I wasn’t sure how to title this series on prayer. I landed on Entangled: Quantum-Informed Prayer because it is so abundantly clear... I could have gone with Prayer after we let go of God as Merlin or Genie or Santa... But I figured that might be too much for those who love those paradigms.
In his book, Praying with Process Theology, Bruce Epperly offers seven weeks of daily devotional thoughts, affirmations, and prayers that he hopes will teach and foster a robust, thriving spiritual practice for folks who resonate with Open and Relational Theology (Process Theology fits under the umbrella of ORT). In the first section, Epperly offers some bedrock affirmations to ground our practices:
Affirmations: the world in which we live.
• Our world is a dynamic, ever-evolving process. Relationship is primary to reality.
• We live in a world characterized by dynamic interdependence.
• We live in a universe of experience, and this includes non-humans as well as humans.
• Value is co-extensive with experience and reality.
• Every creature has value and deserves ethical consideration, apart from human interests.
• Creativity and freedom are essential to reality, including the nonhuman world.
• The future is open, and our actions make a difference in shaping the world to come.
Affirmations: God’s nature
• God is present everywhere and in all things.
• God experiences everything and God’s ongoing experience of the world is constantly growing in relationship to an evolving universe.
• Although God influences all things, God’s power is best understood in terms of love rather than coercion or domination.
• In all things, God works for good – even life’s most challenging situations.
• God’s power is persuasive and invitational, a call forward, as the source of possibilities and ideals appropriate to every occasion of experience and our whole lifetimes.
• The future is open for God as well as us.
• God needs us to be partners in God’s dream of world transformation.
Affirmations: our spiritual journeys
• God is present in our lives as the “still small voice” speaking in our “sighs too deep for words.”
• Our spiritual practices bring God’s unique and personal visions for our lives and the world to consciousness.
• When we pray, we align ourselves with Gods’ vision for us and experience greater divine energy/presence.
• Our prayers, in an interdependent universe, create a field of force that enables God to be more active in our lives and the lives of those for whom we pray.
• Our prayers create new possibilities for divine and human activities and may influence the nonhuman world in amazing ways.
While you may find yourself easily nodding your head to much of the above, realize that many of the statements above challenge long-held classic Christian beliefs. The truth is that many Christians today have one foot in ORT and the other in classic Christianity. Their stated beliefs mirror the tenets challenged by the statements above while their experience simultaneously resonates with those same statements. In my experience as a human being who has moved through and away from dominant classic Christian beliefs that have reigned supreme for at least 1,000 years, and as a pastor who has led many through the same journey, I can tell you that the deconstruction-reconstruction process is very difficult. Prayer becomes collateral damage in that process. If God isn’t “up there” then where am I directing my prayers? If God isn’t omnipotent in the way I’ve been told to believe, what is the value of my prayers? These questions are the “why” behind this series. I believe Epperly’s book will be very helpful in moving into a renewed passion for prayer. My teachings might help, too. Might...
It might help to remember that Jesus was a fan of prayer. He integrated solitude into his rhythm. He encouraged us to ask, seek, knock – all directed toward God. His model for prayer: attunement more than atonement. His final prayer: that his followers would be connected – one with God like he was – and that they would continue his work. We can answer Jesus’ prayer by our decision to grow. Will you so choose?
A Model for Prayer
Our loving, supportive, holy ABBA:
Your presence is here and everywhere!
May your Divine Commonwealth come!
May your will be done through us!
We are grateful for the gift of food
and work for all to eat their fill.
May we work for a world
where mutual grace and respect abound.
May we foster SHALOM everywhere.
Strengthen us for the work to which we’re called.
Amen. May it be so.