FORT WORTH, Texas - Eyes open - or closed?

Heavenly Father? God through Jesus? Adonai? Allah? Or the Goddess?

Family prayer at Thanksgiving?

Quick prayer at bedtime?

Asking through clenched teeth for divine aid to control road rage?

Prayer is getting a lot of attention these days: in polls, in labyrinths, in conferences to fine-tune prayer skills. Bloggers muse about such matters as their favorite postures for praying. Some Web sites post prayer requests.

No matter how often people pray or to whom, when it comes to private prayer, "people say that the most recent time they prayed, it was about family," said Christopher Bader, a researcher in a random survey about religion in America.

The survey of 1,721 people, released by Baylor University and the Gallup Organization, showed that three-fourths of Americans pray at least once a week. More than one-fourth prayed several times a day. Of those who prayed regularly, 77 percent prayed for relatives.

"We couldn't get too specific about what people pray about, like, 'I need to get rid of this bunion on my foot' or 'I need to get this job,'" Bader said. "But we found that the least likely thing they were to pray about is what is listed as a prayer concern in a church program or newsletter. People are thinking about their issues."

He said researchers got a surprise when they asked to whom people prayed.

"Given the evangelical focus on Jesus and the rhetoric about having a personal relationship with him, only 5 percent said they prayed to Jesus," Bader said. "Most prayed to God and sometimes to Jesus. But when they pray, they are thinking more broadly, about the big boss, so to speak."

Fourteen respondents noted that God and Jesus are, according to the New Testament's explanation of the Trinity, the same, along with the Holy Spirit.

Depending on religious affiliation or the lack of it, people also prayed to the Virgin Mary, Buddha, Allah, angels, saints, spirits and "a higher power."

"Nine percent said, 'No one special,'" Bader said.

Baylor researchers said they plan surveys every other year about prayer and other religious issues.

"We hope to get more specific in the future," Bader said. "This is the first salvo.

Here is a look at the prayer lives of some in the United States.

Religion survey

The Baylor Institute for Studies on Religion asked about 400 questions in the survey. They included whether respondents think God takes sides in politics, what God's personality is like, whether they watch TV shows like "Touched by an Angel," even whether they believe in the paranormal and such creatures as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

On the matter of prayer, the survey found:

Women are more likely than men to pray several times a day.

People with high incomes are less likely to pray several times a day than those with low incomes.

About 45 percent of respondents say a table grace on certain occasions; 19 percent do so at all meals.

Senior citizens are more likely than younger people to pray often.

About 53 percent of respondents pray about world affairs.

About 28 percent pray for financial security.

When it came to prayer by religious affiliation and tradition, black Protestants outdid any other group: 74 percent of those surveyed said they pray once or more a day.

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Fort Worth, Texas, retiree Mary Weathers prefers small bamboo knitting needles that don't clickety-clack.

Grapevine systems analyst Rosemary Freeman, of Grapevine, loves to applique butterflies on the shawls she makes.

And stay-at-home mom Pam Young, of Fort Worth, sheepishly admits that her shawls sometimes wind up with irregular shapes rather than the desired rectangle.

For one hour each Sunday afternoon, they and half-dozen other women cluster in a small room on the second floor of First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth.

They begin with a prayer, then wield crochet hooks and knitting needles to create "prayer shawls" for people in need of prayer and comfort.

The prayer shawls are not magical, and "we're not original; we just took a good idea and ran with it," said Debbie Shrauner, 45, an elementary school teacher.

Thousands of people across the country are making prayer shawls, an ancient tradition, the women say.

Jews have long used the shawls as a religious symbol of being enveloped physically during joy and sorrow.

These days, patterns for prayer shawls and books about them can be ordered online.

Since the Fort Worth group formed in January, members have made 51 shawls in colors with such names as cotton candy, Montana sky and Mediterranean.

Some knitters, like 60-something Weathers, have more than 50 years of experience; Young, 42, is a novice. Freeman is the record-setter, having made 18 of the shawls.

The women have made shawls for teens heading off to college, for parents of a baby with a heart defect, for a widow marking the first anniversary of her husband's death.

Weathers is at work on an extra-long shawl for a 6-foot-4 fellow to use as he recovers from surgery.

"Sometimes I knit for somebody I know. Sometimes I don't, and that's OK," Weathers said.

Occasionally, the women receive thank-you notes.

As they knit, their conversation hopscotches from husbands to children to the merits of filter-free vacuum cleaners.

At hour's end, they lay aside the shawls and stand in a circle to pray in unison.

"May the one who receives this shawl be cradled in hope, kept in joy, graced with peace and wrapped in love."

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While much of the world is dreaming - 4 a.m.- the Rev. Don Miller awakens to his internal alarm clock. Quietly, so as not to disturb his sleeping wife, he heads outside to his "prayer arbor," a wooden swing facing east.

"The Father has been talking to me at 4 a.m. for 30 years, and I've never had to set an alarm clock," said Miller, 83, of Fort Worth.

Miller, whose nickname is Man of Prayer, is the founder of Bible-Based Ministries and has led prayer conferences around the globe. Whether he speaks in the United States, Africa or Australia, his suggestions are the same.

"Keep prayer simple," Miller says. "Don't complicate prayer. Let theologians do that."

Follow a good example - Jesus - and keep prayer short, he says.

