Crying Out to God as a Spiritual Practice

As part of my seminary training, I’m working at a men’s homeless shelter and participating in a recovery group that meets at the shelter each morning. These men are tortured by demons. I really can’t think of a better way to describe the struggle with addiction.

One man in particular, newly sober and detoxed, was going through a really horrible time a couple of months ago. He was waking up screaming in the middle of the night and pounding the wall in his sleep. One morning after our group meeting, he asked me, “How do you pray?” It seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask a seminarian, right?

But I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. I mumbled something about my own practice of centering prayer, which involves finding a quiet place and choosing a sacred word or phrase to put at the center of my consciousness in order to contemplate and experience the presence of the divine.

Not surprisingly, my homeless friend’s eyes glazed over somewhat as I described my way of praying. To my credit, I quickly realized that what I was talking about was not going to work for him at this particular time. So, I suggested that he talk to some of the other men in the group about how they pray—as I know that many of them are quite religious and would be happy to share.

It turns out that what he needed was really what I need sometimes, too. When you are tortured by demons, contemplative centering prayer may not get you where you need to go. What you need to do is cry out. You need to make known your pain. You need to give voice to your deepest, darkest suffering and grief and ask for help.

As Anthony Bloom wrote in "Courage to Pray": "God reveals himself to us in this awareness that we are essentially a cry for him."

And from Rumi (via Coleman Barks): "The grief you cry out from / draws you toward union. / Your pure sadness that wants help / is the secret cup."

One of the old jokes about UUs is that we begin our prayers with the words “To whom it may concern . . .” But the fact is that, with some notable exceptions, there’s just not a whole lot of praying of any kind going on in our congregations (unless, as another old joke goes, it looks like a Democrat is about to lose an election).

If you ask a group of UUs what their spiritual practices are, you are likely to get answers like the following: “My peace and justice work is my spiritual practice.” “I try to parent in a mindful and spiritual way.” “I practice my spirituality in spirited discussions about vital issues with people.”

Those are nice things, but I'd like to see all of us go a little deeper. If we are to minister to a suffering world, we need to find ways of expressing our own suffering--which is what will ultimately connect us to one another and to something greater than ourselves.

May it be so!