The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on March 30, 2022 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
When I first began to explore quiet, still prayer through the Centering Prayer method, I was in my early twenties and had not become a mother yet. While appealing at the time, regular quiet, still prayer did not stick to my routine. Years later, married and mother of small ones, I was attracted again to still, quiet prayer, but felt dismayed. How would I ever be able to find silence with two little ones around!?
Luckily for me, I was encouraged to seek the quiet and still within, even—and especially—when there was external noise all around me, seemingly all the time. In this paradoxical sense, even quiet prayer can be loud. And just as surely, not all prayer is quiet.
The last of the Psalms, 150, directly encourages our loud and clamoring prayer. The sound of the cymbals in the air, our feet stomping on the ground as we dance in joy. The rumbling of our breath as we chant and sing. The sound of our anguish when we sigh deeply… all of it is prayer out loud! It is loud, and it is good! Surely, as in each of the seven days of creation, the Holy One also celebrates and revels in our loud prayers.
