Freestyle Cooking
I’m not very good at following recipes. When I cook I tend to guess about amounts such as teaspoon versus tablespoon and quarter-cup versus a third of a cup. It’s easier to guess than it is to find the measuring spoons in the bottom of the drawer. I’ll even go so far as to add spices that are not specified and substitute spices that look the same (sweet paprika and cayenne powder look awfully similar). Needless to say, dinner at my house can be an adventure.
Funny thing, though, I’ve yet to have a complete disaster for a meal. Sure, sometimes the kids drink a lot of water to cool the fire in their mouths, but I’m sure that just helps them flush their kidneys. They need a good hydration now and then.
I take the same cavalier approach to recipes in other areas of my life, including my spiritual life. Take prayer, for instance. We have a recipe for prayer – taught from the earliest days of nursery through to adulthood. It’s a four-step process: Open, Thank, Ask, Close. BAM! A quick and easy prayer for the busy life.
Now, I will admit that it warms my heart to hear my kids pray, especially as they bless the food at dinner time and include phrases such as “protect us” – funny kids. It is especially warming to help my little 4-year-old say a prayer before bed. But I’ve found that, anymore, I rarely follow the recipe for myself.
My prayerful times have become times of meditation. They may be planned, or they may be spontaneous, but they rarely include the petitionary elements of our standard recipe.
One of my more common prayerful/meditative times should scare anyone driving on I-80 in the Salt Lake Valley. It is in my car, doing 90 65 on my way to work or back home. It’s a 30-minute commute, but for me it is a time to work things through, to contemplate, to ruminate, and to, sometimes, receive inspiration. I’m sure I look insane as I drive, all alone and talking to myself – but trust me, the conversation can get pretty interesting. Yes, I answer myself a lot, but sometimes those answers are revelatory – whether they originate with me (study it out in your mind) or whether they originate from somewhere beyond me (your bosom shall burn within you), it works. It is effective.
I’ve also discovered another form a prayer – at least, I think it is prayer. I’ve recently started meditating. It’s a little bit strange just sitting still, trying to do nothing. It’s especially strange when you do it as a group. Several people, sitting there, doing nothing, trying to ignore that cough from left or the shifting on the right. But I’ve found it to be both calming and invigorating, and in some instances incredibly powerful. It isn’t in any way a petitionary prayer, but it is a contemplative prayer, even if the contemplation amounts to little more than trying not to contemplate.
Do you pray?
If I answer this question based on standard forms I would say no, not very often. I am rarely on my knees. But if the definition of prayer is more than the recipe, if it is an attempt to commune with God, to gain inspiration, to work things out, then yes. I pray every day.
Recognizing these forms of contemplative prayer has been key to pulling me back from my skepticism. They anchor my natural tendency to discount anything supernatural as complete hooey. I don’t pretend to understand what is going on, I don’t know where I end and that something begins, I don’t know how to harness it or even if it is something to be harnessed. I only know it is something I perceive to be real, it is something I recognize to be bigger than me.
In many ways this is similar to my experiences with the Priesthood. We have recipes there, too – but much more formal. It’s nice to participate in the prescribed events, but it can be quite a mechanical experience. However, for those times when the kitchen is open and the cook is given free access to the spice rack – oh yeah, those times are special.
Don’t bother me with the definition of the Priesthood – the whole concept doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But this I do know – in those times when I have had the opportunity to bless my baby, or to ordain my son, or to confirm my daughter, something happens. Something big. Something grand. Something beyond me. For just that moment I touch something powerful, something beyond me. It’s a special moment, an eternal moment, and it is in that moment that I take a step away from the skeptical ledge.
May 10th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Great post, Rory. Your style and thoughts complement each other well.
I hate to inform you, though, that i have heard Institute teachers explicitly condemn your highway praying as a “less effective” (and if you’ve ever been a missionary in a mission run like a business, you know what that means!) method of prayer.
You bad, bad boy.
But I have to admit that I’ve taken up much the same method. My favorite method of praying is to sit in my two sons’ room while they’re sleeping and just think. There’s something about sleeping children that can put me in a contemplative mood faster than anything.
So, going against prophetic counsel as always, my children never stumble into a room to find me praying on my knees. I’m sort of a stealth prayer like you.
Another form of prayer I’ve slipped into has been the steady replacement of prayer with my wife at night with prolonged conversations with her. It seems to serve the same function - getting us closer together. We used to do that by trying to get close to God, and there was a certain efficacy to that. But now that we take a more direct approach, getting close to each other without a third party involved, the need for couple prayer doesn’t seem as important. Orthodox approaches to prayer did take less time than our current conversations. But that doesn’t bug me.
May 11th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Thanks, Stephen. I totally understand your quiet time sitting in your sons’ rooms and contemplating.
I’d like to think of it as a mature prayer in this sense: My father and I talk a lot, but I don’t ask him to direct me or resolve things for me. I do recognize, however, that he has a lot more experience in life, that he has a wisdom born of that experience, and that he has a perspective that I value. Our conversations are a dialog in which I benefit by personally thinking through my situation and receiving valuable feedback from my father. I am making my decisions and I am growing because of that, but I am also tapping into his wisdom and experience.
Contemplative prayer is much the same. Rather than asking God to give me something - an answer, health, riches, intervention in life’s troubles - I am content to rely on myself. But I also recognize that I benefit from a higher wisdom. My conversations in the car or my contemplations while meditating are, in a very real sense for me, a recognition that God might help me work this out, offer valuable feedback, or simply be a sounding board as I find my way.
Of course I wouldn’t mind the riches. But for now, I’m content with growth.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I’m all over both freestyle cooking and prayer. Recipes stifle, creativity rules. Some of my best moments are the result of spontaneity–in the realms of the culinary and the spiritual.
But, oddly enough, lately I’ve been really drawn to the Lord’s Prayer. I find myself repeating it all the time in my head. I have recited it over meals or in our family prayers. I love listening to it in Aramiac (http://www.v-a.com/bible/prayer.html). I grew up in the Bible Belt where we recited the LP each morning at school along with the Pledge. At that time it really didn’t mean anything to me–I associated with the weird ways of my born-again neighbors. But not now. Now I find the repetition comforting. As I repeat it I feel closer to the Saviour than when I pray Mormon-style.