dominated her conscious- ness and doing, even her sleep. “If I can have that kind of relationship with a bunch of cells trying to kill me,” she said, “I can have that kind of relationship with God.”
That’s prayer, too, which
regularly bubbles up into full consciousness.
Carvalhaes: How do we pray individually and as the church of Jesus Christ? What should we pray for?
Oldenburg: It’s easier to pray as an individual than in an assembly. As an indi- vidual, I can simply tell God what’s on my mind.
PHOTODISC
Oldenburg: The simple answer is that prayer is conversation with God. It’s especially important to bal- ance talking about God with talking with God—it’s all too easy to make God an object of study rather than a being we love and are loved by. Like any relationship, our relation- ship with God is nourished by honest communication. That’s a deceptively simple answer because calling prayer a conversation means we both speak and listen. Prayer isn’t just telling God what we want or how we feel. It’s also listening. So prayer includes meditation but also attending to the ways God speaks to us in preaching, the witness of others, and even our own memory and insight. That conversation is intentional and also a constant awareness of our relationship with God, what Paul meant in telling us to pray without ceasing. After finishing a lengthy treatment for cancer, a friend took stock of her life. She realized that throughout chemotherapy cancer
Praying as a community and leading its prayers is
different. Here I am praying on behalf of “this holy house and for all who offer here their worship and praise,” and I want everyone in the assembly to be able to say “Amen” to the prayers on their behalf. For the same reason, it’s as hard to write the prayers of intercession as it is to write the sermon—you have to know the assembly, what’s going on in its life, and where different mem- bers are in their journeys. In the prayers of intercession we pray for others, not for ourselves. We don’t talk to God as an excuse to nag the congregation. But we inter- cede for others, in which petitions God might enlist us but for which God might have other plans.
Carvalhaes: You’re working on a book about the liturgical calendar. How does prayer flow throughout the liturgical year?
Oldenburg: I find prayer taking on the color of each season, though that
may be because my job immerses me in the seasons and the readings of the lectionary. During Advent, I find myself open to seeing how God’s reign breaks into the world in unexpected ways and how the world is not yet the way God has promised it will be. This back and forth between “The Lord has come” and “Come, O Lord” is a deep part of Advent and helps me understand what I’m sing- ing at Christmas when I talk about the hopes and fears of all the years meeting in Bethlehem.
Carvalhaes: As a musician you know that Augustine said that to sing is to pray twice. What does that mean?
Oldenburg: I’m not sure, but for me singing deepens both sides of the conversation with God. When I sing my prayers, I’m using more parts of my body and mind. I’m enlisting my memory and lungs to speak to God. When I sing something God is say- ing to me, I get to listen not only to the words but also to the way a com- poser has understood them. I “get” the Nicene Creed much
better because I have sung J.S. Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” He slows me down to savor it and brings out meanings I would have missed.
Carvalhaes: How is your prayer life?
Oldenburg: Not as rich as I would like or that God is offering. I set aside time in the morning to listen to God and in the evening to speak, and I take advantage of lots of other occasions—meals, fire sirens, scary appointments—to offer short prayers of thanksgiving or interces- sion. But I struggle to recapture the single-hearted delight I had in rat- tling God’s ears when I was 8.
November 2013 19
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