All Prayer is Inadequate

If the purpose of prayer is to accurately and adequately praise God, or even describe God, then we must admit that it will always fail. There is a paradox to all spiritual practice and to all prayer practice. we try to describe God - infinite and pervasive - in words made for our own finite and limited human experience. Just as an artist must paint an image from the three dimensional world in a two dimensional frame, so too the spiritual seeker must try to describe something profoundly true in an artificial frame. Even sculpture, though it has the benefit of three dimensions, can only capture a moment, frozen in isolation amidst the ever-unfolding reality that we inhabit.

Perhaps then, the goal of prayer is not to describe God, but to discover ourselves. What we explore is not the vastness of God Out There, but the intimacy of God Inside. As we become more adept, we are able to more convincingly approach and realize what is truly real in our life.

Every word of prayer is inadequate to describe the experience of God. Every painting and sculpture is inadequate to describe and communicate the reality around us. "Praised are You...", "Merciful One....", "God is good...". None of these are True with a capital T. But ironically they can, with practice allow us to begin to understand the nature of mercy, praise, and goodness.

The more we know, the more we realize that each word, meant to symbolize an aspect of our experiences, and each ritual act and each quiet meditation pales in comparison with the emotions and imaginations that they seek to reveal, provoke or describe.

Our recitations, repetitions, and exercises all reveal our limits even as they invite us deeper. The process of refinement and investment in these brush strokes liberates them from the shortcomings of habit and routine. We can invest each move and each word with meaning so that these inadequate words trigger the neurological jump to Davenology/Prayercraft, and in that they become powerful ways to enhance and expand our capacity for creativity.

It is in that creativity that we truly experience and encounter what we call . . . God.

Praying With Rabbis

This week, I prayed with rabbis. I don't usually do that. But this week, I was on a four day retreat with about twenty five other rabbis in the farm country of Maryland. A group called Rabbis Without Borders gathered for its annual alumni retreat, and it was a simple pleasure to daven in their company. Because it was  RWB (Rabbis Without Borders) kind of retreat, our group included a wide range of denominational and professional difference; so we didn't have a set plan for minyan. We can do a lot together, but we still have some boundaries even if we are trying to be without borders.

Still, each morning a small group of rabbis got together to pray the morning meditations and read the parsha on Monday. Rabbis. I got pray in a group of leaders. A mamlechet Kohanim. A gathering of kindred spirits and love of Torah. One of us was saying kaddish for a parent. And there was a lot of easy singing and niggunim. It is not that rabbis are somehow better at praying, or better in general. In my experience, rabbis have great facility with the text and language of the tefiilot. They have given a lot of thought to the order, history, and even mystical prayer experiences. But they are like everyone else when it comes to reflective thinking, and we are certainly subject to all the more distracted and biased ways of thinking that are common among all men and women who seek to make and keep tefillah meaningful.

Still, it felt like the buzz in the room was a little bit higher, a little more in tune. Like a old style radio, dialed in a bit closer to the proper frequency, but still . . . not quite there. In that way, my tefillot with my friends in Rabbis Without Borders was wonderfully unique, and at the same time, just like those of many others, rabbis, Jews, non-Jews and you. A tefillah of striving to embody the best of my spiritual abilities, and the best of my traditions ideals. It helps to pray with rabbis sometimes.