Eyes open — or closed?

Heavenly Father? God through Jesus? Adonai? Allah? Or the Goddess?

Family prayer at Thanksgiving?

Quick prayer at bedtime?

Asking through clenched teeth for divine aid to control road rage?

Prayer is getting a lot of attention these days: in polls, in labyrinths, in conferences to fine-tune prayer skills. Bloggers muse about such matters as their favorite postures for praying. Some Web sites post prayer requests.

No matter how often people pray or to whom, when it comes to private prayer, “people say that the most recent time they prayed, it was about family,” said Christopher Bader, a researcher in a random survey about religion in America.

The survey of 1,721 people, released in September by Baylor University and the Gallup Organization, showed that three-fourths of Americans pray at least once a week; more than one-fourth prayed several times a day. Of those who prayed regularly, 77 percent prayed for relatives.

“We couldn’t get too specific about what people pray about, like, ‘I need to get rid of this bunion on my foot’ or ‘I need to get this job,’” Bader said, “but we found that the least likely thing they were to pray about is what is listed as a prayer concern in a church program or newsletter. People are thinking about their issues.”

He said researchers got a surprise when they asked to whom people prayed.

“Given the evangelical focus on Jesus and the rhetoric about having a personal relationship with him, only 5 percent said they prayed to Jesus,” Bader said. “Most prayed to God and sometimes to Jesus. But when they pray, they are thinking more broadly, about the big boss, so to speak.”

Depending on religious affiliation or the lack of it, people also prayed to the Virgin Mary, Buddha, Allah, angels, saints, spirits and “a higher power.”

“Nine percent said, ‘No one special,’” Bader said.

Baylor researchers said they plan surveys every other year about prayer and other religious issues.

“We hope to get more specific in the future,” Bader said. “This is the first salvo.”

Here is a look at the prayer lives of some in the United States.

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“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of . ?”

Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet

While much of the world is dreaming — 4 a.m. — the Rev. Don Miller awakens to his internal alarm clock. Quietly, so as not to disturb his sleeping wife, he heads outside to his “prayer arbor,” a wooden swing facing east.

“The Father has been talking to me at 4 a.m. for 30 years, and I’ve never had to set an alarm clock,” said Miller, 83, of Fort Worth.

Miller, whose nickname is Man of Prayer, is the founder of Bible-Based Ministries and has led prayer conferences around the globe. Whether he speaks in the United States, Africa or Australia, his suggestions are the same.

“Keep prayer simple,” Miller says. “Don’t complicate prayer. Let theologians do that.”

Follow a good example — Jesus — and keep prayer short, he says.

“I’m a big believer in a minute prayer, or a prayer of 15 words or less,” he said. “Many of Jesus’ prayers were less than 15 words.

“When he was on the cross, his prayer was, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And the last prayer he ever prayed was, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’

“The only long prayer is the one in John 17. And that one — the one we call the Lord’s Prayer — is really not a prayer but a teaching instrument given when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray.

“I praise God in the morning because I’m alive. I praised him one afternoon recently when I drove home from the doctor’s,” Miller said. “I praised him because I didn’t have to have surgery” for a carcinoma, a kind of cancer, but rather just topical treatment.

“You need a quiet time and place to pray. It’s hard to have that in today’s noisy society, but prayer is the intimate communication between the heavenly Father and his child.

“God likes to hear specific prayers,” Miller said. “If we pray for the lost, I hear God say, ‘Which one?’ But God doesn’t get on a loudspeaker; he speaks to me out of his Word, so I carry a little New Testament in my pocket.”

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“As for having a prayer rug, the idea is that you are bowing to Almighty God. You wash up and be clean for your prayers. The rug is anything clean; you can use a clean bedsheet. There have been times when I’ve prayed on cardboard.”

Aftab Siddiqui, a Muslim

Praying five times a day is vital to Islam. When Muslim employees of American Airlines learned that management had found a small room for prayer in the company’s building near the airport, they were thrilled. A manager ushered them into the room, then took a look at their faces.

“What?” she asked.

Aftab Siddiqui chuckled as he recalled the room, furnished with a table and chairs. Muslims pray in a no-frills space — better for laying down prayer rugs and bowing, kneeling and touching their foreheads to the floor.

The furniture’s not a problem, though: They simply move it before prayers.

“We’re very happy and satisfied with the way management has been helpful and understanding of the value of prayers for us,” he said.

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“Any thoughtful person prays for the well-being of his or her family or community, and it’s just human nature if someone is hurting to pray for relief.”

Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger

“The tradition going back a couple thousand years is that God’s name is too holy to pronounce,” said Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger of Beth-El Congregation in Fort Worth, a Reform Jewish congregation.

Yahweh is the hypothetical reconstruction of the name for God, but “modern scholars really don’t even know how it was pronounced,” he said.

“Hebrew is only written in consonants. We don’t know what the vowels were.”

The equivalent Hebrew word is Adonai, he said, and “we pray directly to him.”

Pronunciation aside, “it’s natural to reach out to God,” he said.

“Any thoughtful person prays for the well-being of his or her family or community, and it’s just human nature if someone is hurting to pray for relief. It’s not just about me, me, me.”

He said the most common prayer in the Jewish tradition is for peace.

He tells others — and himself — not to forget prayers of thanksgiving.

“I think it’s the unselfish prayers that do us the most credit,” the rabbi said.

