A disclaimer first: as I speak about prayer, I want to remind us that I'm not interested so much in the phenomenology of prayer, but in the narratives we construct about prayer. For instance, as I discuss persona prayer, I draw a distinction between what we experience as "personal prayer" and what we talk about when we talk about personal prayer. That we talk about it, even to ourselves, places our focus at the level of persona rather than person. More pointedly, in this discussion I'm not denying nor discounting the possibility that a person may commune with God during personal prayer. However, given my narrative theory, that communion is not available for my reading. Instead, the data available derives from personas.
At the narrative level, recounting personal prayer is a narrative about a person's persona interacting with a divine persona, which I restrict to the Spirit for theological reasons. Now, I know that many people pray to Jesus and consider their personal prayers a conversation with Jesus or even the Creator, but as a Christian - even better, as a Reformed Christian - i understand that the persona through which they pray is actually the Spirit because the Spirit is the only persona available to us (the Creator is somewhere else and Christ is there, too, interceding for us). So in a narrative about personal prayer, told from whatever perspective or point of view, we have a most basic ethos: two personas interacting. And reading such a narrative tells a great deal about how the narrator views the person praying and the God hearing.
Even at the personal level, I want to maintain that a person prays through her persona: the person prays self-consciously in a persona that is prayerful, for instance. And the person prays to a divine persona, itself a construct based on all kinds of factors: theology, tradition, experience, etc. We pray in certain ways, all of which rest in personas. "Spiritual" prayer in this analysis is prayer that honestly engages the two personas, but the question remains whether the prayer is "spiritual" or "Spiritual" (the capitalization of "Spirit" at the beginning of this sentence is accidental). A "spiritual" prayer, given my earlier definitions, is one in which personal characteristics are honestly communicated in that person's prayer persona. A "Spiritual" prayer is one in which the same is true on both sides of the prayer: both the individual and the Spirit are honestly (or truly) communicated in the ethos of their two personas. Now, it remains (for me) a real question whether the Spirit must always engage with us when we pray. I'm very hesitant to make the Spirit accountable to our desire to pray, and I'm equally hesitant to make the Spirit coterminous with existence itself, as if the Spirit were everywhere and in everything. I do not think that very scriptural. But I'm straying into phenomenology again. From a perspective of narrative, then, a narrative about personal prayer is open to critical evaluation: is the person's persona honest, and is the persona of the Spirit reflected/recounted honestly and truly? Just to be honest myself, critical evaluation inevitable brings in the evaluator's theology, presumptions, convictions, etc., with which the evaluator evaluates. Yet reading narratives necessarily entails such a messy process.
At the corporate level, the main frame of analysis is the dialectic between the group's ethos and its encroaching ethoi. In corporate prayer, a group, through its ethos, prays in interaction with the Spirit's persona but in awareness of all those surrounding ethoi. For instance, in the old days in the Presbyterian church, the prayer of confession was often a collect (you can Google the collect form if you're unfamiliar with it). The collect is a very old, formulaic but delightful, literary form of prayer. Now, a particular Presbyterian church praying corporately using a collect is certainly, at the level of narrative, praying in the Spirit, but they're also praying in the midst of a church culture in which the form of a group's prayer distinguishes the group from others, perhaps critiques others (conversely, some of the more "free" churches emphasize extemporaneous prayers, in distinction to written prayers). Further, reminding ourselves of the complexities of ethoi, corporate prayers are often political, or socially-conscious, etc., all of which must be seen not just as conversation/dialogue within the walls but in conversation with many ethoi outside the walls as well.
Now, as in persona prayer a corporate may indeed be "spiritual" if it honestly and truly voices group convictions, characteristics, etc. By watching a congregation during a corporate prayer (and I confess: sometimes instead of closing my eyes I watch congregations pray) you can often tell whether the person praying actually gets the congregation and its ethos. Heck, you don't really have to watch: you can feel when a prayer hits the mark and when it misses. One that hits the mark is "spiritual." A "Spiritual" prayer, on the other hand, is one in which the Spirit's persona is truly engaged with the group's ethos. That engagement changes even the most spiritual group prayer, giving the words unplanned depth and resonance, sometimes even thwarting the prayer itself, transforming it into something quite apart from its original intention. Sometimes, perhaps in the best of times, that Spiritual prayer calls forth the very essences of a group's ethos and reaffirms them. Again, I'm very hesitant to put the Spirit at our beck and call simply because as a group we pray, but, again, that's phenomenology, and I'm trying to stick to reading narratives.
My posting has been delayed and erratic because Nancy and I are on vacation in Colorado. At any rate, my next post will (finally) get down to the persona/ethos/God trialectic. Thank you for reading.
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