How to Find God

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When you fall in love, you want to think of nothing else, or no one else, but your beloved. It can be close to an obsession.

If you marry, as I did over 50 years ago, love eventually transforms. You don’t expect to be always aglow with emotion, to be feverish about it. Your conversations with the other aren’t always warm and interesting.

You settle into a more enduring, calmer and, in my opinion, more authentic kind of love, in which you become accustomed to think about the other’s welfare at least as much as your own, close to a real “love of neighbor as yourself.” Oh, you still have those moments in which your heart melts for your beloved, but they are balanced by the joint, day-to-day tending to the needs of living.

Married Love

I think this understanding of married love, at least, is analogous to what may happen when we pray, or don’t pray.

Says Ronald Rolheiser, priest and theologian, in his little book, Prayer, Our Deepest Longing: “We nurse a fantasy both about what constitutes prayer and how we might sustain ourselves in it. What often lies at the center of this misguided notion is the belief that prayer is always meant to be interesting, warm, bringing spiritual insight, and giving that sense that we are actually praying.

“Classical writers in spirituality assure us that, though this is often true during our early prayer lives when we are in the honeymoon stage of our spiritual growth, it becomes less and less true the deeper we advance in prayer and spirituality.”

I think the most common idea of prayer is “asking God for something,” known as “prayer of petition.” That’s a legitimate form of prayer, but if that’s all you’re ever doing, it’s not going to do much to advance your spiritual life.

Ronald Rolheiser
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Imagine your relationship with someone that only involves asking for stuff. No, prayer is, in general, a way to get to know God, to feel closer to him/her, to develop a lasting relationship. And for that, you need the other forms of prayer, known in the Catholic tradition as prayer of adoration, in which you try to develop intimacy with God; prayer of petition, in which you ask for what others need; and prayer of thanksgiving, showing appreciation for all God has done for us and others.

I’ve mention in these blogs before that many people may fail to pray because we find it boring or because it feels like “talking to yourself.” Might that be because we haven’t tried to develop a relationship with God?

Let’s look again at how our relationships with others occur. When you meet someone new, you may be hesitant, unsure and vacillating about the new relationship. It usually takes months or even years to become more and more confident in the relationship, to recognize the good in the other and to feel comfortable in the others’ presence.

That is, I believe, how we establish and grow a relationship with God. It may start slowly and take months or years to blossom, but eventually we become – even with doubts and occasional setbacks – close to a God who otherwise may seem remote and unknowable.

Impossible?

So why am I writing about this subject, again, in a blog meant principally for “people who have given up on God and/or religion?” Because I’m convinced that finding God, and sustaining a relationship with God, is impossible without prayer.

Many of us have busy lives with work and family and home obligations, and relationships with others that require time and attention. So, how do we find time to pray?

Somewhat like we do with our relationships with others: by establishing routine, ritual from which we try not to stray; by setting aside a time, however brief, that’s “God’s time,” in which we talk to God as we would to a friend or beloved, or just bask in God’s presence.

Eventually, we will establish a bond - even an intimacy - with God that we may not have thought possible. That, in my view, is how we “find God.”