As for me, I cry out to You, O LORD; each morning my prayer greets You.  (88:14)

Some people wake up in the morning ready to go; others wake up with feeling like their brains are full of damp cotton. Even the most enthusiastic morning folks don’t always look forward to morning prayers. There is so much to do, we want to get started tackling the items on the agenda! So we rush through the prayers without much thought in order to get started with more important business.

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev noted that it is easy to find people who are distracted by business during prayer times; it is far more difficult to find people who are distracted by God or Torah during business hours.

Why cry out to God? Doesn’t God already know what’s on my mind? Is it possible that God won’t provide for my needs unless I ask for them? And what about all those things that I ask for that I never receive – is God not listening?

We pray not because we need something from God, but because we need to remind ourselves to distinguish between what we truly need and what we merely want.

We pray because we remind ourselves that our life is a gift from God and we need to remind ourselves to show gratitude.

We pray because showing gratitude to God for God’s attributes of love, power, and generosity reminds us to be loving, use power wisely, and generous.

We pray to remind ourselves that the world can be better than it is right now, to remind ourselves that optimism is a Jewish value.

We pray because sometimes we are in pain and shared pain hurts less than pain born alone.

We pray because sometimes we are joyful and joy increases exponentially when shared.

Finally, we pray in a communal minyan to remind ourselves that we are not simply fulfilling a selfish personal obligation – we are also supporting others to fulfill their obligations.

I call to You all day long (86:3)

Years ago I met a man named Ken Wells, who used to sit at a table in the front window of a vegetarian restaurant named Gaia’s. Because I saw him every time I went there, morning or afternoon, I thought he owned the place. One day I struck up a conversation with him and found out that he was a local artist and a Buddhist, but he did not in fact own the restaurant. I admired his work, which I found flowing and whimsical, at a couple of bagel places where he was commissioned to do murals on the walls. Ken was my primary source of information on meditation, years before I did any serious learning from Jewish sources.

I invited him to be the primary speaker at an interfaith Thanksgiving service that was held at the synagogue. His message included a reference to his personal meditative practice in which he strove to spend the entire day, every waking moment, in a state of meditation.

At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. My mental image of meditation was of a person sitting in a quiet space emptying his mind of thoughts. How can you drive, have conversations, engage in business, or create art, with an empty mind? Over time I learned more about meditation and began to understand what he meant. Meditation is a “I call to you all day long” experience of being connected and aware of the Divine Presence at every moment. When speaking to another person while in a meditative state, you have total focus on that person and what she is saying as a manifestation of the Divine Image. Safe driving requires a meditative-like awareness of your surroundings and complete focus on the task at hand. Creating art, creative writing, and even engaging in business require a mind which is at once completely focused and at the same time open to unexpected ideas, a state of mind which can existed in meditation.

Thank you Ken Wells, of blessed memory, for sharing this insight with me years before I had the capacity to understand it.

As for me, may my prayer come to You, O LORD, at a favorable moment; O God, in Your abundant faithfulness, answer me with Your sure deliverance. (69:14)

The assumption of the Psalmist is that God is more open to petitionary prayer at some moments than at others. It’s like the image we use on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of gates of repentance opening and closing. If our prayer rises at a favorable moment, it will be answered. If God is not open to prayer at the moment our prayer arises, it will fail.

Another image comes to mind. An average of 280 million sperm cells race toward the uterus. Most will not make it. Only a small percentage of those who do will find the oviduct. Only a fraction of those will make contact with the egg – but the “shell” of the egg repels the initial assault by the sperm cells. Each sperm cell, however, deposits an enzyme that breaks down the barrier. Finally, one cell breaks through a hole in the egg’s outer shell and combines its genetic material with that of the egg. Let’s imagine that this couple has been praying for a child. So many things have to be in alignment: the egg has to be in the right place, ready for fertilization. The sperm have to find their way through a complicated mucus filled maze in sufficient quantity to help one break into the egg. The genetic material in the zygote has to be healthy enough to begin mitosis and the emerging blastocyst needs to attach itself to the uterine wall and absorb nutrition. This couple’s prayer seeks a favorable moment in the same way that the science of reproductive medicine needs a favorable moment to begin the process of creating a child. If the couple’s prayers for a child reach God at the wrong time in the woman’s reproductive cycle, there is little to no chance that God’s answer will be a baby delivery 40 weeks later.

The lesson is that if we are to offer petitionary prayer, we have to ensure that we have done everything in our power to create the conditions under which our prayer might be answered.