"I'm a big believer in a minute prayer, or a prayer of 15 words or less," he said. "Many of Jesus' prayers were less than 15 words.

"When he was on the cross, his prayer was, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And the last prayer he ever prayed was, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' The only long prayer is the one in John 17.

"And that one - the one we call the Lord's Prayer - is really not a prayer but a teaching instrument given when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray.

"I praise God in the morning because I'm alive. I praised him one afternoon recently when I drove home from the doctor's," Miller said. "I praised him because I didn't have to have surgery" for a carcinoma, a kind of cancer, but rather just topical treatment.

"You need a quiet time and place to pray. It's hard to have that in today's noisy society, but prayer is the intimate communication between the heavenly Father and his child.

"God likes to hear specific prayers," Miller said. "If we pray for the lost, I hear God say, 'Which one?' But God doesn't get on a loudspeaker; he speaks to me out of his Word, so I carry a little New Testament in my pocket."

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Praying five times a day is vital to Islam. When Muslim employees of American Airlines learned that management had found a small room for prayer in the company's building near the airport, they were thrilled. A manager ushered them into the room, then took a look at their faces.

"What?" she asked.

Aftab Siddiqui chuckled as he recalled the room, furnished with a table and chairs. Muslims pray in a no-frills space - better for laying down prayer rugs and bowing, kneeling and touching their foreheads to the floor. The furniture's not a problem, though: They simply move it before prayers.

"We're very happy and satisfied with the way management has been helpful and understanding of the value of prayers for us," he said.

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She travels 11 months of the year, this small statue. She represents Our Lady of Guadalupe, a brown-skinned Virgin Mary who is believed to have appeared as an apparition to an Aztec in 1531.

Each Sunday, Mary Aguirre, of Fort Worth, drives the statue, housed in a glass case, to wherever it is needed. Church members who want to host the statue for a week sign up at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Fort Worth. They wait eagerly for the statue, said Aguirre, a member of the Guadalupanas, a Mexican-American charity group organized primarily by women.

"She's not hard to move," said Aguirre, a clerk at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. "Most of the people I take it to are from Mexico, because there is a lot of devotion to her in Mexico. She represents the intercessor, the Blessed Mother.

"I take her to homes, we pray the rosary, we sing hymns, and I leave her. A week later, I go back, say the rosary, sing and take her to another home." Those in the home say rosaries throughout their week with the statue.

"Some may want to have a baby. Some may need a job or want to take a trip and don't have money," Aguirre said. "They may have cancer. Some may be illegal immigrants praying for their papers. Some just have kids doing things they're not supposed to."

The statue stays at the church for much of December during processions and other celebrations.

"I love doing this," Aguirre said. "It's like having it at my own home. I feel like I'm home with these people, praying with them."

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"The tradition going back a couple thousand years is that God's name is too holy to pronounce," said Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger of Beth-El Congregation in Fort Worth, a Reform Jewish congregation.

Yahweh is the hypothetical reconstruction of the name for God, but "modern scholars really don't even know how it was pronounced," he said.

"Hebrew is only written in consonants. We don't know what the vowels were."

The equivalent Hebrew word is Adonai, he said, and "we pray directly to him."

Pronunciation aside, "it's natural to reach out to God," he said.

"Any thoughtful person prays for the well-being of his or her family or community, and it's just human nature if someone is hurting to pray for relief. It's not just about me, me, me."

He said the most common prayer in the Jewish tradition is for peace.

He tells others - and himself - not to forget prayers of thanksgiving.

"I think it's the unselfish prayers that do us the most credit," the rabbi said.

"In modern times, Jews, Christians, Muslims all pray to the same God.

"Hebrew is considered the language of prayer, and Hebrew sounds especially prayerful. You're allowed to pray in any language, but prayer is the language of the heart."

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The Prayer Warriors begin their Monday night sessions with anointing.

Norma Howard, this evening's leader, takes a quarter-ounce bottle of Oil of Gladness Frankincense and Myrrh - $4.49 at a Christian gift shop - and dabs the palms and foreheads of the handful of women assembled.

"There's no power in the oil; it's just symbolic of the Holy Spirit," Howard says.

The women close their eyes and lift their hands, and Howard works her way around the room, touching each woman gently as she utters rapid-fire prayers. She thanks God that one woman does not need surgery; she asks that another receive food as well as spiritual nourishment. Amid a rising background chorus of "Yes, God," and "Thank you, Jesus," she pats medical lab assistant Jerri Colbert, 58, on the shoulder.

"Thank you for Jerri's even temper, God, like smooth silk, because you're her stabilizing force," Howard says.

The women sit and read aloud from a book about intercessory prayer, then read in unison from a book of prayers.

On a table, a black three-ring binder holds the names of people who have signed up to request prayer. The women pray for those with ailments, those who need money for rent and gas, those who are lost. No politicians have signed the book, but the women pray that they will not take bribes.

Someone knocks on the door, and two women slip away to answer.

It is a man named Reggie, and he says he is hungry. The women load a plastic sack with groceries from the church pantry and invite Reggie to join them. They pray for him.

Afterward, the women give Reggie a few dollars from a collection plate.

"I'll see you ladies to your cars," Reggie says.

Howard grins.

"The Lord's gonna snatch you and shake you," she tells him. "Use that for sodas and bus fare."