Insights and Warnings

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1  NIV

Teach us – “Theotropism, man’s turning toward God, is a structure of experience that may be attained through the performance of ritual acts, prayer, meditation.  It is characteristic of exercises performed in order to induce the state of ecstasy and communion with God; of efforts of a magic nature aimed at establishing contact with the sphere of the divine.”[1]

“To be able to pray, one must alter the course of consciousness, one must go through moments of disengagement, one must enter another course of thinking, one must face in a different direction.  The course one must take in order to arrive at prayer is on the way to God.  For the focus of prayer is not the self. . . Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which one forgets oneself and becomes aware of God.”[2]

“In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.  God is the center toward which all forces tend.  He is the source, and we are the flowing of His force, the ebb and flow of His tides.”[3]

“Just as the prophet is the supreme example of anthropotropism, so is the priest the outstanding exponent of theotropism. . . The prophet, speaking for God to the people, must disclose; the priest, acting for the people before God, must carry out the will of God.”[4]

“Prayer is an act involving body and spirit in relationship with God; it uniquely is called kirvat Elokim, a situation of closeness to God.”[5]

“Someone who is ‘needy of others’—financially, or in terms of self-esteem—will find it very difficult to pray with the community.  He will be excruciatingly aware of the gaze of others, which will induce a fatal self-consciousness in him.  His prayers will then become affected, marked with theatrical expressions, in order to please and impress others.  His face will lose its natural coloring: chameleonlike, he will respond to the imagined expectations of others.”[6]

“The act of prayer is the most expressive act of man situated in the modality of ‘doubt,’ unclarity, and contingency, of which the Ishbitzer writes. . . . not ‘sitting’ at peace, ensconced in the spiritual certainties of his desire, but standing in the characteristic posture of prayer, alert, attentive to all intimations from within and without.  Le-hitpalel, ‘to pray,’ is, literally, to ‘think about oneself’: it is to attempt yet another redescription of the self, in the presence of God.  In a situation of unclarity, such as obtains in this world, any human act requires great courage, a motive force to appropriate and transform experience into the making of the world.  Prayer is the quintessential act of this kind: . .”[7]

Topical Index:  Heschel, Zornberg, prayer, Luke 11:1

[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 220.

[2] Ibid., p. 221.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 119.

[6] Ibid., p. 206.

[7] Ibid., p. 282.