Session 5: Personality and Prayer

Starting Prayer (5 minutes)

Design this as you wish.

Reflection on Our Experience (15 minutes)

Working on your own, make some notes of how you pray.You might find the following questions helpful:

How did you first learn to pray?Were you taught to “say prayers” when you were little?Did you have a special prayer book, a child’s book of prayers, a bible, any special pictures or a special object such as a cross?Did music play a part?What about school?Were there particular assemblies, visits to church and so on which you still remember?

Have you always prayed in the same way?Have you taken up new ways of prayer and discarded others?Think of ways in which people in Christian gatherings other than your own church pray, both individually and together.Did you find things in these ways that have helped you in your prayer?Has anything hindered you?

Here is a range of prayer experiences used by individual Christians or within different churches.Which of these appeal to you at this stage in your life?Do you want to add any others of your own?(It might be useful to allow a short time for sharing about any that are less well known).

LITURGICAL DANCE  - HIGH MASS - CHARISMATIC PRAYER

COMPLINE - A QUAKER MEETING

THE ROSARY - PRAYING WITH THE BIBLE

Sharing (15 minutes)

Talk together in twos or threes, about anything from this work that you want to share.Come together in the group for the last few minutes to share together.

Experience from the Church [ This section uses someinsights of Carl G Jung to throw light on some aspects of the writings on prayer from the Church down the ages]. (45 minutes – time this section carefully to cover all the material)

Somebody reads out:

It is quite usual in common speech to refer to different personalities and temperament… the jovial sort… fairly withdrawn… someone who’s “up in a minute”… a thoughtful type… and so on.Carl Jung, who published his work in 1920, has done a lot to help us understand how personality is built up.Jung would be the first to say that every human being is unique and is in the end a profound mystery.But having said that, his ideas help us to appreciate some of the main differences between people and gives us insight into the different ways in which people build their relationships.Jung’s work can help us see how some ways of prayer might be more appealing to us than others, depending on the kind of personality type we are.When Dom John Chapman gave the wise advice “Pray as you can, not as you can’t” he was perhaps saying what Jung meant when he spoke of harnessing the preferred energies within our personality rather than going against them.

To get a flavour of Jung’s work, we will try to position ourselves in relation to three of his key ideas.

The first idea is that there are basically two types of person:

1. One who turns with a ready welcome to the world outside, who gets energy from being with people, who often speaks a lot and needs to do so to know what s/he thinks.Such a personality he called “extrovert”.
2. The other turns to the world inside, the energy of hidden ideas, feelings and vision.This person will be more quiet, enjoys being on their own, friends may be few, but loyalty to these is deep.Such a personality Jung called “introvert”.

Using this thumbnail sketch, would you say that you are basically an extrovert personality or an introvert personality?Most of us will say, “it all depends”; sometimes we work from the extrovert in our personality and sometimes from the introvert part.Nevertheless, most of us will be able to choose one of the two where we are most at ease and from which we operate in “tight corners”.That is, we use our strongest suit when things get difficult.

Having made your choice, consider the two statements:

1. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”
2. “The Kingdom of Heaven is in your midst”.

The first might be set to spring from the experience of an introvert, the second from an extrovert.Most of the classical teaching on prayer comes to us from introverts; they ponder and write their experiences down in solitude.The extroverts, on the other hand, tend to be out in the world expressing their prayer in action.

Read the following snippets from people who have written about prayer.Share ideas about the personality type of the one who wrote it.

You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being.(14C Cloud of Unknowing)

 

During the Mass, you saw that the priest touched the Body of Christ with great love and tenderness.When you touch the poor today, you too will be touching the body of Christ.Give them the same love and tenderness.(Mother Theresa)

My God, how wonderful Thou art, Thy majesty how bright, how beautiful Thy mercy seat in depths of burning light.

Somebody reads out;

The second of Jung’s ideas is to do with how we each take in information and come to know things.We do not all do this in the same way; we do it in one of two ways, either through our senses or through our intuition.To get an idea of which way you prefer to operate, ask yourself, “When I go into a room, what’s there?”If you are inclined to answer by being able to say pretty exactly how the furniture is arranged, the colour of the carpets, the wallpaper, and maybe sensitive to its smell, then you are in Jung’s term a sensing type.If, on the other hand, on recall of that room you are at sea with what was actually in it, but can re-enter its atmosphere or imagine possibilities for the room, then you are likely to be in Jung’s terms, an intuitive type, seeing with your “minds eye”; hunches mostly turning out to be right, come to you “out of the blue”, you dream possibilities, are imaginative.

