Phenomenology of Prayer 1

In the Phenomenology of Prayer, Westphal in chapter one talks about the praise aspect of prayer and how unnatural that aspect of prayer seems to be for him. As he breaks down what praise looks like in prayer, he forms this thesis: “prayer is a deep, quite possibly the deepest decentering of the self, deep enough to begin dismantling or, if you like, deconstructing that burning preoccupation with myself” (pg. 15). To begin with praise is decentering the self before God and focusing first on God’s power and rule over all things. Westphal looks at the prayer of Samuel as found in 1 Samuel 3:10 when Samuel says to God “Speak, for your servant is listening”. Through this prayer there are three dimensions that Westphal acknowledges, the third being inward action, which he says we can learn four things from.

As a communications major the second one Westphal mentions caught my attention. He says how a lot of our prayer has been centered on things we wish to receive, rather than like Samuel, presenting ourselves to God as listeners. He then mentions how our human conversations follow this pattern as well. We more often than not enter conversations to be heard and not with the intent to hear. This causes us to be less present with the people we communicate with because we are always thinking two steps ahead about what we want to be saying, injecting our personal agenda. This is the fundamental issue with all communication is that we usually neglect to listen to one another. Westphal brings up a good point that we must approach prayer in a way that first decenters ourselves through praise, and second presents ourselves to God as listeners and servants.