sure how it works,

I do know this, however: theological explanations aside, when I'm in deep and desperate need, prayer springs naturally from my lips and from the deepest level of my heart, a solemn truth Foss' bit of whimsy enshrines.

There are no atheists in foxholes, or in any other holes we dig for ourselves. When we're frightened out of our wits, when we're pushed beyond our limits, when we're pulled out of our comfort zones, when our well-being is challenged and endangered, we reflexively and involuntarily resort to prayer. "God help me," is our first language, our natal cry.

"Brief, urgent, frightened words-a person in trouble, crying out to God for help. The language is personal, direct, desperate. This is the language of prayer: men and women calling out their trouble-pain, guilt, doubt, despair-to God. Their lives are threatened. If they don't get help they will be dead, or diminished to some critical degree. The language of prayer is forged in the crucible of trouble. When we can't help ourselves and call for help, when we don't like where we are and want out, when we don't like who we are and want a change, we use primal language, and this language becomes the root language of prayer."[1]

Prayer begins in trouble (and continues because we're always in trouble to some degree.) It requires no special preparation, no precise language, no appropriate posture. We just do it! It springs from us impulsively in the face of necessity. "The natural thing is straight to the Father's knee." [2]

Doublehaul Dave

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[1] Eugene Petterson, Answering God: the Psalms as Tools for Prayer (New York, Harper Collins, 1989) p. 35
[2] George MacDonald

AN EXCERPT FROM THE PROLOGUE TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN

By Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

And as for me, though that I know but lite,[1]
On bookes for to read I me delight,
And to them give I faith and good credence,
And in my heart have them in reverence,
So heartily, that there is game none[2]
That from my bookes maketh me to go'n,
But it be seldom on the holyday;
Save, certainly, when that the month of May
Is comen, and I hear the fowles sing,
And that the flowers ginnen for to spring,
Farewell my book and my devotion!


When Chaucer tired of his books and devotion he took to the fields and the "flowers in the mead." Me, I hie myself to a mountain stream.

Frivolous, you say, when there is so much work to be done. No, frivolity is a gift of God, a indispensable break from the necessities of life. But more than that: it is a foretaste of heaven's joy, a better metaphor for eternal pleasure than the "solemn" duties of this present world.

C. S. Lewis put it this way: "I do think that while we are in this 'valley of tears'--cursed with labour, hemmed round with necessities, tripped up with frustrations, doomed to perpetual plannings, puzzlings, and anxieties-certain qualities that must belong to the celestial condition have no chance to get through...except in activities which, for us here and now, are frivolous. For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in itself, indeed The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be the complete reconciliation of boundless freedom with order-with the most delicately adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful order?

"How can you find any image of this in the 'serious' activities either of our natural or of our (present) spiritual life? Either in our precarious and heart-broken affections or in the Way which is always, in some degree, a via crucis?

"No, Malcolm. It is only in our 'hours-off,' only in our moments of permitted festivity, that we find an analogy. Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for "down here!" is not their natural place. Here they are a moment's rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven."[3]

Doublehaul Dave

[1] "lite": little
[2] "game none": no longer fun
[3] C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, p 92,93