I don’t completely understand inspiration, but I know it as an essential engine that drives my art. Literally, with out it I am no artist.

What I do know is that it has it’s rules and they’re unforgiving, as I’ve discovered when after realizing how one or another of the rules work in actual practice, my perfectly sensible reasons to ignore them doesn’t stop me from suffering the consequence of doing so. I do not know if all inspiration is of religious origin, but have concluded that it is not. It’s darker side is called temptation and it’s just as real. It undoubtedly has a source, but that source is suspect. Learning to discern between the two is a matter of importance involving tools.

 

Everything goes back sooner or later to tools. They don’t just extend what we can do, they extend what we become so I like them. When you’re young, every project around the house or in the garage can be an excuse to acquire another glorious heaven sent tool (tool = opportunity).

 

The tool on my mind is prayer. It’s peculiar in that it’s obvious what it is and how it works and yet it isn’t so clear what it really is and how it really works.

 

It’s not like the stove, near as I can tell. Go to the stove, select a burner, turn it on. Works every time.

Go to wherever you go to pray, engage. Some times it works, sometimes nothing seems to happen. I guess now the definition of “works” is open to reconsideration.

 

An appeal to scripture can be cryptic and the examples can be so inconsistent as to leave one wondering. Some passages advise that one always keep a prayerful heart. Some say to pray out loud. Others say to go off by yourself and keep it personal. In every case it is a communication and has to be sincere or it’s as troublesome as any insincere communication.

 

So there I was, a boy, praying fervently and often. There was no question in my mind that there was a god and that the channel was open and I was invited to use it. The subjects I covered were pretty consistent and I was often very passionate in my part of the discussion. With my limited view of the world, I was not prepared to make the best use of the tool, but I did as well as I knew how. Certain requests, which I frequently made, were ignored which I am now happy about. They’d have been disasters for me.

 

Large portions of the address were sincere statements of gratitude about a whole range of things. Some of the things I said would probably bring those knowing adult smiles and would seem cute from a little boy. Such as when I would thank God for certain talents and then negotiate with him over which one I’d like to keep the most if I fell into disfavor and had to give some of them up. The pluses and minuses would be laid out and I’d pick what I definitely didn’t want to lose no matter what but then leave it in His hands to decide and I’d thank Him again and promise to not waste them.

 

Some times my parents would be out of the house going to dinner or something and they’d be home very late and I’d spend the last couple of hours negotiating for their safety and then relenting that if they were squished by a train or something then I’d need help dealing with the aftermath.

 

Most of what I included in those boyhood prayers were probably trite in retrospect, but they were serious business to me.

 

It was not a religious experience for me, just the normal thing one did. When religion became involved, it all changed.

 

To get us out of the house, we’d be sent to Sunday School when the church would send a bus to fetch us. I don’t remember what they taught us about God, but it didn’t match up with what I felt I was experiencing. Not at all. So I had it out with him in the long driveway between the county road and our yard and called off the relationship.

 

For years I didn’t get back to him and was irritated at his allowing certain things to go on that shouldn’t go on and which he had the power to manage.

 

Years later  after getting a better picture of how things really are, I realized I’d been innocently but nonetheless seriously misled. By then I was a grown man with different concerns. The only prayers that ever had any power or effect were the ones just like those of my childhood – the ones with only honest guile free intent. There were times when I approached prayer as an obligation.

“Obligatory” sucks the life out of anything, so that didn’t work. Quitting wasn’t the right solution though. Getting it right was the solution. Turns out, getting prayer right is super simple: just mean it.

 

None of this answers the question of what exactly is going on in this form of communication between a mortal child of God and his or her maker. When I speak with people, their feedback makes for a real conversation. When they say nothing, it is short and awkward.

Almost never will people relate that prayer ends up being a dialog. Some who do are suspect, particularly when their recitation of the experience leads up to a cash request. So it isn’t like other communication. It’s actual communication, but it’s also a vehicle for expressing gratitude. There is real value in actually expressing thankfulness to the source of the appreciated matter just as there is a downside to keeping that under your hat. Happy relationships include gratitude and it’s expression.

 

Prayer is a tool to express and bring life to hope, and for reasons unknown it is a choice vehicle for the realization and deepening of that important motivation.

 

It’s also a means of getting clarification both for yourself and for your situation. The means of confirming the rightness or error of things you run past your maker are included in the process, but only when childlike sincerity is employed. In that respect, prayer leads to course confirming and course altering confidence.

 

Following up on that confidence seems to have the very useful, I’ll call it essential, development of faith. When you go through with something that is based on faith, the results do a lot of talking. Faith is trusting in things which are true but which you can not prove are true. Hoping out of bed first thing in the morning is a brilliant use of faith in a common setting. You have a history of getting out of bed, but upon awakening you still have no proof that you can take that action until you do it.

A paralytic may believe that wanting and expecting relief will overcome the physical limitations of their condition. Most of the time, that is not true because for reasons unknown that is not in the cards for that person. Faith is not the exertion of desire only.

 

When I was a boy, I prayed for things I should not have. It was innocent. Adults can still innocently try to get celestial favors not due them, but are counseled to ask for whatever they think they need and be grateful when it shows up. All I can figure is when you’re asking for something that will get you in trouble for seeking, you can expect to get feedback if it matters that you do. This is where knowing the difference between the sources of inspiration and being able to discern that source is super handy. Many a sad story attends lives where people asked for things they knew they had no business wanting, thereby driving the Holy Spirit away. All too happy to use the same conduit to motivate a willing heart, the shady source jumps in to answer the request with acceptance.

 

Then there is the matter of repetition. Insincere pestering is not communication. Making a big show of words isn’t either. However it appears to be perfectly acceptable to revisit honest concerns and restate matters that have not been resolved for which divine (godly) intervention is felt to be necessary.

 

To me, it looks like common sense dictates what constitutes acceptable prayer to God and that is termed ‘attitude’. The attitude of gratitude and the acceptance that God is doing his job, and guile free reaching out to him go a long way toward making prayer fit in to the quest for inspiration, among other needs.