How To Pray Without Ceasing When You Have Anxiety Without Ceasing
tracing the mechanics of stress back to the heart in order to learn how to pray
A woman once asked Augustine of Hippo how to pray. He told her that prayer is not about informing God, but about your desiderium (your desire).
He said, “In most cases, prayer consists more in groaning than in speaking, in tears rather than in words.” Her desire was her prayer, manifested in her groans.
That got me to thinking. I’m very well versed in groaning. It’s the tenor of most of my thought life. “Why do I feel this bad?” I groan. “How can I get this done?” I moan. “What will I do? I whine.
Does that mean that I, without even realizing it, am praying without ceasing?
I always thought that was impossible, the without ceasing part. I mean, no one speaks without ceasing (well, almost no one), but most of us do return to the same thoughts all day. Revisiting our same worries, same wants, and same fears. Our minds are on a constant loop, at least mine is. My attention circles the same three topics over and over agin.
And that repetition is closer to praying without ceasing than those spiritually energetic and dedicated moments where I sit down and try to use my words to pray.
Maybe we are all, without realizing it, praying without ceasing, trouble is we might just be praying to the wrong gods for the wrong things.
Truth be told, if I’m groaning about my suffering, my prayer is really: “Comfort, come and save me.”
If my anxiety is over my to-do list, the theological conclusion is: My productivity proves my worth.
My groanings about feeling overwhelmed or anxious. My vigilance to find the cure to what ails me are most often sending me seeking answers in the kingdom of the fixable: more magnesium, better time management, finishing my to-do list.
With that in mind, I thought I might apply the law of reverse engineering in an attempt to trace these symptoms back to their foundational object of worship.
This week’s essay for paid subscribers is about reverse-engineering anxiety—not by trying to suppress it, but by tracing it back to the worship and desires underneath it.
