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 January 24, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Over the centuries, theologians have employed fancy words like supernatural and extraordinary in order to define varied levels of theological concepts such as grace and contemplation. So, for example, a really special grace is extraordinary and a really powerful experience of contemplation is supernatural.
In the business of categorizing, to add superlatives, such as super and extra, is to imply a higher order. We humans love our order. In truth, order and stability are really good for wellness. At the same time, the proper order of things does not always mean that “higher” is better. Every child knows that the tower of blocks is more likely to tip over with each additional block.
The trouble with the temptation to place “higher” as better, is that the ingrained habit of looking up, out, and far away, can leave the seeker with a profoundly damaging sense of separation and inadequacy, such as, “only the people who know the fancy words can pray properly,” or “only the times when something magical happens can count as true prayer.” To leave ideas such as these ringing in our minds and hearts is to place most of us outside of experiences of grace and contemplation, because more often than not, prayer is simple, not fancy.
Another way, then, to claim prayer as supernatural or extraordinary is to claim prayer as one of the most ordinary and natural activities of being human. We are made to pray! It is natural and normal for us to want to pray. To build on this natural urge to pray, by actually praying often and wholly, is to allow our prayer to become supernatural, that is, “more” manifestation of the natural longing that is already there. Supernatural prayer is not a height of loftiness to be achieved, but rather an ongoing process of becoming more and more like the One who calls us into, and more fully toward, the supernatural state of prayerfulness.
