Prayer, Psalms, Openness to the mystery of God

Prayer is many things:asking, begging, pleading, lamenting, cursing, praising, thanking, murmured or shouted into the great mystery called God.

The Psalms model the diversity of prayer, and, it occurred to me today, something more. For all their variety of expression, the Psalms share not only a sense of divine reality, they also share an evident openness to God. Their honesty (so very human) is shocking to some of our pious notions about what prayer should or should not be. But such is their openness. It is as though praying like a psalmist is a matter of a no-secrets radical openness. After all, God already is well aware of everything anyway, so why not let your guard down and get real!

Such (radical) prayer is less about requesting this or that of God, and more a matter of baring one's soul with a sense of God's mysteriously reliable and merciful presence, and that presence in and of itself is worth everything, is what fills the "hole in the soul."

"As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Ps. 42)