Praying In Your Native Tongue

Have you read Simcha Fisher's newest article for NCR?  While on the one hand, I sorta kinda wish people would just let Leah Libresco alone for the time being, on the other hand I am so grateful for this post, since it laid to rest so many concerns I had regarding my prayer life.


Specifically, Fisher writes:


So both kinds of prayer -- the formal, "ready-made" prayers that we participate in as an act of will, and the personal, immediate outpourings of our own soul -- both are necessary and pleasing to God.  Praying only in own language is limiting and inadequate -- but so, I believe, is only ever praying in the formalized language of the Church.  We ought to pray, at least some of the time, in our "native tongue." (snip)
Leah is drawn to Truth; it's her native tongue.   For others, it's goodness; for me, it's beauty.  Pythagoras doesn't do much for me, but corn on the cob bubbling away in my blue enamel pot as the steam sifts through a shaft of evening light -- this is something I invariably hold up to God, so we can admire it together.


And here lies why I admire Fisher's writing so much- she is able to communicate elementary spiritual truths in a way that doesn't make you feel like a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging dinglehopper.


Of course we all respond to different aspects of God!  Of course we all resonate differently with different qualities of the Almighty.  We're all different.  We're all unique creations, and all made in His image.


Der.


But all this time, here I am beating myself up because I can't say a Rosary without falling asleep in the middle of it.  And I can't pray my way through the Psalms for love or money.  And math makes me break out in hives.  And I hate corn.


But Goodness.
Ahhh...there's something different.


Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in the works, and it's Goodness that I was created to respond to.

• Like those "Pass It On" Billboards that make me tear up every! time! I see them!

• Like the blogger I know through a blogger who is actively working to foster kids in New Mexico.
• Like all the people tirelessly working to show the world that an extra chromosome shouldn't be a death sentence.
• Like the 9 women who kept their acts of charity a secret for 30 years
• Like the people all over the world praying for one tiny little boy with a heart of gold

All these people- and so many more who I haven't written about because I have two boys begging me to go watch their play- appeal to my strong need to see goodness in the world.  

Like Gene Wilder said so well during his stint as Willy Wonka, "So shines a good deed in a weary world."

When I see these acts of goodness, they become a prayer for me, drawing me closer and closer to God.

And so to all you listed above, and all you unnamed ambassadors of Goodness, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You have strengthened my faith in ways you'll never understand on this side of the veil.