Mr. Buttrick's Private Prayer

1.  At the core of Buttrick's definition of prayer, I think we find that he's saying that prayer is a "friendship" with God that is not to be taken loosely. In coming into prayer, we come into a relationship with God that has set guidelines that are to be followed, and different disciplines that we must learn. I think that this definition is very insightful because I think we have become almost lax in our everyday prayer. I see this especially in young kids (myself to this day included) the tendency to say the same prayer that goes something like "Dear Jesus thank your for my family, thank your for my food, thank you for the sun, and help me get good grades. Amen." And while this is not an inherently bad prayer, especially for a young kid, there are certain paths we need to find in our prayer that God wants us to explore to deepen our relationship with him.

2.  I think the tension between having "no rules" and having elements that one "may do" exists because prayer is a specific experience that is unique to each person, so we all pray differently and for different things. So we can make our prayers theoretically however we want, just as we might say we can talk to another person however we want. There are however, certain paths that must be traveled in prayer as Buttrick has described, but those give a general outline, and the specific points can be made different for each and every person.

3.  The first element of prayer is silent self preparation. This is a time of quiet in which we slow down our brains (something I need to do more often) and prepare our minds to enter into relationship with God. The next step is the act of faith. This is how we accept that whatever we ask for, God will give us through our faith- as long as it is in his will. The next stage is the stage of thanksgiving. This is the time in which we praise God and thank him for all the blessings in our lives. The next step is confession. This is the time in which we admit to God all the ways we have wronged him, which he accepts because he is perfectly understanding. The next step is intercession. This is where we do not focus solely on our own desires and sins, but we ask God for the desires of others around us. The last step is the step of petition. Petitioning is our bringing requests to God, and asking him to accept them, and to repeat the process while still meditating on the will of God.

4. I think that Buttrick's words on confession and contrition are very true, and can be applied easily to our lives. He says, "we have neither inward peace nor inward power until we have offered prayers of penitence." This is something that relates to us all because we have all experienced how sin can totally crumble our spirit and we can't find peace nor the power to overcome it. A great example of this is Edgar Allen Poe's "Telltale Heart" which is an amazing description of how a person can become so completely taken over by sin that it consumes them, and I think that Buttrick is hitting on that in these passages.