Why We Pray

We pray because our body requires nourishment, health, safety, comfort. We pray to acknowledge our dependency upon, our appreciation of, & our gratitude to the Source of all the needs, joys & achievements of life.

We pray because our soul is lonely. A spark of the Divine fire, it has journeyed to a world heavy & dark with "matter" - with things, forces & objects that shout forth their own reality, obfuscating their Source. So the spark yearns for the fire & strives to become reabsorbed in it. Eagerly it awaits the times set aside for prayer - those precious daily moments when the person it inhabits ceases to commune with the world & communes with his or her Creator.
So a person praying is a standing paradox, a swaying contradiction, a self divided against itself. Both body & soul are praying. The body is praying for life & existence. The soul is praying to escape life, to transcend existence.

Yet, as prayer progresses, a certain harmony emerges. As the soul prays, climbing the heavens & shedding the husks of selfhood that encumber it with an identity with "needs" & hold it distinct from its source, the body (who's praying on the same page - there's no escaping that) learns that spirituality, too, is a need; that transcendent strivings are also a pleasure; that union with G-d is also an achievement; & the soul, who's praying on the same page as the body (there's no escaping that, either) learns that life, too, is Divine; that existence is also a way of fusing with G-d; that achievement can be the ultimate self-abnegation, if one's achievements are harnessed to a higher, G-dly end.

Why do we pray? Because the body needs the soul & the soul needs the body, & both need to be made aware that the other's need is also their own.

That, ultimately is the essence of prayer: to know our needs, understand their source, comprehend their true objectives. To direct our minds & hearts to He who implanted them within us, defined their purpose, & provides us with the means to fulfill them.

G-d Bless.

J