What about you, how do you pray?

Most stars, whether local or foreign, when asked how they prayed, would say, “I talk to God directly.”

And the best way to do that is straight from the heart. If sounds and images can be captured from everywhere by satellite and relayed “live” to our homes via the radio and television even from the farthest end of the world then, since God is omnipresent, I believe that the best way to “capture” Him is by using our heart as “satellite.”

I thought of that while I was reading (again!) Larry King’s (photo) book Powerful Prayers (published in 1998) from which I have published excerpts relevant to the Holy Week. In the intro, King admitted that he was (still is?) agnostic which means that, unlike an atheist (one who doesn’t believe that there is God), he doubts the existence of God. Nevertheless, he came up with a book so powerful that reading how powerful people pray could change your own personal way of connecting to God.

Here are three more excerpts from the book:

• Rod Steiger (photo, best remembered for his Oscar Best Actor performance in In the Heat of the Night in 1967):

I call it conversations with whatever’s out there. My favorite way of doing it is in the place of the beginning — the ocean or the water or the sea. When I really get down to having one of my serious conversations, I get in my pool, especially at night, with no clothes on, which is going back to the beginning, poetically speaking, the original womb: the ocean.

I have no set prayer. It can start with “I don’t know what’s going on. I really don’t. Whoever is out there, I can’t understand this.” But I always thank whatever it is for protecting my home, saving the lives of my family from earthquakes, fires, floods, rains and mudslides.

I take deep breaths and try to bring in the air from the ocean, and I will say, “Give me strength from the air that I breathe and the earth that I walk upon.” I feel cleaner and I feel like I’ve at least spoken to somebody. It’s the sharing of joy, but it can also be the sharing of pain — those inner thoughts we all take around that can choke us to death sometimes. The water in the pool, the way I move slowly through it while I’m talking, lets me release all of this.

• Kenny Rogers (photo):

It’s funny how certain things are synergistic to families. My grandfather used to say a prayer at every meal. He was a Pentecostal and he said a prayer before we ate and it was always the same one, but he always used the wrong word. It was no big deal, but it was grammatically incorrect and everyone in my family would always try to correct him and then we’d end up in this big argument.

We thank thee, Heavenly Father

for this food that’s been prepared

for the nourishment of our bodies.

Help us to spend the strength

that we arrive in doing good

and keeping thy command.  — Byrd Roger (the word should be “derive”)

My grandfather would say, “You are about the thirtieth person that’s tried to tell me the word is wrong, but this is how my father taught me and I’d appreciate it in the future when you say the prayer that you do it the way I taught you.” That we always say the prayer that way makes my family, which is pretty scattered, close.

King added, “Rogers say the prayer at mealtime the same way his grandfather taught him. And today, when Rogers says grace, his children are continually trying to correct his grammar.”

• Suzanne Somers (photo, on how she bargained with God if He would save her son):

He was run over by a car, missing his head but crushing his spleen. Everything seemed to be happening in a blur as if it was all under water. The ambulance took him to the emergency room, and I remember hearing a doctor say, “He has a fifty-fifty chance to live.” My child was taken into surgery and I sat there thinking to myself, “This can’t really be happening.” After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the doctors came out of surgery and told me I should go home and change my clothes, which were still covered with blood. So I did just that.

And then, for reasons that I still don’t understand, I started cleaning. I cleaned his room. I organized his toys. I scrubbed floors. All the time I was doing that, I was saying, “If You let him live, I promise I will spend the rest of my life being the best person I can be. That was a bargain I’ve tried to keep because my son did live.

When he returned from the hospital he would wake up screaming from horrible nightmares. I’d hold him, praying for help, but his dreams got worse. Finally, I took him to a community mental health center where we both spent a year in therapy and flourished.

Our therapist then decided my son would be fine, but wanted me to continue seeing a counselor since she knew about my having grown up in an alcoholic family and the accompanying low self-esteem. I was in treatment for three years. Now I look at my childhood, that accident, and therapy as somebody shaking my shoulders saying, “Wake up! Pay attention! Look at what’s important and seek where you can add to the world rather than take away.”

So, what about you, how do you pray?

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