Do you believe in Prayer?

This is a simple question, right?   Yes or No.  But, it turns out to be a hard question for me to answer.    As a child, I was taught to kneel next to my bed, clasp my hands and recite, “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”   To my adult ears, this now sounds hideous on multiple levels.  Should children really be put to bed with the thought that they might not wake up?   That the “Lord” is going to whisk them away to parts unknown?  The other prayer that was super important to recite was the one where you ask Jesus to come into your life, forgive your sins and give you eternal life, thereby saving you from eternal damnation (lake of fire, brimstone kind of stuff).   It was not until a long time later that I encountered the doctrine of the “eternal security of the believer,” which, while not universally endorsed by all of Christendom, might have come in handy during those tender years when I repeated the sinner’s prayer over and over again, just to make sure my soul was properly inoculated.   As parents who raised their children in the Christian faith, Janet and I dropped the concept of prayer as a nightly swan song, but I know we taught some variation of the prayer to ask Jesus to make his home in the heart.

That said, I remain a fan of prayer, although I no longer visualize my words to G-d’s ears or place them at the feet of Jesus or wrap them up in the lovely religious language that I remember my Grandpa Kiel using (e.g., Heavenly Father, we come before your Throne of Grace to beseech Thy mercy that Thou might grant your servants the courage to do Thy will …).   These days I often gather my thoughts and feelings and just put them “out there,” letting them drift into the cosmos like smoke from a fire.  Sometimes I stare at fixed object (a mountain, a blinking light on a tower, a star, a point on the horizon), imagine having a conversation with the Cosmic One and then wait for something in the stillness to respond.   Does the Eternal Source of All Being really answer or talk to me?    Am I talking to myself?   Does anything in the here and now actually happen or change?   Truthfully, I don’t know.

My wife, Janet, calls herself a “praying woman,” and she prays A LOT.  Janet prays when she walks.  She prays when she can’t sleep.   She prays before we eat.  Anytime, anywhere, Janet prays about everything going on in her life, for peace and justice in the world, for people who are suffering or those that are sick and she especially asks for blessings, health, protection and love for our daughters, son-in-laws and their kids, our grand kids, her sisters, her parents, her entire extended family and probably for me too.  Heck, Janet tells me that she even prays for President Drumpf.  I tell her that I doubt whether G-d answers these prayers, especially those for the racist SOB in Chief, but Janet insists that prayer has power and efficacy because she can point to answers that come out of her dialogue with the Divine.  I know that it is pointless to argue about this.  If I’m honest, I will admit that I secretly hope she is right because the world can certainly use a lot more goodness, peace, healing and love!

So how can I remain a fan, an unorthodox devotee, of a practice that I am not really sure works or has a basis in reality?  Well, for me, there is value in connection, in general, and in making an effort to connect with the G-d energy in everyone and everything, in particular–the force, energy, radiance, the Love, if you will, that is in me, in you and all around us.  While I doubt that this Presence determines the outcome of football games, rains lottery dollars down on supplicants or makes stage 4 cancer disappear, I do believe there is an assurance to be found, a hope to be discovered, and sense of care that is embedded in so many divine sparks waiting to be activated by sincere seekers … by something that can be called prayer.   A Jewish broheem named Apostle Paul once wrote that we should pray without ceasing.   Impossible, I used to think.   But now, I realize it can be accomplished by living and by tuning in.   For some extraordinary reason, we have been given something called life and it is also a prayer.