Devotional Prayer

DEVOTIONAL PRAYER

Prayer is an effort to communicate with God, or to some deity or deities, or another form of spiritual entity, or otherwise, either to offer praise, to make a request, or simply to express one's thoughts and emotions. -Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer]

Prayer takes many forms and covers a wide variety of intents. Prayer may be done alone or in a group; with elaborate ritual or simply and casually; special body postures may be assumed, or not. A prayer may be recited from memory, or composed on the spot. It may be spoken, chanted or sung, with musical accompaniment or without. Prayer is arguably an almost universal human practice, and is as diverse as all the individuals and cultures that have ever lived.

Prayer may be done as a form of supplication, blessing, intercession, or invocation; it may even used as a weapon if one prays for harm to come to one's enemies or to unbelievers. While respecting the great diversity of prayer, here we will focus on devotional prayer, defined as “an act of communion with God, a god, or another object of worship.” An I-thou relationship is usually explicitly or implicitly present in this type of prayer, and would include prayers in which the worshiper is praying to become more like the object of worship.

In chapter 23 of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran provides a beautiful discourse on the spirit of devotional prayer taken to the point of becoming one with the object of worship:

On Prayer

Then a priestess said, "Speak to us of Prayer."

And he answered, saying:

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?

And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.

And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.

When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.

Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion.

For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive.

And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted:

Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.

It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.

God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.

And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.

But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,

And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,

"Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.

It is thy desire in us that desireth.

It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.

We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all."




A few examples of Devotional Prayer:

A prayer in honor of Mary by Hildegard of Bingen:

Alleluia! light
burst from your untouched
womb like a flower
on the farther side
of death. The world-tree
is blossoming. Two
realms become one.

~~~~~

Baha'i prayer:

I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee.

I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, and to my poverty and to

Thy wealth. There is no other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.

~~~~~

a common Christian prayer:

Glory to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now,
and forever shall be,
world without end. Amen

~~~~~

The Salve Regina, a prayer to Mary:

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy.
Hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To You do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
To You do we send up our sighs; mourning and weeping in this
valley of tears.

Turn, then, O most gracious Advocate, Your eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of
Your womb, Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.

Response: That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

~~~~~

A psychedelic devotional prayer by Timothy Leary:

our father, who art in cellular heaven within, hallowed be thy names... from whose loins we have sprung... tissue mother, i remember you... take me back, fleshly parents... back to the temple, back to the cave, back to the desert, back to the jungle... oh fanged & furry father, from whose loins i sprang, i remember you... our furry fathers, who are in ancient heaven, hallowed be thy names in shallow jungle pools... hail mary, mother... hail mother of flesh... blessed is the fruit of thy womb... i remember... back, back beyond flesh & bone... many cellular mother... colloidal globule father, origin of my life... our slimy protozoan fathers in moist cellular heaven, hallowed be thy tissue name, in shallow brothy tropical pools... beyond life... now i lay me down to sleep in cold crystal patterns... amino acid ancestors, and now i die before i wake in silent void... galactic space, shimmering, molecular design of energy beyond life... empty bowl of radiance and stars... silent, shimmering, void... atomic vacuum... ancestor of all things... out here, out here, all sharpness rounded... all wheels glide along soft tracks of light... preface to life, galactic play... belted radiance, lethal spectrum, jeweled indifference... jeweled indifference... where's home? i want to go back... get me back, get me back... is it all a dream? it's cold out here... warning... solar shutters closing, opening, lethal, fusion, love, danger, radiance, fusion, bliss, fusion... slide................into fusion. goodbye. slide............... into fusion..."

~~~~~

Master's Prayer:

Dictated by Avatar Meher Baba at Dehra Dun September 13, 1953

O PARVARDIGAR, the Preserver and Protector of All:
You are without Beginning and without End;
Non-dual, beyond comparison; and none can measure You.
You are without color, without expression, without form,
And without attributes.
You are unlimited and unfathomable,
Beyond imagination and conception,
Eternal and imperishable.
You are indivisible, and none can see you but with eyes Divine.
You always were, You always are, and You always will be.
You are everywhere; You are in everything;
And You are also beyond everywhere and beyond everything.
You are in the firmament and in the depths;
You are manifestand unmanifest;
On all planes and beyond all planes.
You are in the three worlds, and also beyond the three worlds;
You are imperceptible and independent.
You are the Creator, the Lord of Lords,
The Knower of all minds and hearts;
You are 0mnipotent and 0mnipresent.
You are Knowledge infinite, Power infinite, and Bliss infinite.
You are the Ocean of Knowledge, all knowing, infinitely knowing:
the Knower of the past, present, and future;
And You are Knowledge itself.
You are all merciful and eternally benevolent;
You are the Soul of souls, the One with infinite attributes.
You are the Trinity of Truth, Knowledge, and Bliss.
You are the Source of Truth, the Ocean of Love.
You are the Ancient One, the HIGHEST OF THE HIGH;
You are Prabhu and Parameshwar:
You are the Beyond-God, and the Beyond-Beyond God also.
You are Parabrahma, Allah; Elahi;Yezdan; Ahuramazda;
And God the Beloved.
You are named Ezad: the only one worthy of worship.

~~~~~


THAT LIVES IN US

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land-
that sacred earth that is
your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.

When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and future?

The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear- to our innocent follies.

Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.

You will come to see that all evolves us.

If you put your heart against the earth with me, in serving
every creature, our Beloved will enter you from our sacred realm
and we will be, we will be
so happy.

-RUMI

From “Love Poems From God” by Daniel Ladinsky.




References

1.World Prayers: http://www.worldprayers.org/index.html

2. Jane Hirshfield, ed. Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, (New York: HarperCollins, 1994)

3. Spiritual and Devotional Poets: http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets

4. Prayers of Praise: http://www.beliefnet.com/prayeroftheday/sec_prayerslst.asp?paid=61

5. Poetry of Rumi: http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/rumis_poetry/

6. Wikipedia article on prayer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer

7. Maggie Oman Shannon, The Way We Pray (Berkeley: Conari Press, 2001).