Singing Your Prayers

Spontaneous Singing as Creative Expressions of Prayer

Prayer is an expression of our deepest self. How may we pray when words are not enough?

Singing meditation is an opportunity to explore one of the ways that you can bring your most spontaneous, creative singing to prayer. This "improvisational" song may also be a freeing, growing and enlivening experience for you. Come to explore, experiment, listen, and sing this exciting possibility for your prayers.

One might also want to think of this practice as a creative form of meditation. Especially when used in groups, it seems to take on a communal character that fits the idea of a mindful practice of meditation or group contemplation. In our initial experiments with this group meditation in June, 1998 we've encountered some wonderful moments of community, group expression and inspiration.

Singing My Prayers

I tried instrumental music as prayer. While it still has its place for me, the focus too easily becomes the instrument or recording the song and so on. In addition, while playing an instrument is a very bodily experience, I find singing to be even more of a physical engagement. This makes singing an even more appropriate mode of prayer for me.

Additionally, I must mention that I find prescribed musical prayers very useful in certain settings and circumstances. However, there are times when spontaneity is important especially when self-expression is part of the picture.

I've found four types of improvised singing especially useful in prayer. I call them "um-um", vowel sounds, word songs and catharsis chant.

um-um

I suspect that part of the attraction of this form is the relationship of this sound to early human utterances and to "mom". Certainly the motherly nature of the one to whom I pray is part of draws me to prayer over and over.

This one spontaneously occurred for me for the first time in early 1998. I create these prayers very simply by almost humming the "um" syllables. Often, I create repeated musical patterns or themes in this form. It is usually a mantric type of song that evolves during this form of sung prayer. Thanksgiving is often the "content" of my um-um prayers.

vowel sounds

Especially in groups, use of particular or random vowel sounds is frequently a helpful form.

word prayer songs

Even in these spontaneous forms it is sometimes useful to use words to pray. Typically, when I sing words in prayer, I do not use much musical (melodic) repetition. Confession/contrition is typical content of word prayer songs, but I've used them for all four of the traditional movements of prayer.

catharsis chant

This was the first form of spontaneous singing prayer I "discovered". It's also the most difficult to describe.

This form sounds to me like a cross between certain native American chants and a cry for help. As the name suggests, I find it to be very cathartic especially for feelings of anger and fear. This is the only way I've been able to fully express some of these feelings in prayer.

The fact that it is so expressive also frightens me. I sometimes have to "talk myself" into using this form again because it is so powerful each time. The wonderful outcome of this style in groups is that it frequently allows people to be freed of feelings of constraint and inhibition. After practicing this form, groups often move directly into wonderful, freeing spontaneous truely communal singing!

Catharsis chant is usually a petition or intercession/invocation since it expresses such deep personal feelings.

Singing Your Prayers

There's power in singing. Perhaps we can see this in the significant world changes in the days and years after the Harmonic Convergence (1989), in the powerful imagery about words and sounds in religious beliefs (e.g., John 1) or in our individual responses to singing. Singing your prayers may bring up emotional responses. When this happens be at least as gentle and patient as you would be with someone else. Remember that this simply means that singing is working well for you. Notice and accept it as compassionately as you possibly can.

A word or two about singing:

• Most toning and chanting instructors recommend that you inhale through your nose. You should feel your lower and upper abdomen expand.
• However you sit or stand make sure that the upper part of your body is straight.
• Remember that you cannot do spontaneous singing incorrectly!

Other Resources about Singing Prayers

Thoughts on singing and breath

"Our task: chant the world. Chant the beauty. The world is a reflection of our chanting."
Billie Yellow -- Navajo Healer

"When you breathe fully, your heart slows and you feel calm and peaceful. The breath is the single most vital tool for attaining a sense of peace and calm, helping to eliminate the effects of stress."
Joy Gardner-Gordon, The Healing Voice: Traditional and Contemporary Toning, Chanting and Singing

Traditional Movements of Christian Prayer

Thoughts of two Mystics on Prayer

The Ladder of Divine Ascent was the most widely used handbook of the ascetic life in the ancient Greek Church. Popular among both lay and monastics, it was translated into Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Old Slavonic, and many modern languages. It was written while the author (who received his surname from this book) was abbot of the monastery of Catherine on Mount Sinai. As reflected in the title, the ascetical life is portrayed as a ladder which each aspirant must ascend, each step being a virtue to be acquired, or a vice to be surrendered. Its thirty steps reflect the hidden life of Christ himself. This work had a fundamental influence in the development of Christian monasticism generally, and particularly the Hesychastic, Jesus Prayer, or Prayer of the Heart movement. Pierre Pourrat in his History of Christian Spirituality calls John Climacus (c. 579-649) the "most important ascetical theologian of the East, at this epoch, who enjoyed a great reputation and exercised an important influence on future centuries."

In it the author says:

"Prayer is the mother and daughter of tears."

"We are not all the same, either in body or soul. Some profit from singing psalms quickly, others from doing so slowly, the one fighting distraction, the others coping with ignorance."

The thought of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Dominican philosopher and spiritual master, is among the most daring and difficult in the history of Western mysticism. Thoroughly grounded in the Scholastic method of his day and steadfastly loyal to the Church, Eckhart's love of speculation, paradox, and the apophatic way, nevertheless, resulted in the controversial condemnation of certain of his teachings by papal bull in 1329. His doctrines of detachment, the return of the soul to God, and the birth of the Son in the soul have continued to perplex his critics and nourish his disciples through the ages.

"We ought to pray so powerfully that we should like to put our every member and strength, our two eyes and ears, mouth, heart, and all our senses to work; and we should not give up until we find that we wish to be one with God who is present to us and whom we entreat."