My understanding and practice of prayer are grounded in my understanding of God, the Sacred. I see God as a presence, as the one “in whom we live and move and have our being,” to quote words attributed to Paul in Acts 17.28.

For me, prayer – addressing God, paying attention to my relationship with God – is about reminding me of the reality and presence of God in the course of my day and days. It is about centering more deeply in God and about “opening” to God. It helps me to be more centered, more present, more appreciative.

What about prayers in which we ask for something – prayers of petition and intercession? To speak personally (and how else can we speak?), I do not think of God as an interventionist – that God “decides” to answer some prayers. To imagine that God sometimes intervenes leaves all the non-interventions inexplicable.

And yet I “do” both petitionary and intercessory prayer. I pray for help for myself. As Anne Lamott remarks in one of her books, the two most genuine prayers are “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I also pray for help and health and protection for family, friends, and “the world.” Doing so is a natural expression of caring; for me, it would be unnatural not do this. And not to do so because I can’t imagine how it works would be an act of intellectual arrogance – if I can’t imagine how something works, then it can’t work.

So I don’t believe that God sometimes intervenes to answer prayer. But this doesn’t prevent me from thinking that prayer sometimes has effects, even though I can’t imagine how. I am very willing to think of other ways of imagining God’s relation to the world, such as speaking of divine intention and divine interaction. At the very least, I am convinced that prayer changes us – that it transforms those who pray. This has been my experience.