In Support of Petitionary Prayer

Petitionary prayer has a bad rap in our broader culture but this is entirely understandable given the crude representations of it which are most prevalent — “dear God, grant me a convertible!” Even certain more rationalistically and mystically inclined religious folks will deride the practice as silly or ineffectual, questioning the validity of human, conscious thoughts directed towards God being able to affect the Divine being which is already in immediate, vibrant union with all things.

Yet this prejudice is unfortunate and I think classic petitionary prayer retains an important spiritual function and not one confined to just the “unsophisticated” masses who spiritual “elites” look down upon as needing to rely upon “crude” images of God as as reified personal being, separate from the cosmos yet acting upon it in each moment — or so goes one common critique I’ve seen.

At its best, petitionary prayer is like playing jazz with two essential human faculties — care and aspiration. Contrary to an Enlightenment anthropology which has a tendency to see human beings as blank slates with essential capacities baked in, much of our human faculties actually require training and conscious intention to really come alive and function at a high register. In petitionary prayer, we have the opportunity to enter into existential encounter with questions such as “what is really most important to hope for in this life, in this world?” and “what must I become, what must I aspire to in order that my life is transfigured into what it ought to be?”

Sitting with these questions in full earnestness on a regular basis certainly has the power to shift your perception, what you find salient in your awareness, what seems easy or natural as a course of action moment to moment, and other very basic aspects of your very mode of being in life.

Always putting off calling a friend or family member to show them you care and tell them you love them? This is a very easy thing to avoid when operating on autopilot in life but try praying for this person everyday and see if it’s still so easy to avoid following up on that aspiration. What other little aspects of your life could be recalibrated at their base if you made a constant effort at sitting with care and aspiration the way those who regularly practice petitionary prayer do?

In this form of prayer, virtuosity is not only permitted but the standard of excellence — how can you beautify your very act of hoping? What does it look like to weave a complex tapestry of earnest, longing desire and care for ever-expanding horizons of creatures, elegantly expressed? Maybe the first and most crucial petitionary prayer is that our prayer itself may be purified and raised to a high station.

All of this, of course, is further amplified by the fact that such prayers are imaginally directed to the Divine being — that is to say, the very fount of all that is True, Good, and Beautiful. Standing in such a relationship as one exercises faculties of care and aspiration certainly has the effect of powerfully contextualizing and refining the very contents of the prayer.

To conclude: a richly indulgent meta-prayer for the transformational powers of our prayers to be actualized (there is of course room for play and delight here as well)…

May we be amongst those whose prayers are beautified and whose prayers beautify their own actions, intents, relations, and perceptions. May we find existential transformation in this simple, timeless practice — a grace available to all people whose hearts cannot quiet their longing, regardless of their condition. May we realize the act and fulfillment of prayer are one and the same — as our spirits are transfigured in humble yearning before the Divine plenitude, so too is the cosmos as we receive it. May we be magnified in gratitude, patience, and discernment so that the breath and depth of our prayers may extend to even the quietest, most disregarded corners of life. Ya Rabb, may we be annihilated in the humble sincerity of our innermost aspirations — a gift from You, by which we may magnify You — so that what comes to subsist in us is none but the refraction of Your Light. May we be made representatives of Your Mercy in this vibrant creation. Amīn.

‎لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لاَ شَرِيكَ لَهُ، لَهُ الْمُلْكُ، وَلَهُ الْحَمْدُ، وَهُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