What is Prayer?
What good is Prayer?
What is prayer when the most consistent and dependable attribute of God is silence?
What is prayer when the most consistent and dependable attribute of God is invisibility?
What is prayer if, no matter how despairingly I cry out, the invisibility and silence stay the same?
What is prayer when the odds of it coming true are the same as without prayer?
What is prayer when the prayer of a righteous person feels like it means nothing? Or does the “fervent prayer of a righteous person availeth much?” James 5:16
What is prayer if my belief in God has disintegrated into the nothingness or impossibility?
What is prayer beside talking to myself?
It seems to me that whether or not my faith in God is ever restored, prayer just keeps on. I keep right on talking to myself as if there is someone else listening. It seems to me to be a basic human trait... talking to myself and/or an imaginary friend.
So maybe prayer is self talk. But what good is it? What does it do? Is it hopeful dreaming? Does it presume an imaginary friend? It sure isn’t Santa Claus showering on us the many things we desire. What is prayer doing? Who is it talking to? Who is listening? Anybody home? One thing we know for sure is that we are listening to our own prayers. Maybe that is what we need most, a voice within reminding us what we have forgotten. We know that we cannot guarantee answered prayers or even acknowledged prayers. Words fall in the void between the cracks sometimes lost forever unless I remember my own words that I cast in the nothingness, the no-thing-ness never to retrieve. Other than my possible acknowledgement of my own voice, there is no other response besides silence and invisibility.
I still find myself talking to myself as if I was praying. I ask myself, who am I talking to? But never is there an answer. Never. Unless it is me. Sometimes I end up answering myself because I so desperately need interaction, a two way conversation, instead of me jabbering away. But on I go, talking and talking, knowing full well that after 62 years, I will get nothing but silence and invisibility. That is proof in and of itself. And ultimately, the best thing for me during those times is silence, quieting the voices in my head.
Often I run out of people to relate to that are even a little bit close to where I am within. Then I listened to an interview with Elie Wiesel on Speaking of Faith. I’m not sure if I found any real definition of prayer but did get a bit of clarification of ways that prayer and faith might, just might, be woven into this life of groundlessness where people tell themselves a story that says they have a big buddy in the sky and that all authority is above the clouds and yet there is nothing to show for that story; nothing but silence and invisibility. But somehow, some of these words from an auschwitz survivor resonate deep within. I guess we all have to work with what we have. After 50 years of telling myself a story contrary to reality, I’m just amazed to hear someone tell a story of heartbreak and despair as I stand in wonder of the hope it gives. Maybe I am not alone. Maybe hope is not a gift from above but a gift we give each other. Or even a gift we give to ourselves. It seems to me that there are ways that we can give ourselves hope, reason to go on, a positive outlook, etc. based on our self-talk. For me, I used to think of myself as totally depraved like my religion taught. Well, after many years that seemed to be working directly against who I am and who I want to be. As I began to see the basic goodness deep within me, I could stop berating myself with self-talk and start looking for and identifying that basic goodness. Now that is a way that “prayer” does a lot of good as self-talk. Self fulfilling prophecy works the same way but in the reverse. If we hear how bad we are enough times, whether from ourselves or from others, we begin to believe it. And it is a very powerful sort of belief that affects everything we do.
Prayer as Becoming Still and Settled
"Deep down, we know that when we step back, breathe, allow our agitation to settle, and simply start paying attention, we often see new possibilities in situations that once seem intractable... only in this contemplative state are we able to touch the truth..." (Parker Palmer, The Politics of the Brokenhearted)
Prayer as a Testament to Despair and Suffering
“Elie Wiesel stands in the modern imagination as a towering moral figure. He’s known for his work on behalf of the Jewish people and also other peoples across the world who face suffering and persecution. At the same time, Wiesel is often cited as an intellectual symbol of reasonable religious despair. In his memoir, Night, which has recently landed on best-seller lists five decades after its publication, Elie Wiesel declared that he lost his faith forever at Auschwitz. Let's explore what that declaration meant and how it has evolved in Elie Wiesel’s life and his perspective on the world.”
