Answer:
There is a lot that can be said about this. I will just write a few short ideas because it's deeply personal and probably not that interesting to most people.
- frequently - I think the word "pour" illustrates both quantity of words as well as iterations. Saying short, meaningless prayers, no matter how frequent, doesn't really qualify as "pouring." Saying one long, heartfelt prayer, no matter how long, doesn't either.
- privately - I think that in order for me to really be praying to God, it has to be between me and God. Occasionally, I pray like this with Danny. We pray every day together. Every morning, every meal, every evening as a family and then privately together. Still, it is not that frequent that the pour-y prayers are in his presence. I have never prayed like this in anybody else's presence.
- sincerely (see point number 2) - ...probably because I am not close enough to anybody else to be able to pray like that. It is so personal. It's not like my other prayers aren't sincere - they are - but they are also usually not so personal. They usually don't introspect quite so much. The sincerest prayers I have are all about introspection and being deeply honest with myself and before God.
- reverently - Is it more reverent to be on my knees, or sitting in a chair with my arms folded and head bowed? Is it more reverent to be saying a prayer while my hands are on the steering wheel of my car and I'm driving, or is it more reverent to just quickly close my eyes and think something quietly to myself? I do not know if there is some kind of linear scale you can measure reverence on, but I do know that distractions of any kind detract from the reverence. I said a prayer in the celestial room of the Nauvoo temple this weekend. My eyes were closed the whole time. The room is beautiful. But it wasn't about the room. It was about my feelings and my heart. In the celestial room of the temple we do not pray on our knees - you will be asked to get up if you start doing that. It's not done. I don't know why. I think it may be because it's not so reverent for the people around you to be so conscious of the fact you are praying. It's the holiest place (except inside my own home - or perhaps in some places in nature) on earth, and we don't kneel there. Yet we do kneel other places, settings, and groups and it can be noticeably more reverent when we do. I don't know why it's like that. There isn't a protocol. It's experiential.
- silently - and aloud - See above point. However, I do think that there is value in reminding myself to say prayers aloud sometimes. Aside from prayers with my family and husband, I usually don't pray aloud. Sometimes I will do that if I am alone outside, for example.
- listening-ly - If we extend the pouring analogy, what good is water for quenching thirst if it is not poured into a cup or container of some sort? If I really want answers, if I really want to satisfy my longing, I will need to supply some sort of boundaries. These probably involve time and the sincere searching of the scriptures. We try to teach our children not to just get up and run away as soon as a prayer is said, but to pause and listen for a moment. I have found that answers to my questions seem to come when I am studying the scriptures. Today, an answer to a really important question came while studying something completely different and unrelated.
I don't always do a perfect job at pour-y prayers. I also don't think that it's very sincere for me to measure my progress in this regard on a blog. It might, however, be helpful to share that this is a thing I've thought about, want to do better at, and is important and interesting to me.
Take it for what you will. Maybe your answer to this question will look vastly different.
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