Say what you like about Muslims, they take prayer seriously. Dress, posture, timing, regularity are of the essence. The Christian tradition assumes a different form as far as the rank and file are concerned. But that is not the whole story.
A more or less forgotten poet, William Cowper, had something original to say about prayer. Forgotten he may be but in his day he was a popular writer, not least on account of his productive friendship with John Newton, the one-time slave-ship captain. The two of them produced the Olney Hymns. The collection included hymns by Cowper that in their day were top of the charts. Today we rarely sing them. They include ‘Oh1 for a closer walk with God’, ‘Hark, my soul! It is the Lord’ and ‘God moves in a mysterious way’. Cowper was a brilliant man and a devout Christian. He translated Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’. He wrote numerous poems, including ‘John Gilpin’ but he was delicately balanced and lapsed into suicidal moods.
The words on prayer occur in his major work ‘The Task’. This was an extensive recognition of domesticity as a blessing from God. It covered a lot of ground – communing with nature, contentment in gardening, a cup of tea by the fire. “The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,” he wrote.
What Cowper had in mind, I think, was a twofold tendency: first to reduce prayer to intercession and even a programme submitted to God for his approval; secondly a reduction of prayer to a familiar routine and then to say that what is needed is more of the same thing. Better, he judged, ‘a wiser suit’: let God do the proposing as well as the endorsement. Prayer, in other words, is as much about listening as it is about requesting. That means putting thanksgiving and contemplation into the forefront. It means prayer is dynamic. It allows God to set the agenda. Prayer brings about changes in those who pray.
Clearly knowing what we do when we pray is at least as important as knowing what we do when we take on a garden or a family or drive a car. We have to accept that the first principle is to be in touch with God. A long way down the list is the question of whether we ourselves find prayer – and the same is true of worship – pleasing, enjoyable or beneficial. There are recognisable components in prayer. Our forgotten poet can teach us a thing or two about ‘a wiser suit’.
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