“In modern times, Jews, Christians, Muslims all pray to the same God.

“Hebrew is considered the language of prayer, and Hebrew sounds especially prayerful. You’re allowed to pray in any language, but prayer is the language of the heart.”

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“We have very strict rules. If someone wants a specific person to come into their life, we can’t ask for that. That’s manipulating, and you can’t do that. But we can ask for someone suitable to come into their life.”

Kim Hochreiter, a Wiccan

Kim Hochreiter, a resource pricer at Thrift Town in Arlington, Texas, said the Wiccan religion is nature-based and she and other practitioners pray to what they refer to as the Goddess or a universal power.

“All prayer, in my opinion, is focusing your thoughts on a desired end,” she said. “That’s what magic is — to facilitate a change somewhere.

“We use seven-day jar candles sometimes, and you might write a person’s name on it and what you’re praying for. ? I’ve never seen a candle last that long (seven days), but that’s how you set up your spell: ‘May so-and-so be well.’ If possible, you keep it lit, but when you go to work, that’s not always safe, so a lot of us will put it in a bathtub or kitchen sinks so it doesn’t fall out. We believe divinity lives both within and without, and I don’t have to go to church to find this.”

Members of covens also go to “covensteads” to conduct rituals. “Where I live is mine,” Hochreiter said. “We meet on full and new moons and Wiccan festivals eight times a year. After 9-11, we prayed for the people who were injured, that those missing would be found and for the families of those who had physically gone on.”

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“Nobody comes to a builder and says, ‘I want a home chapel.’ This is kind of like a leap of faith. ? Am I goofy? I don’t know.”

Builder Randy Bollig

Early this year in Argyle, Texas, Randy Bollig, a Catholic, began building $1 million-plus speculative homes with chapels.

Dave and Donna Perley say they did not buy their home because it had a place to pray and worship.

“We were a little surprised, but we go to church every Sunday, so we appreciate what Randy is doing,” Dave Perley said. “Most of our friends are believers and don’t go, ‘That’s weird.’”

The 250-square-foot chapel has images replicating early Christian art in Roman catacombs, including an image of the Virgin Mary and the Last Supper.

Perley said his wife plans to hold Bible studies and prayer in the chapel soon.

“You know, with your day-to-day work and dealing with the kids, you just kind of go, ‘Hmm. I think I’ll go in there for a while.’

“It’s not that it’s any greater than any room in the house; we don’t worship the room,” Perley said, “but it reminds you what you are supposed to be doing. It keeps you in check: ‘Did I say the right thing? Did I do the right thing?’

“You don’t go in there to say a bad word, I’ll tell you that right now.”

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“Is this the plan? I went through all this to end up here? Well, let me tell you something, Mister. You’re not funny!”

Robert Barone, the character played by Brad Garrett on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” glaring heavenward after a rough day

The Rev. Bayard Pratt of Bedford’s Martin United Methodist Church doubts that God would take offense at that.

“The Psalms are full of people venting. Job vented as well. That’s anger — that’s a God-given emotion,” Pratt said. “I think railing at God is healthy.”

When he prays, he said, “I begin with the premise that God is a God of grace, rather than vengeance, and that we’re forgiven before we ask.

“When I look at my own life, there’s a comfortableness that develops, a sense of awareness,” he said. “I don’t know that I have a routine. It’s more that I constantly find myself seeking God’s presence in the conversation.

“There’s the ability to be real and human, to say, ‘God, my patience on the highway is not in the top 10.’”

As for why God sometimes does not seem to answer — or at least does not give the desired response — those conundrums have been around for as long as humanity.

Pratt does not have an answer.

“When someone is critically ill and we pray for them, they may or may not get well,” Pratt said. “If they do, we thank God. If they don’t, we need the presence of God.

“We can’t comprehend God. We put God in a box and make him too small. Our language is the way we state our desires to God. But I think how God responds to us is a very different thing.”

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“We hold hands sometimes during our prayers, but we’re not ritualistic. ? It’s like talking to a friend?.”

Marianne Lagerstrom, mother and wife

On a sunny Friday in September, at an outdoor table at Weinberger’s Delicatessen in Grapevine, the Lagerstrom family of Flower Mound was ready to eat lunch.

But first, a prayer.

“We always pray before meals, whether publicly or at home,” said homemaker Marianne Lagerstrom, 38, of Flower Mound. Her husband is corporate trainer Steve Lagerstrom, 47; their children are Andrew, 8, and Liza, 6.

No matter that sometimes singing waiters are making a to-do over a nearby diner’s birthday.

“I know we’re talking to God, and he can hear us anytime, anyplace,” Marianne Lagerstrom said. “You don’t worry about noise drowning us out. It comes from a need inside to be thankful no matter where you are and who may be watching.”

They do not always close their eyes to pray.

“The other day, I said, ‘Let’s do an open-eye prayer,’ because we were with some people who are not pray-ers, and I didn’t want them to feel self-conscious or weird about praying in public,” Lagerstrom said. “I like to do that, too, so the children can see my face and we can pray face to face.”

The prayers go beyond gratitude for food. “I have a wayward sibling — I don’t know if that’s ‘Christian-ese’ — but I pray for him all the time,” Lagerstrom said.

“We hold hands sometimes during our prayers, but we’re not ritualistic. It’s just whatever we do at the time. It’s like talking to a friend — you don’t always hug.”

Source: Ventura County Star

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