TEACH ME TO PRAY
"In the morning while it was still very dark, he got up and went
out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. [Mark 1:35]
How do I Pray?
It is helpful to set aside a regular time for prayerful practice every day. It is helpful to have a sangha to support us in our practice, and sometimes reminders such as a rosary can be helpful. But don't ever let anyone tell you that the way that you're raising your heart and mind to God is 'wrong.' Ever heard the one about there being no such thing as a bad question, except the one unasked? How about there being no such thing as a bad prayer, no such thing as a person that is inadequate before God, no heart too broken, no pain or brokenness too deep or doubt too silly to take to God. Jesus spoke of a God who waits for the joyful celebration of being in a loving relationship with each and every one of us. That's the whole point of his story about the prodigal son - God who loves us and gave us free will (can you just see God weeping over some of our choices?) will jump for joy in celebration of our return... This is wild, over-the-top celebration of family relationship we're talking about here.
In prayerful practice, we deepen our relationship with God. Meditation helps, just talking out loud helps. Even something as simple as "God, I haven't prayed at all and I don't even know how to get started and this is probably a pretty lame prayer" is a great start. Any way in which you're spending more time speaking and listening to God, spending time in God's presence and mystery, is time well spent. But that doesn't mean that you can't learn from some of the people who've been working at prayer practice for a long time. When you want to get to know God, it's good to spend time with God's friends. Some of them have left behind beautiful prayers for us to learn from, and others are still with us. And as we grow more comfortable in our practice, our prayer will become more skillful, and we'll go from the questionable "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedez Benz" prayers (is God our personal piggy-bank / wealth-giin?) to more generous, flowing, open hearted spiritual bouquets like those of St. Francis, on the right of this page.
Even if we have no clue that we are seeking and feel absolutely lost, we can always say 'help me feel better, show me how to stop suffering, show me the way, open my eyes and my heart, help me to forgive X person, teach me how to live, lead me in a good path' or a googolplex of possibilities. The important thing is not to get in the way of ourselves, not to stop the flow of a river of possible conversation that could be happening all the time. God's got one big word to say to us, and that word is LOVE... it feels so great when you start hearing it, so let the conversation from happening, and to start earnestly down the path of the spiritual journey by taking the first step, with one little attempt prayer.
When Jesus was asked 'Rabbi, please teach us a prayer' he gave us The Lord's Prayer. You may know it, and it is available in many languages all over the web, at sites like voiceshome.com. We thought you might like seeing how to pronounce it in Aramaic, the ancient language, similar to Hebrew, which was spoken by Jesus:
Abwûn
d'bwaschmâya 
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