How to Hear the Prayer of the Soul
The Mishnah tells us that in ancient times pious Jews would spend an hour in quiet preparation before commencing with their prayers. Most of us today have neither the time nor the inclination to devote this much time to readying ourselves to speak to God in prayer. But what might happen if we did? What if we spent even five minutes in quiet meditation before turning to the words of the prayer book? What might we discover?
The first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Isaac Kook, gives us a clue. In his commentary on the prayer book, he writes that the soul is always at prayer. It is only at the time of prayer that the soul’s prayer is revealed.
We tend to think of praying as primarily an exercise in speaking. But these two teachings suggest an entirely different paradigm -- prayer is actually a practice of cultivating deep listening.
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