Prayer and Personality

Sunday School – Winter 2024 – Temperament and Prayer

The Garden Room January 7, 2024

“Would you teach me to pray?”  That is a question that comes to Eugene Peterson, a pastor and writer, as he is spiritually walking with a young woman, a lawyer, a mother, a wife, who finds herself suffering an “ailment” that her doctors finally come to diagnose as “psychological.”  During the course of her treatments, she comes to know Eugene Peterson, and is curious about his faith, his life, his prayers and time with God.  Finally she asks, “Would you teach me to pray?”  This new, and renewed, experience of God became one of the touchstones of this young woman finding her way out of a personal wilderness; a way that her purely secular attempts had failed to provide.

This story comes as the conclusion of a teacher and writer that I admire – Andrew Root.  I believe that Andy Root is one of the few folks writing today who has a finger on the pulse of what “ails” many folks in our contemporary culture – the intuitive burden of knowing they have been created with an antennae for prayer and communion with God, and yet finding themselves living in a seeming desert; finding themselves thirsty for a water that never quit seems to appear.  Andy Root and others believe that finding “resonance” through prayer and engagement with “God-things” is the medicine that many are missing as they try to live flourishing lives, yet with a wound that needs dressing.

My experience with others has shown me that sometimes we begin the project of praying, only to find ourselves frustrated and misdirected by the strenuousness, or leisureliness, of our efforts.  Sometimes folks return to prayer the way we return to a jigsaw puzzle that we half-finished and save for later; we simply pick up where we left off.  Or we come to prayer the way we might come to golf, tennis, yoga, cooking, or some other pursuit that involves a gentle mastery of skill; we look for the rudiments, the techniques, the literature, and the “look,” and we pour ourselves into these things, forgetting that prayer is de facto a positioning of self so that we will come into contact with another animate being – God.  Prayer is sort of like establishing a partnership, riding a tandem bicycle, or riding on the backseat of someone else’s motorcycle; we are the co-pilot and passenger when prayer is often most real. 

Efforts to become something more than amateurs at prayer often lead to feelings of self-defeat and dejection; I am mastered Tae Kwon Do, why can’t I master what I imagine prayer to be?

Our temperament comes into play because we might have raised up and idol as to what we think being spiritual, religious, or prayerful might look like, or might feel like.  Sometimes we drag these projections along with us from childhood – maybe the last time we “really” felt God’s presence was sitting around a fire a church camp, and then life changes, we change, and when we are ready to pray we go back to that oasis of spirituality we had by the camp fire hoping that the magic will happen again.  And when we cannot conjure up the old magic, “feel God,” we can become disappointed, deciding it is all too much trouble, and that prayer is either for the specially gifted or delusional.

Sometimes we try to posture our way into greater depth with God; “Maybe if I act, dress, or imitate the people that I think are spiritual, I will become more spiritual too.”  However, this too can lead to more wandering in the desert, simply because each of us was created to be an utterly unique expression of God’s presence within the frame of time and space we inhabit.

Ultimately, paths of nostalgia and imitation rarely lead us to the land of light and truth that we are seeking to inhabit.  Sometimes it is helpful to take stock of where we are actually living; to pause and examine the moment we inhabit – the present moment; asking ourselves why might God seem distant to me in this life that I have both created for myself, as well as received through chance and God’s happenstance?  How well am I living under the guidance of the 10 Commandments?  How well am I living beneath the Summary of the Law?

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Over the course of my path I have found occasional inventories of my “gifts,” my temperament, my spiritual “attrait,” helpful in resetting the compass points that live on the compass of my heart and soul with God.  I am reminded of those personality traits that tend toward resonance with God, and those traits continuing to press through the soil, growing, as I pass through this journey of becoming a more complete creature for God.  The small universe of Jungian thought, and the Myers-Briggs personality instrument, have been tools in the toolbox of such growth.  They are tools, not the box itself, nor the relationship with God itself. 

When we find the tools of our temperament and personality that were gifted to us in birth and childhood, I find that we sometimes can close the distance that we may have felt in our efforts to pray and know God.  Our time together is not meant to be “the thing itself,” to be prayer itself, no more than hitting range balls is the same thing as being on the PGA tour.  Our time together is simply meant to help us appreciate our gifts, accept our limitations, and celebrate the wonder of how each person is uniquely equipped to draw closer to God.  As Evelyn Underhill used to say, “reading and studying about prayer is rarely the same thing as prayer itself.”

My hope is that you will treat yourself to taking the Myers-Briggs assessment here:

Take the MBTI Personality Test | MBTIonline

https://www.mbtionline.com/en-US/Products/For-you/?utm_source=MBF&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=online

There is a $60 charge for taking the test online.

If the parish can help cover the cost for you – please message me and we will  handle it.

This Sunday we will have an introduction.  We will begin looking at MBTI types specifically on January 14, 2024; so you have a week to decide if you want to take the Myers-Briggs test. 

Over the next few months we will be discussing how the various personality types included in the Myers-Briggs assessment might deepen their ability to pray and know the presence and love of Christ.

More to come.

Blessings and Godspeed,

Alston