On Written and Unwritten Prayers

I often field concerns that I may be locked in a “dead style of worship” with no personality or heartfelt sentiment.  It is true, the solemnity of the more formal written liturgies seems to invite the claim that there is an absence of the Holy Spirit or meaning.  It is true that the stereotype which portrays formalized written liturgies as rigid and cold developed from a kernel of truth.   Liturgy can all too easily fall into a mindless routine.  To deny that this inattention is possible in formalized liturgies is to be guilty of not paying attention.  Such spiritual dangers are real.  But the kernel of truth is often too readily enlarged and turned into an oblique attack on denominations that use written liturgies.

I came from an evangelical background into the Episcopal Church, so I saw this sentiment often.  I still see it and hear it.  The default conception of a written prayer seems to be that if a person recites it, they do not really mean it.  It is thought that the prayer did not come from the heart.    The problem is that to judge one's preferred method of  prayer as better or worse than the other is to try to judge another person's conscience by trying to discover if they really "mean it."  Or worse, it is assumed that those who read prayers must not mean it.  We are accused of simply following "dead letter," but the people who say that do not realize that by speaking a written prayer, we who use written prayers give the prayer a voice and a power and a life that isn't apparent on the page and ink. 

There needs to be a middle way that acknowledges the place of both written prayer and extemporaneous prayer.  In traditions that worship from a written liturgy, both of these types of prayer are needed.  

The first thing that must be done is to break down the false dichotomy and the assumption that written prayers cannot be heartfelt, or that extemporaneous prayer is always heartfelt...and vice versa.  I've seen people who pray by written prayers who mean it it deeply, and those who don't.  I've known people who can pray extemporaneously and deeply mean it and I've known people who can fake it---and will admit to faking it.  I don't think either method of praying is better than the other in of itself; it is a matter of what works in a particular situation.

I'd like to mention how I came to appreciate written prayers.  When I started coming to the Episcopal Church, I greatly appreciated that there were written prayers that I could turn to.  I didn't feel like I knew how to pray (now I realize that prayer is prayer, regardless of a 'right' way...groanings and sighs can be a prayer).  So to turn to a written prayer that matched what I wanted to say to God was a gift to me in times when I didn't know what to say.  I continue to use the written prayers to form how I pray extemporaneously. The prayers form me and guide my relationship with God.  Still, I am not eloquent in speech.  I find it easier to write a prayer than to speak it.  (Perhaps I will do what a friend of mine did...she decided to do her chaplaincy at a hospital without using written prayers so that she would be better at extemporaneous prayer.)  Once again, we need to know how to pray meaningfully in both ways.
 

There is also an argument from tradition, for there is something valuable in praying the same prayers that Christians have used for hundreds of years, sometimes over one thousand years ago.  Then there are the psalms, which Jesus prayed.  It gives us a connection to all who have come before and those who will come after, all of whom we will meet in the End.  In using these written prayers, I also know that I'm joining millions around the world at any given time in the same prayers, and that gives me a keener sense of the body of Christians, Catholic and protestant, around the world.  If the prayer happens to be beautifully written, we also experience joy and delight in praying it and hearing it. 
 

In the end, I think God delights in our desire to be in God's presence, however we choose to get there, in good faith.  It can be from our own heads or from someone else.  The importance is whether the prayer penetrates one's heart and soul.  Of course, trying to judge whether that happens is a spiritually dangerous and prideful place to be.