Say your prayers!

Earlier this week, I was on the Winds of Change radio program where I spoke with Mary Hallan FioRioto and Loretta Froelich about my book The Words We Pray.

As I shared my experiences and what inspired me to write the book, I realized that this was a great topic for this space which I hadn’t even considered: prayer.

So first, remember the purpose of this place. It’s a space to share experiences, not argue. I won’t be analyzing things or doing history here, except for my own personal history.

I don’t update that often – I aim for once a month – and I don’t know how long I will continue, but for the moment, it’s a sort of archives. Perhaps folks will find it useful as they wander the Internet.

So, prayer.

To remind you:  I was born in 1960, of an observant Catholic mother of French-Canadian background and a lapsed Methodist father. An only child, I went to public schools up until high school. I did First Communion and Confirmation preparation, but the only CCD I recall was a couple between grades 4 and 7. Not sure which. More on that here.

In terms of personal prayer, my formation was scant. My mother, as I said, was observant, but the only prayers I learned were the basics: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be.  I was given a rosary for my First Communion and knew how to pray it – but in a very basic form. When I returned to the rosary in my 30’s and people were doing all those pray for us o holy Mother of God that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ and even Hail Holy Queen – it was all brand-new to me.

And that’s it. I was not taught any other prayers at home, in CCD or – and here’s the meat of this post – in Catholic school.

Before we talk about the Catholic school experience, let’s talk about home. I don’t suggest that my experience was typical at all. I don’t know how much of mine - the fact that I learned no prayers and that prayer wasn’t a part of daily life in the home - was due to my mother’s personality or the way she was raised. I know that others, raised in different environments and perhaps even in different ethnic contexts, had far different experiences. But that’s mine. Observant, believing mother who taught me the basics and then let me on my own.

I attended a Catholic high school in the south from 1974-1978. I’ve recounted that experience from a catechetical perspective here.

Again – no “traditional” prayers were used because, of course, the assumption was that the best prayers were those that came, not from old guys who lived in the middle ages – but from our hearts.

From the introduction to The Words We Pray:

It was the 1970s, and I was a student in a Catholic high school, so of course I learned to pray.

I learned how to meditate on flickering candle flames, a budding flower in a vase, and the ceiling tiles. I was guided in contemplation of songs by James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel and Bread, and if it was a “really good” prayer experience, I cried.

Although I shake my head over it now, I can see how all of that practice took me to a point in my senior year when, on our class retreat with Jesuits in Atlanta, I could immerse myself in a bit of lectio divina centered on John’s Passion account, be in the presence of the Presence, and give myself over to what I finally knew was real.

I still remember that encounter, and in a way I still feel the  effects of it. So if contemplating (and crying to) “You’ve Got a Friend” helped get me there, it was good. But the bad part was that such experiences made me a bit of a prayer snob. The message I absorbed and lived with for a good long time was that the only real prayer was mental prayer—that very personal and subjective experience that was mine alone—and that anything else, especially if it involved praying with words that someone else had written, was definitely not worth my time. Only children repeated memorized prayers and then closed their eyes to go to sleep. It was what the less enlightened did for penance—repeated their memorized prayers and assumed they were taken care of. Rote recitation of prayers written by dead people was not the practice of a spiritually mature person.

And this was the path for the next fifteen years or so. When I went to college and was involved in campus ministry and beyond. We prayed spontaneously before meetings and gatherings, we wrote our own Stations of the Cross for Lent, we composed our versions of the Gloria, our own petitions for the penitential rite. As young Catholics in community, we never prayed the rosary, we knew no formal or traditional prayers. I’ll also mention that the charismatic movement was very big at our campus parish, so that, of course, was going to weigh things in the direction of er, Spirit-led spontaneity.

The only “written” spiritual guides we used - perhaps sharing them, reciting them together, or using them as meditation starters - were popular books by, for example, Henri Nouwen and Hugh Prather - and there’s another guy who wrote poetry…and I can envision the book cover, but can’t remember the title or author. Did it have flowers on the cover? Probably.

All that said, imagine how the sight of 20,000 young people chanting Salve Regina would hit us back then. Imagine how it hits those who were formed in ministry back then, flush with singing a “new church” into being….understand that, and you will understand at least some of the current tensions in the Church.

Anyway. What prayers did you learn? All of them? Was I unusual or typical?