Setting a Trap for God

Dave Brisbin | 9.25.16 How important is prayer? A kneejerk reaction says of course it’s important, essential to our spiritual lives. But a more important question may be what kind of prayer is essential to our spiritual lives? When you take all the different types of prayer that we commonly think of as prayer—recited prayer, freeform prayer, petition, intercession, thanksgiving, praise—what is common to all of them are words. Words form the basis of most if not all our prayers, and yet words can never capture the deepest parts of our spirituality or the relationship we have with a God who can’t be seen or expressed in any way. The Hebrew word for prayer, slotha, points back to the roots, sela, which is actually a hunting term for laying a snare or setting a trap. Prayer to an ancient Jew meant to incline toward, lean in, focus, adjust, tune in, or literally to set a trap for God--to clear a space interiorly and exteriorly and prepare to receive and connect with God’s presence. We need more of this kind of wordless prayer, time regularly spent stepping aside from the words and images, the shields we carry around in our minds that limit God’s presence and scope in our lives. One form of this kind of prayer, centering prayer, comes from the earliest years of the Christian tradition, and practicing it regularly will take us a long way on our journeys of faith.