Prayer: Christian and Muslim Perspectives

Growing in Prayer as a Muslim: Reflections and Lessons of a Struggler

Growing in Prayer as a Muslim Reflections and Lessons of a Struggler t im ot hy j. gi an ot ti I often reflect that the prayer-related growth we most need within the Muslim community is like a hidden treasure buried beneath or within the religious obligation. I say ‘‘obligation’’ here because prayer is often presented and taught as a duty, as something we owe God, rather than as a way God—in the infinite mercy and love we believe God extends to us—has opened for us to approach and come close to the One who is the ultimate goal of all our longing and unrest. So in my community teaching and in my own self-coaching, I try to engender the sense that prayer is a most welcome and precious opportunity to respond to God’s invitation, sounded in the depths of our being as well as in the explicit teachings of the Qurān and the legacy of our beloved Prophet, may God’s blessings be ever upon him and his family. Before we forge ahead with this discussion, I must frankly acknowledge that the topic of growing in prayer presents unusual challenges for the scholar in me. While tempted to approach this theoretically and professionally and with a sense of academic competence, I quickly realize that I cannot embark upon this subject without a full admission that the author writes as one who struggles greatly with prayer and who desperately seeks to grow in prayer. Of course, this admission betrays the perspective that prayer is something we do rather than something God does within us, a perspective that dominates the way we Muslims are taught to view prayer. As we will see in this very selective survey of Muslim discussions of prayer, however, filtered as they are through my own experience and understanding, growing in prayer seems to mean, among other things, a letting go of the somewhat materialistic notion that prayer is the product of the worshipper. That said, there is no 147 148 timothy j. gianotti question in the sources (as well as within my experience) that personal growth in prayer seems to begin with personal struggle—born of a deep, personal desire for a closer walk with God. This desire is itself a gift, of course, and so we again are faced at the outset with the ambiguity of prayer being both an act of the Creator and an act of the creature. Another ambiguity arises when we speak of prayer as an act of worship as opposed to a process. In the first case, when prayer is understood strictly in terms of duty and as an obligatory act of worship, growing in prayer might, for a Muslim, mean mastering the forms of prayer, memorizing various Arabic supplications and litanies, getting into a better habit of praying with regularity , and becoming more adept at focusing the mind and more fully attending to the act of worship when we are in it. In this sense, growing in prayer is fairly straightforward and can to some extent be quantitatively measured and monitored. Growth in all of these areas is, of course, highly beneficial and meritorious, but I do not think such growth can be separated from the larger religious project of growing as a God-centered, moral being, remembering God with greater frequency and intensity, and, in doing so, infusing everything one does with the love and obedience that we associate with acts of worship. In the prophetic vocabulary, this means making an explicit and permanent connection between our islām—our embodied act of surrendering —and our ih .sān—the psycho-spiritual and moral ‘‘beautification’’ of our dispositions and our actions in God. In other words, the act of worship, which dwells in the realm of the embodied dimension of the faith (al-islām), must enter into a state of constant communion with the transforming, spiritual awareness of standing within the theatre of God’s ever-presence (al-ih .sān). When this link is made, prayer remains an ‘‘act,’’ but an act that reflects a much larger process by which that closer walk with God becomes increasingly real, increasingly intimate, and increasingly transfiguring for the practitioner of prayer. Of course, when taken in this expanded and allinclusive sense, the idea of growing in prayer becomes much more demanding and more difficult to measure. In what follows, I will reflect upon seven lessons that, from my perspective as a...