Friendship, Listening, and Empathy: A Prayer GuideDraw Near: A Lenten Devotional Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian LifeAdvent DevotionalSabbath Keeping FastingA Renewed SpiritualityNurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First CenturyThe Power of ListeningJoy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your CongregationPrayers of the New TestamentPrayers of the Old TestamentPersonality Type in CongregationsSabbathA Garden of Living Water: Stories of Self-Discovery and Spiritual GrowthDead Sea: A NovelDeadly Murmurs: A NovelDeath in Dunedin: A NovelBeating Burnout in CongregationsReaching Out in a Networked WorldEmbracing MidlifeFriending

Listening to God in prayer: Alone or with others

Lynne Baab • Friday December 1 2017

Listening to God in prayer: Alone or with others

Any contemplative prayer form can be practiced alone. You are warmly invited to experiment with the forms of prayer described in this series of blog posts as you pray by yourself. In addition, you may find great joy in experiencing contemplative prayer in a group. It took me a while to wrap my mind around the notion of praying silently with others.

I can remember the first time, more than twenty years ago, when I heard someone describe her experience of silent prayer in a group. She was the pastor of a Presbyterian Church located near several other churches. She told me that every Friday all the ministers of the churches, along with anyone else who wanted to come, gathered at the Episcopal Church over lunch hour and prayed silently together for an hour.

I was incredulous. I didn’t say anything out loud to her, but inside I was thinking, “You mean you gather with a group of people for an hour and you don’t talk? At all? How weird! You can pray alone at home. When you’re with people, what’s most fun is to talk. This is craziness!”

Soon after that conversation, I began to attend contemplative prayer events in my own congregation. At first I felt very self-conscious praying silently in a room with other people. After a while, I began to realize it was one of the richest experiences of community that I had ever experienced.

A few years later, I interviewed participants in one contemplative prayer class for our church newsletter. “What is contemplative prayer in a group like for you?” I asked them. “And why would you encourage others to participate?”

Here are some of the answers:

  • “I like that you have an affinity with people without talking. God is joining hearts together.”
  • “I like everyone here. It’s a liking that comes out of quiet.”
  • “It’s a time to be alone with God but without loneliness, because there’s intimacy with God and with others.”
  • “Being quiet with God enables us to be a group. It begins with our relationship with God and then we can share it with the people around us.”

Because of those comments, I became more comfortable suggesting a period of quiet at the beginning of meetings. Freedom from words, in the presence of other people, is a great gift, and most of us have very little experience with it. I encourage people who want to learn patterns of contemplative prayer to participate in a contemplative prayer group of some kind, because that experience of intimacy in silence with others as well as with God brings such unexpected blessings.

Some people use the term “our presence for God” when they talk about silent prayer. This term refers to our willingness for God, our openness to God, our commitment to take the time required to hear God’s voice and experience God’s presence. Contemplative prayer, at its heart, acts out the truth that our lives depend on continual grace from God poured out upon us. Contemplative prayer allows us to relinquish the myth that it is our discipline or our competence that runs our lives.

As we practice contemplative prayer, this “presence for God” begins to spill over into our everyday lives, and more and more we experience God’s hand in daily life. We grow in acknowledging our dependence on God.

Often I find it easier to put myself in this stance of openness to God with when I pray with others.

(Next week: Breath prayer. Illustration by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column. This post is excerpted from my book, A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife.)

Advent Devotional (downloadable PDF)

Advent begins this coming Sunday. My church, Bethany Presbyterian in Seattle, asked me to write reflection/discussion questions for an Advent devotional they have used in the past. For each week of Advent and for Christmas Day, there’s a short liturgy with a reading from a psalm. I’ve written reflection/discussion questions to go along with each psalm. If you’ve never made connections between Advent and the Psalms, you’ll enjoy this. Available here.



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