Learning to Pray

I found this article to be a particularly interesting read. Most notably in the concept of learning how to pray. The article specifically mentions four keys of dialogue with God. These are “learning how to recognize God’s voice in your everyday thoughts, learning to go to a quiet place and be still, attending to dreams and visions, and writing down the dialogue so that you remember it and it becomes real for you.” As I was reading this, I couldn’t help but to compare this understand of prayer to my own personal understanding of prayer. In my religious understanding, I have always considered prayer to be a conversation with God. A time to be give thanks for the blessings in you life, a time to reflect on his glory, a time to make requests, and a time to repent of sin. But not once have I ever thought of prayer to mean a checklist of four criteria. In my understanding, just as a conversation with a friend can have many different forms, so too can prayer take on many different forms. Prayer can often include journaling, or a quiet place, or a social context, but that does not mean that you are doing it wrong if these elements are not present. At least in my opinion. So if prayer is designed to be communion with God, then can there really only be one way to do it right? Can we really learn to pray?