Sacrament Prayers Are the Chorus

Basilique Notre Dame De Montreal

Psalm 96:1 (NIV)

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.

Psalm 98:4

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.

Psalm 5:11 (NIV)

But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy.

2 Nephi 32:9

. . . ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ . . . that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul.

Kim Matheson is someone I've shared some spiritual experiences with in the past when she lived in my ward (congregation). She is someone who has both inspired me and that and I would call a friend. She is currently a research fellow with the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. I recently caught a podcast on which she was a guest. She spoke of an essay that was recommended to her years ago that was at least a small part of what started her exploration of prayer. That exploration would be the focus of her academic research to this day ("The Wounded Word", by Jean Louis-Chretien). She said this about one section of that essay,

"What if you think of the conversation that you are having with God this year or this decade? Prayer is like a heartbeat. He calls it something like the equivalent of respiration. Prayer is part of our spiritual respiratory system. And what if each prayer is just an exhalation in this longer conversation that you're having with God? I wonder sometimes if our prayers fail because we put them on too small a scale. We think we get down our knees and start a conversation and the whole conversation happens there. But my life, my devotional life, has been a much longer conversation with God. I like the idea of prayer as just one breath in the larger spiritual respiration."

This thought intrigued me, and I started to think about how the communal prayers we listen to or that we are a part of fit into this model. My conversation with God becomes partly personal, partly family based, and partly communal in congregations or larger groups. It is still my own personal conversation with God, but different "breaths" or sentences of my prayer happen in different ways and in different places. As I bring my full self to those communal prayers I gain personal insights from them, and I am able to take away personal communication from God to myself and to my own soul. I can more deeply feel empathy and love for the person speaking the prayer, and I can refocus on parts of myself that I should improve in order to get closer to the Lord. I can feel my conversation with God becoming richer. It could help me see progress. It can help me better understand how to listen as well.

By extending the view of our prayers into this longer time frame, it changed the way I'm thinking about the sacrament prayers I am a part of weekly. Rather than looking at my personal prayers as only happening between my "Dear Heavenly Father" and my "Amen" each night or morning, I can now treat them as one sentence in a longer conversation - or a verse in a song. The weekly sacrament prayers become like the chorus in our conversational song.

Music is the one thing that makes life make sense to me. It is also the one thing in life I have no skills at but wish I did. Maybe this comparison will help me understand why I seem to always struggle at prayer as well. If I think of my prayers more as a very long musical composition, it brings me a new level of beauty and understanding.

The basic structure of so many great popular songs looks something like this:

Verse → Chorus → Verse → Chorus → Bridge → Chorus

Of course, every good song is different and has its own unique structure. Some songs may have multiple verses, multiple bridges, and/or a chorus that is repeated multiple times. Some may be much simpler and have one verse or even just a few lines. Some may even contain instrumental sections or segues between different sections of the song. Ultimately, the structure of a good song is determined by the songwriter and is tailored to best express the song's message and emotion.

Our prayers are the daily verses. The story of our personal lives, the struggles we feel, the help we need, and the joys and the gratitude we feel all are written into our daily verses. The chorus becomes the weekly Sacrament Prayers. This chorus ensures we focus on our covenants, the atonement of Jesus Christ, and on the having His spirit with us always. The chorus brings new understanding to the verses. The power of a new verse following a chorus is increased. Occasionally there are other sections or beautiful interludes of prayers we listen to, or that we read. There are prayers that we become a part of in temples, or blessings we say for others, or blessing said for us. Sometimes we are working in duets, sometimes with a full choir and orchestra, and sometimes all we can do is barely speak one note alone.

Great musicians know that listening is the most important skill they have. As we listen to the Lord as part of this song, we will hear new harmonies in our lives, counterpoint melodies will open to us that we missed before, rhythm changes will excite us rather than scare us, and key changes will help each of us change into a new person through our faith. Our confidence, understanding, and the peace we feel in this conversation will increase.

I may be taking this analogy too far; I have a tendency to do that. But for someone who struggles with prayer and never quite feeling like I'm doing it well, this is a beautiful and powerful way to see my prayers for this year, this decade, and maybe even my life. Each one of my prayers are one short line in a psalm that is my personal and wonderful conversation with God.