Why It’s So Hard to Pray

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After the evening meal most days, I usually watch something on Netflix, Prime Video or YouTube, or a combination of them. I’m usually too tired to continue reading or writing or anything that requires focus or physical exertion. I don’t generally watch network television to avoid its endless stream of commercials. But I must admit, streaming video is almost as bad.

So, what’s so bad about commercials? To me, they represent the worst of our culture, the preoccupation with “stuff,” the pettiness and childishness with which they appear – talking, animated people, animals and objects suddenly appearing like magic in a scene, for instance, and after the briefest moment of being startled, humans accepting them in conversations about the product. They seem to be created by second graders.

Then there are such unrealistic representations of products that claim to make us better looking, healthier, stronger, more athletic or look more prestigious. Having been a journalist, which are cousins of marketers, I suppose, I understand what advertisers are trying to do. To make money, they need to sell things. But in my opinion, advertising has become more and more crass and ridiculous over the years. It’s all sizzle and no steak.

Our Deepest Longing

Where am I going with all this? Believe it or not, this blog is about prayer, and about the obstacles that keep up us from praying. Ronald Rolheiser, a priest and popular spiritual writer, in his little book, “Prayer, Our Deepest Longing,” sums it up.

“We live in a world of instant and constant communication, of mobile phones and e-mail, of iPods that contain whole libraries of music, of television packages that contain hundreds of channels, of malls and stores that are open 24 hours a day, of restaurants and clubs that stay open all night, of sounds that never die and lights that never go out. We can be amused, distracted and catered to at any time.”

Ronald Rolheiser
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Commercials, to me, represent the most clownish, empty and distracting of all these media and cultural realities. What do I mean? Rolheiser writes that all these things, though making our lives “wonderfully efficient,” are often obstacles to prayer.

“We are attentive to so many things that, ultimately, we aren’t attentive to anything, particularly to what is deepest inside of us. …Sometimes we need a narcotic,” but we have to know when it is time to turn off the television and smart phone, shut down the computer, silence the iPod, put away the sports page, and resist going out for coffee with a friend, “so that for one moment at least, we are not avoiding making friends with that one part of us, the deepest part, that someday will accompany us into the sunset.”

Often, when you mention prayer, people assume you mean “asking God for stuff” – things, good health for us or a loved one, prosperity, avoidance of pain or suffering. Those are all legitimate forms of prayer – traditionally called prayer of petition – but prayer is much more.

Being Attuned

Appealing again to traditional definitions, prayer is “raising the mind and heart to God,” and you can’t do that if you’re constantly and continually distracted. That’s because we have to be attuned to “the voice of God,” the one entity that knows us intimately and completely.

Jesus’ words in Luke’s gospel come to mind. After telling his disciples that they are worth much more than the sparrows sold in the marketplace, none of which are “forgotten by God,” he says that “even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”

The kind of prayer I’m talking about is one in which you attempt to shield yourself from all distractions so you can be in God’s presence, and if he chooses to speak, you can hear his “voice.” This kind of prayer requires silence, a degree of solitude and having particular times and places to pray.