Years ago, back before practically anything we wanted could be delivered to our door within 24 hours, I went to a local department store’s lingerie area to buy panties, only to find that the store did not have the style I wanted in my size. The clerk said a new shipment would be in the following week. She would not be working then but she gave me the name and number of her co-worker who could let me know when the shipment arrived if it included my size. The clerk was trying to save me an unnecessary trip back to the store. I appreciated her help and asked if she was going on vacation.
“Sort of,” she said. She then explained that she and her mother would be visiting her sister, newly widowed, who was having a hard time.
“I am sorry to hear about your sister’s lost,” I said. “I hope all goes well on the trip.”
Her response surprised me.
“Do you pray?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Will you pray for me? Right now?”
Oh. “Of course.”
I reached across the counter and took her hand. I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and – there among lacy bras and silken panties –– I began to pray, calling on the God of all to bless this woman and her mother as they traveled to bring comfort to her sister.
When I think back to this experience, I am grateful that I could respond as the woman seemed to need, that, it being a cold winter night, there were no shoppers, so we had privacy. Yet a question for me remained, unspoken at the time, to whom was I praying?
THE QUESTION OF GOD
I struggle with the word God. As often it is evoked in our society, indeed throughout time, you would think that there would be a mutual understanding of what the word means. We say table, in any language, and there is a common image of a flat surface of some size with legs. We say bed, and we know it is a place to sleep, whether it is a king size orthopedic dream machine with 100% organic cotton bedding or a pad on the floor. We recognize bed when we see it. Yet, the term God is defined differently by different individuals.
(I am aware that there are people who claim that there is only one meaning and, of course, they can give it to you).
God the Father is the image that I grew up with. Some today say God the Mother. Both give comfort and refuge to those who hold those images to be true. And these images can provide an answer to a question that I have heard throughout my life –– Who is God? But as I have aged, a different question has called to me: “What is God?” Now that is a question, one I first saw on a cover of an academic publication of a religious institution years ago, and it is one that I have grappled with for decades. Just what is God?
THE COMPANION QUESTION
A companion question that has equally grabbed me is “What is prayer” –– or rather what is the purpose of prayer. Prayer, as I was taught as a child, was something that God wants, and it was important to please God. To this day, prayers of old roll off my tongue without a hitch, so deeply ingrained are they that I can recite them without thought, even to the point of being able to mutter them while I am thinking of other things. And certainly, when I or those I love are in crisis, or even just in need, the words easily come to my lips, “Please, God … “
But as I utter those pleas, do I really believe that there is some superior being considering my request, hopefully with magnanimity? No. So why do I pray? Simply, it gives me comfort and, so often, particularly when faced with the pain that those I love are enduring, there is nothing I can do but pray.
But I don’t think that prayer is as useless as it may seem. On the contrary, I think prayer is critical, and most beneficial, but perhaps not in the way we have been taught.
THE CONNECTIONS
That we are all connected is a common train of thought among those of a particular spiritual bent, and it is one I embrace as true. I once heard the Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong say that someday in the future we may be able to literally trace the energetic connection between all that is. And we certainly see the proof of that when, for example, a person feels physical pain that a loved one is going through. But do we really believe that in a way that changes the way we live?
My friend, Rabbi Abie Ingber, tells me that within his Jewish tradition any prayer for anyone is always followed by a prayer for all with the same need. In other words, the prayer is always communal, always focused on the community.
What I like about this approach to prayer is that it moves my focus from my own self-serving needs to the common good.
Just as Martin Luther King as observed that “no one is free, until we all are free,” I tend to think that none are whole until all are whole.
THE STUDIES
And where does God fit into all of this, regardless of how we define God, whether that be a Who or a What? I suspect, as long as I have breath, that for me God will remain a mystery, a deep all-encompassing one of love beyond imagining. But whatever that Mystery is, it is not one that hears and grants some prayers while ignoring and denying others. Instead, I think, as Bishop Spong once proposed, that perhaps rather than zipping up to some God who may or may not bestow the healing grace on the one in need, prayer rather travels along the direct connection we share with others.
Studies have shown that an individual’s prayers for oneself can have positive effects, as can knowing that someone is praying for you. But the verdict is still out on whether prayers prayed for those who do not know they are being prayed for have any effect on a subject. Perhaps that is because there is no benefit, or it could be that the instruments attempting to measure any efficacy are the wrong tools.1
I will leave such studies to others to tease apart, to give credence to or totally debunk the power of prayer. My purpose here is to propose a different train of thought.
FRAMING PRAYER
Framing prayer as one that connects us all opens me up to the needs of all peoples and not just my loved ones. That social expansion, consequently, changes how I approach the way I live. Do I only care about the needs of me and my own, or do I care for the larger community, indeed, the whole world –– those whom I don’t know but who may be suffering as well? I strive for it to be the latter, and that is the path I look to travel, what some would call a third way, that looks to take care of the needs of all, not just a select few.
As for the department store clerk that I prayed for that cold, dark evening, I remain grateful for her request and that I was able to respond in the affirmative. To whom or to what I may have prayed is beside the point.
Prayer sets my intentions and focuses my actions so the outcome I seek may create good not only for me and my kind, but for all in this beautifully brutal world, the one that some Source beyond my comprehension has created.
FOR REFLECTION: What is your understanding of the Godhead? And how does that understanding affect your prayer, if you are a person who prays?
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer
Top image: Pixabay/Julie Turner
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
