When We Don't Know How to Pray
Thought to Ponder: Nobody ever found recovery as a result of an intellectual awakening.
There are only two things we need to know about prayer and meditation for staying sober:
(1) We have to start doing them, and, (2) We have to continue.
A dear AA friend once gave me a copy of The 12 Step Prayer Book. It's a lovely little book that contains a lot of very beautiful prayers written for us folks in recovery. It contains a few annoying ones, too, but then I am easily annoyed by prayers.
I'm not as easily annoyed by them as I was when I first got here though, because then I was especially annoyed when a member would rhapsodize about the Prayers of St. Francis of Assisi, the one that asks God to make us "an instrument of Your peace."
As a single working mom with four small children, aging parents, a job to keep, a house to manage, and all while staying sober, I thought I was doing plenty enough for others, thanks.
I called that lovely prayer "the codependent prayer," and said so, often.
(Yes. I was that kind of AA member).
But our spiritual program of recovery doesn't much care if we like the idea of prayer or not, and it doesn't care if we enjoy meditating, either (more about which in next week's blog). It just "suggests" we do both if we want to stay sober.
With sobriety upon my arrival into A.A. being my priority goal (then and still), I examined all the prayers I knew by heart. I found all two of them lacking:
(1)
The Lord's Prayer was too masculine for my taste
(but not too Christian. Pray it and listen to the words.).
So I altered it some.
I still pray my version at bedtime.
(2)
My Mum had taught me a grim little bedtime prayer when I was very young: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray to God my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray thee, God, my soul to take."
It was a bit scary when I was little to even think about not living through the night and I soon stopped praying it. Now that it's far more appropriate (though still disturbing) it has become part of my nighttime prayers once again.
Since I didn't get to AA with a headful of memorized prayer material I have had to cobble things together over the years. Some I'm quite pleased with, others not so much, but I do my best.
Being a creature who loves routine I tend to say the same old, same old, stuff, much of it written out by me as original prayers long ago, even knowing by then the only real prayer is to ask for knowledge of God's will for me and for the power to carry that out in that day. Today, In addition to "power," I ask for the energy, courage, ability and desire as well.
I pray that, too, every day.
But not until I've first bored blind the God of My understanding by naming my children, their partners, their own children, our pets, my friends, my sponsees, our pets, and then naming deceased loved ones, my country of origin, people affected by war, and climate change, and ... trust me, the list goes on (and on and on). These are my by rote prayers and I do them morning and evening, even though they often bore me, too.
My "real" prayers are those I mutter throughout the day when I appreciate something, accomplish something, find a missing something, hear from a loved one, have a nice surprise of any kind, cook a delicious meal for myself, paint a picture that turns out better than I had hoped, get a call from one of my sons, have a lengthy visit with my daughter, laugh with a grandchild, tell my dog he's a good boy, pet one of my pushy cats, and so on.
My daily muttered prayers are all prayers of gratitude and they are pretty much ongoing these days.
But that was not always the case!
My life in early recovery still held a lot of turmoil, because I would still go full-on into situations in my time-honored fucked up way - and pay the penalty for that pretty much immediately. It took me a long old time to remember to ask my Higher Power to help me before I set out with my personal battering ram aimed to take down anything that got between me and what I wanted.
People in the states may remember those commercials where people would guzzle down a soda and then smack their forehead and cry, "I cudda had a V8" (a healthier veggie drink).
In my case - after I had done damage - it was only then when I'd think, "Shit! I cudda said a prayer first."
Our Big Book says: When we see others solve their problems by simple reliance upon some Spirit of the universe, we have to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work, but the God-idea does.
I now completely agree - but in the beginning we have to start to SEE it. And that can take us awhile.
Most alcoholics are perfectionist, people-pleasing, over-achieving, hard-driving neurotic accomplishers. A smaller number are procrastinators that won't leave a burning building until their clothing starts to smoke. We all have to come to terms with who we are and how to best work our 12-step program, our own prayers being a part of that.
The main thing is we don't have to learn everything AA has to teach us in an afternoon. Our A.A. life is a journey and, like any journey, we learn the most by not trying to do too much, too fast.
SLOW-briety.
Spiritual gurus and philosophers through the ages have spent entire lifetimes pondering spiritual mysteries and truths. We drunks - guilt-fueled perhaps over years wasted in drinking - tend to want an understanding of the knowledge of the ages by next Thursday.
Friday at the latest.
Reeeee-lax.
Breathe.
Slow the pace.
As long as we are staying clean and sober we are all exactly where we need to be at this stage of our recovery.
We will all have our own battles in switching from a material viewpoint - the one fostered by our entire society and hammered into us by Madison Avenue jingles and other persuasions - to a more spiritual outlook.
Some non-alcoholics make that change willingly, the vast majority do not, remaining focused on acquiring more "stuff," and often using the time-honored techniques of greed, arrogance, and selfish hoarding to get it.
God has given every human free will to use as we choose, either for good or for evil.
With us stubborn drunks, however, He has reigned us in a bit.
In A.A. we soon learn we are pretty much doomed if we don't focus our life force on developing unselfish love, service and honesty.
Given any other option in those early days of recovery we'd all still be drinking.
True, we can still drink or drug if we choose to, but in our case, because our Higher Power knows us alkies so very well, He took our widdle hans and tied our widdle shoes, and then shooed us out onto the path to victory, like it or not.
Prayer is one of the most powerful ways for shifting our focus from the material to the eternal verities of life. I've come to the conclusion there is no wrong way to pray, as long as we do pray, and also that our prayer life grows and changes over time.
Our Big Book talks about the power of prayer a lot, like this for instance:
If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried ... Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient, they failed utterly. Lack of power that was our dilemma ...
Here the Big Book there launches into finding that power, that seeking God in prayer gives us that power. The entire book is in fact stuffed with that same information presented both in the text and its stories of recovery.
Science has weighed in, too. It has discovered prayer which elicits feelings of love and compassion for others releases a nice hit of serotonin and dopamine into our own brains. As most of us know, both of those are notably in short supply in alcoholic heads.
One study of the psychological benefits of prayer states it may help reduce anxiety and stress, promote a more positive outlook, and strengthen the will to live.
There are many days when any one of us can use a good dose of that!
