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 May 9, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
When we ask for something in prayer, we call it petition. Depending on our image, or understanding of, God, prayer as petition potentially produces a dualistic worldview. For example, if, when we ask for something in prayer, we petition our cause to an interventionist God, a being somewhere “on high,” who may choose, or not, to listen to and/or grant our petition, we are giving way to an understanding of reality that is governed by the whims and will of a sky-God, whom we may, or may not, be able to appease in order to get our way.
On the other hand, if, when we ask for something in prayer we petition not only our cause, but also our participation, in communion with the God of Oneness, a being always and everywhere, with whom we seek to align our own being, in mutual listening, ever-present and offering guidance, then we give way to an understanding of reality that is governed by the powerful force of Love, a Presence that constantly seeks to heal and unify.
This worldview, while honoring difference and “two-ness,” also recognizes a foundation of “one-ness.” In this worldview, our prayers of petition require not just a call out, in search of Good and perhaps on behalf of others, but also a look within, to arouse a sense of how our own will and actions can also contribute to the common good. In this view the petitioner in prayer participates in the prayer by not only calling out, but also by responding to the need that is named in prayer.
In holding this tension, the person offering petitionary prayer, who is also responding, also offers participation as prayer, and thus helps to expand the powerful force of Love as a healing Presence in a reality marked by a longing for wholeness.
