During my childhood years with the Amish, prayer was woven into our yearly rhythms. Included in those prayers were words – old German words of all shapes and sizes, such as barmherzigkeit and Herzensgrund. Words that had changed little from their original 16th century iterations.

Though we still spoke a German dialect in our everyday conversations, the somewhat fossilized German of the prayers had become all but incomprehensible to us, or at least to children like me. Most likely that’s also the reason why I’ve forgotten most of the words.

But one regularly recurring Amish prayer dropped all pretence of words: the prayer before meals. Whether in homes or at church, no matter the occasion, this prayer was shamelessly nonverbal. In retrospect I see we were acknowledging that prayer goes beyond words, and today I look back and respect that.

Yes, prayers need words. However, those words are like a pair of shoes: it’s when they fit best that we notice them the least. Effective prayer words do their job, bring us to a larger and more important reality, and then take a back seat.

When we do notice words in prayers it’s usually not because they are eloquent or theologically correct (majestic liturgical prayers may be the exception) but because of their human-ness. The words might well be spartan, visceral and barely more than groanings, as St. Paul said they would be in Romans 8:26; as they were in a prayer commended by Jesus: “Oh God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

Jesus, in his teaching on prayer, mostly focused on our attitude. Regarding specific words to pray he gave us only one paragraph, the Our Father. It seems he saw verbosity as a hindrance to prayer.

As one of my teachers at Faith Builders used to say, “The three most important prayers in the world each require only one word: ‘help’, ‘thanks’ and ‘crap!'” I also like Philip Yancey’s succinct advice about prayer, in a saying that was later taped onto the wall by my sister: “Keep it simple, keep it real, and keep it up.”

Elsewhere Yancey wrote that the best prayer happens when you do not realise you’re praying. I suspect he meant prayer is a state of the heart more than a planned event, and that the purest prayer comes in those rare moments when we experience congruity between our outward projection and our inward reality. Such prayer is an unplanned receiving of grace in the naked presence of God.

None of this is to condemn staged and planned prayers outright, but rather to underscore that some prayers can only happen as grace. In those times our role is to receive and participate.

Prayer as greater harmony between our outward projection and inmost reality, with our hearts open to the living Christ – that’s my working definition of prayer and really the main thing I want to say.

From where I stand (kneel) that kind of prayer happens just as well while swimming in the sea as attending a prayer meeting, is equally possible without words as with them.