Christian Reflection and Prayer

(Prayer 1)

The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly
clenched fists. This image shows a tention, a desire to
claim tightly to yourself, of greediness which betrays fear.
A story about an elderly woman brought to a psychiatric
center exemplifies this attitude. She was wild, swinging
at everything in sight, and frightening everyone so much
that the doctors had to take everything away from her.
But there was one small coin which she gripped in her
fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two people to
pry open that clinched hand. It was as though she would
lose her very self along with the coin. If they deprived
her of that last possession, she would have nothing more
and be nothing more. That was her fear.

When you are invited to pray, you are asked to open your
tightly clenched fists and give up your last coin but who
wants to do that? A first prayer, therefore, is often a
painful prayer because you discover you don't want to let
go. You hold fast to what is familiar, even if you aren't
proud of it. You find yourself saying: "That's just how it is
with me. I would like it to be different, but it can't be now.
That's just the way it is, and this is the way I'll have to
leave it." Once you talk like that you've already given up
believing that your life might be otherwise. You’ve already
let the hope for new life flow by. Since you wouldn't dare
to put a question mark after a bit of your own experience
with all its attachments, you have wrapped yourself up in
the destiny of fax. You feel it's safer to cling to a sorry
pass than to trust in a new future. So you fill your hands
with small clammy coins which you don't want to surrender.

(Reflections on Prayer. Taken from the book
"With Open Hands" by Henri J. M. Nouwen)