Some thoughts on praying "alone"

Now and then--sometimes for many, all the time--one is obliged to pray the daily office without the physical company of others. That's what happening to me this week because I'm in Kentucky, and my wife June is in Florida. Usually we pray the daily offices together. For nearly three weeks now, I'll be praying by myself.

In saying that I'll be praying "by myself," I realize two realities. First, none of us really prays alone; we are always in deep communion with the whole Church on earth and with the heavenly hosts. Each evening I am reminded of that reality because near the beginning of Evening Prayer in my prayerbook, after singing a portion of Psalm 141, I am asked to reflect of the day's events and observe some "silence for meditation," and then I say these words to God:

Let the incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the [with] the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you for ever and ever.

While making this short request, I can't help but notice that all the pronouns are plural: our, us, and we. Deliberately the prayer reminds me that I'm in prayerful union with "the Church on earth" and with "the whole heavenly host." I am not alone.

Then too, during this prayer I am also aware that you, my friends, are praying with me, as are many others whom I know in my parish and family, including my Benedictine friends, my pastor and several priests whom I have the privilege of knowing. Quite clearly, I am not alone.

And yet is some real sense, I am indeed alone. In the morning, I go outside to sit in the emerging dawn, and I sense that I'm the only one stirring in the neighborhood. It's just me and the birds chirping away. In the evening I sit in my chair, and no one else is in the house. When I'm quiet I can hear the clock tick. All of this means that in a very real sense it's up to me to pray; no one will notice if I don't; no one will notice if I do. Somewhere Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, I think, that it's what you do when you're alone that signifies what sort of a person you are. Alone, I can decide not to pray. Or I can pray. Noticeably, my wife June is not with me for encouragement. I am alone.

It's at such times that I think of many of you who are, more so than I, alone. Some of you live alone most of the time; some of you do not have the support of a spouse to help you pray. As a consequence, entering your daily prayers is a matter of considerable personal discipline and habit. At times you may not say the office. At times you have to force yourself to open the prayerbook, psalter, and Bible. At times you can't wait to pray. You actually look forward to entering the prayer-life of God.

Perhaps, like me, you settle in for the prayers that way I do. Often I take a preliminary look at what the day's readings will be, sometimes with the last sips of a cup of coffee. If your prayers include the singing of a office hymn, as mine do, perhaps you'll pick one that's familiar, one that you can sing quietly with some confidence if knowing the melody. Perhaps you light a candle. And then you begin.

What happens for me is this. When I'm praying the office alone, I find that I do things much more slowly. The rhythmic rush of group or corporate prayer tends to disappear. If I want to stop in the middle of a psalm to enjoy its grace, I do so. If I want to look around and enter the Presence, I let myself go. If I need to pause to examine my life while reading something from a Pauline letter, I do so. If I want to cover a large landscape in intercessory prayer, I can do so. If I want to sit and do nothing but enter centering prayer, I have the opportunity. All of this means that often praying alone, all by one's self, has its openings, its times and spaces for honesty, it's clouds for unknowingly resting in God, its searching movements of the heart and mind.

So praying by oneself (not really) has its blessings, as does corporate prayer. Jesus leads us to both kinds of communion with God. He gives us the communal "Our Father" and prays with us during the assembling of believers; he also recommends that we enter a closet to be alone with God.

Image: Marc Chagall, Solitude