PROBING INTO PRAYERS
Robert R. Meyers

Most readers of this journal will have heard public prayers which seemed to be delivered as automatically as the product of a coin-operated machine. Someone is called upon to lead prayer and the familiar phrases roll out one after the other mechanically, without emotion. The threadbare expressions tempt us to give only half a mind to hearing, since we know them all so well.

Because of our familiarity with certain phrases which are spoken over and over in public prayers, we can often complete one of the phrases in our minds before the speaker quite finishes uttering the words. We may even think of his next conventional phrase before he begins to speak it.

It is a fact that polite jokes are made in many church homes about stereotyped prayers. The jokes are lenient; there is no malice. But they owe their existence to the fact that in every congregation there are leaders of public prayers who rattle off a string of tired cliches in an order as unchanging as if they were counting beads.

Is anything so seriously wrong with such hackneyed prayers that we should try to train young Christians to avoid them? Aside from an aesthetic preference for occasional novelty and an aversion to monotony, what is wrong with the prayer that limps along under a massive burden of cliches? In other words, is it conceivably a part of Christian discipline to eliminate triteness from our prayers (and other public utterances) whenever possible?

An answer is suggested the moment we get to thinking about the nature of triteness. The word itself means to wear out, as by rubbing. In other words, the trite phrase is threadbare from use. Words like hackneyed, platitude, cliche, stereotype, bromide, and commonplace, all express the same general idea-that in language there are certain remarks used over and over in particular situations until they become inevitable.

On a sultry day, for example, it is a near certainty that someone will lament, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” The college sophomore will tell you that he is “as busy as a bee.” The politician in his campaign speech will “point with pride” to certain achievements. Such remarks recur until they are ragged with use and almost bereft. of meaning. Sometimes they do not suggest the quality of the user’s experience at all.

To illustrate that, I invite the reader to play the following game with me. Read the beginnings of the familiar expressions below and see how many you can complete on your own:

That poor fellow is as BLIND AS . . . . . . . .

He’s as DEAD AS A . . . . . . . .

I’m as FIT AS A . . . . . . . .

He’s forever MAKING MOUNTAINS . . . . . . .. .

He swallowed that story HOOK . . . . . . . .

That man’s confident; he’s as COOL AS . . . . . . . .

John’s been in the sun; he’s AS BROWN AS . . . . . . . .

Son, you need to learn that MONEY DOESN’T .. . . . . . . .

I was tired last night; I SLEPT LIKE . . . . . . . ..

You probably scored a hundred. But did you notice that many of these expressions are obviously used without much thought? How dead, for example, is a doornail? (For that matter, what is a doornail?) What experience have you had with the coolness of a cucumber that makes it an appropriate metaphor for you? How brown is a berry? (Have you seen a brown berry?) What is the nick of time?

Did you notice, too, that certain language devices are used to make these expressions stand out? There is much alliteration (busy as a bee, point with pride, blind as a bat, dead as a doornail). There is also occasional parallelism, with its rhythm, as in hook, line and sinker. Remember these two devices, because you’ll see them repeatedly in a stereotyped prayer which I will reproduce shortly.

Two things are now clear. These sayings represent a deliberate attempt to say something with special impressiveness. At first, they were arresting and fresh. But they grew stale far faster than an ordinary remark would, just because they were ornate and decorative. We go on repeating them endlessly because it is easier to use familiar metaphors, even if they are fuzzy and vague, than to find our own.

Someone else has had an experience and found a figure of speech to express it; we are content to live vicariously.

What all this has to do with prayer should be obvious now. The man who rattles off a string of cliches is not likely to be thinking clearly about what he is doing. He certainly does not seem to be experiencing vividly, because when people do that, they tend to use their own language to talk about it. We sense a lack of feeling. The prayer seems automatic and our attention wanders.

You will doubtless recognize everyone of the trite phrases which I have emphasized in the following prayer. This means that such a prayer cannot be fresh and provocative. Notice the abundance of alliteration and parallelism, evidences of an effort to be decorative, to elevate language above its ordinary level. Here is the composite prayer:

We are “gathered together” here this evening as the “shades of another night draw round about us” to “sing songs of praise to Thy name’s honor and glory” and “to study another portion of Thy word.” We are thankful that our Lord came to “this low ground of sin and sorrow” to rescue us from this “lost and dying world.” We are thankful also for all the blessings with which “Thou hast so bountifully blest us from our earliest existence down to this present time.”

We pray for our ministering brother that he may “speak as the oracles of God speak” and that “much and lasting good” may be accomplished. Give him a “Ready Recollection” of his lesson so that the “Seed Sown” may “fall into good and honest hearts and bring Forth Fruits worthy of repentance.”

We pray for the “sick and afflicted,” those who are “on beds of affliction,” the “distressed and oppressed, both in body and spirit.” Restore them to their “normal and much-wanted health.”

Now go with us along the “uneven journey of life,” “Guide, Guard and direct us,” and when it comes our time to “quit the walks of men,” if we’ve been “Found Faithful, own us and crown us as heirs of thine in that upper and better kingdom.”

Go with us now to our “respective places of Abode, Abide with us there, and Bring us Back at the appointed time to further worship Thee in a “way and manner” that will be well pleasing.

The number of alliterations may be surprising, but the decorative parallelisms like “upper and better, sick and afflicted, way and manner, sin and sorrow, honor and glory,” and so forth, are shockingly abundant. The clean, good structure of this prayer is so overgrown with ivy that it is hard to see it. The prayer is beautiful and fresh when rescued from the elevating devices, a fact the reader can realize if he can make the same requests in simple language, dropping all alliterations and parallelism.

It would be unfortunate if one were to suppose that the use of such expressions make a man who prays insincere. It does not. Sometimes men are ill at ease in public praying and in fright they fall back upon phrases others have used and which seemed to “go over” all right.

But I repeat that such prayers may be a concession to the speaker’s feeling that he must impress the hearers with high-sounding phrases. This robs prayer of virtue. If public prayer is to be as vital as we would all like it to be, I think it can only be good to talk about getting some of these tired old expressions out of circulation so that we can talk in clean, fresh language about how we really feel.

_______________

Robert R. Meyers (Ph.D., Washington University) is a professor of English, Harding College, Searcy, Arkansas.

Reality lies at the intersection where one personality encounters another. —Anonymous

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of oratory, he answered, “Action”; and which was the second, he replied, “Action”; and which was the third, he still answered, “Action” —Plutarch

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues. —Spinoza