What Do You Call Prayer?

...and more pointedly does prayer "work" in the context of this world?

I've thought on this a lot lately. A postulate I should present a integral to my own evaluation, if you will, of prayer is that I tend to pull away when I look at this question...viewing prayer as a composite tapestry rather than as a collection of individual stitches. You can certainly point to this particular stitch or that one to evaluate the whole, but I think that is a disastrous method to decide prayer's effectiveness and thereby one's participation in it. So how does one rise up and see the whole scene? How does one pray, as Nouwen puts it, within a balance where prayer is personal enough to risk one's faith but broad enough to allow God room to move and create as He so pleases?

I look to one anecdote from my own experiences that defines for me the meaning of God "changing His mind" even within the context of His having perfect omniscience--for this is the rub for many thinking people. The example has to do with bubbles.

I've dreamed bubbles several times. Once I dreamed of a woman in a magnificent gown of bubbles, another time of churches filled with bubbles I was sent to observe (in this case it was more a foaming than a bubbling up) wherein I was pleased to announce to God that this foaming action was dissipating. And I dreamed of sleeping pigs locked in an almost solid foam that absolutely had to go away. What am I to make of all this bubbling imagery sent from God? Why is some good and some bad, almost in equal proportion?

Here is the crux of the matter. The bubbles are the omniscience; but their meaning and their playing out in my life, my actions and reactions are where changes and decisions--even on God's part--can occur. It all has to do with what the bubbles can mean based on the "word" God has given for the sake of interpretation.

Jude 1:13 addresses false teachers, those whose lives are self-centered, as being"Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever." The foam is bad. On the other hand, Psalm 145:7 says "They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness." Here, the word for 'abundantly utter' is more literally translated as 'bubble forth' so the image is good. Bubbles are the constant, but the interpretation is open to interpretation. Some would call this a dog chasing its tail, but I think it exemplifies the most primitive beauty of man, the most elemental elegance of the dance God makes with him.

As Neo in the Matrix so aptly puts it when his adversary finally raises the ultimate question: why do you keep fighting when you know it ends with your death? Neo says, "Because I choose to." Or as happened in another of my crazy dreams, one in which I was a chicken, of all things, in a crate on a truck. The devil asked me, "Why are you so happy? You know you're just headed to the slaughterhouse?" And I answered as I gazed out the airholes on the side, gazed at the fields passing by, "Because the view is so beautiful on the way."

Of all creation, we are the ones gifted with the largest access to the concept of choice, therefore we are the ones most susceptible to deception on that front. We've been given a broad umbrella under the rain of God's omniscience in the context of time and chance, but many choose to perceive themselves as clowns on bicycles, running around under mini-umbrellas. But then, this, too, just proves my point: the choice is ours.