 

From this thumbnail sketch would you say that your strength is coming to know things through your senses, through what you can actually hear, taste, touch, see and so on, or through your intuition, “sensing the atmosphere”, reaching out towards new possibilities?Once again, most of us will want to say “I am both, depending on circumstances”; but try to choose the one with which you are generally most comfortable.Are you a sensing person or an intuitive person?

 

In private prayer, the sensing person will often find help using a crucifix, a religious picture, holding a bible and looking up passages, or using set prayers.These are valued because they help to make an inner picture.An intuitive person often knows God through a movement inwards which has been described as “waiting upon God”, “looking towards Him”, “being still in His presence”, “dwelling in the heart’s centre.”

Read through the following writings of prayer experience and decide between yourselves whether the writer was writing out of the sensing or intuitive way of coming to know God.

You imagine the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem, you see in your mind’s eye the stable with its occupants, you hear the stable noises, the low murmur of conversation… you may smell the stable smells, and even in imagination touch the stable walls and finger the straw.(Ignatius of Loyola)

O Living Flame of Love that tenderly warms my soul in its deepest centre.(St John of The Cross)

Be thou praised, my Lord, for our sister mother earth, who sustains and holds us into her breast, and produces abundant fruit, flowers and trees.(St Francis of Assisi).

Someone reads out:

Jung’s third key idea is to do with how we make decisions as we work with the knowledge and experience which come to us either through our sensing or our intuition.Jung says we do this in one of two ways.We either work our way through to a decision according to principles, laws and logic (using our thinking function), or work our way to a decision according to whether the outcome will be good or bad, attractive or unattractive (using our feeling function).It is sometimes said that using the thinking function in our faith preserves it from superstition and sentimentality, while using the feeling function preserves our faith from dry dogma and cold heartedness.Which of these two functions, thinking or feeling do you use more readily in coming to decisions?Which do you wish more for yourself, clarity of reason or strength of compassion?You will be able to use both functions, but you will prefer one to the other?In worship, the thinker will probably value well thought out sermons and be drawn to discursive meditation in private prayer.The feeling person will probably appreciate sermons addressed to the heart and will quite easily use affective prayer to express sadness, thankfulness or trust.

Read through the following prayer experiences and decide between yourselves whether the writer was writing out of a thinking or a feeling way of coming to conclusions about what the writer had experienced:

And when I think that God his Son not sparing, sent Him to die – I scarce can take it in.That on the cross my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.
By love may He be gotten and holden, but by thinking never.(14C Cloud of Unknowing)

Almighty Son, Incarnate Word,
Our Prophet, Priest, Redeemer, Lord,
Before Thy throne we sinners bend,
To us Thy saving grace extend.

Someone reads out:

It is sometimes said that the Eucharist is a way of prayer that suits all personalities and temperaments.Talk together to identify two things about the Eucharist which will appeal to each of the following:

The extrovert the introvert the sensing person

intuitive person the thinking person the feeling person

New Directions

Somebody reads out:

What conclusions have you come to about your basic personality type?Are you basically an extrovert or an introvert? A sensing person or an intuitive person?A thinking person or a feeling person?(Yung would have been the first to say that this is only a working guide; we all have some of each ingredient in our personality and, in the middle years, begin to develop our less strong features).Has anything struck you about your temperament and the way in which you are drawn to pray? Refer to your earlier work on which ways in prayer appeal to you at this point in your life.Can you make any links between your personality type and the particular ways you are drawn into prayer?

Talk together, in pairs and threes, or as a group about these things.

Ending Prayer (10 minutes)

Return to the prayer focus.You might like to arrange the course leaflets round the candle.Allow space for people to share what the course has meant to them.You may wish to join hands and say the Grace together.

After the Course

You may want to keep up the private journal if this has been helpful.Three books which extend the work of this course are:

God of Surprises by Gerard W Hughes

Live for a Change by Francis Dewar

Prayer and Temperament by Chester Michael and Marry Norrisey (available from St Paul’s Bookshop 119 Kensington High Street, London W8).