Write about a prayer
On what would happen if I let go of the religious connotations of the word and defined it for myself.
I got several messages carrying hard news this week from people in disparate parts of my life. It’s funny how suffering seems to accumulate, and then you realize that there is always an accumulation of suffering, but thankfully it gets broken up by moments of light and joy just often enough to relieve us.
“I’m sending prayers”
“I am praying for you”
“I am thinking of you”
“I am sending love”
I cringe at the idea of sending someone prayers, because I don’t pray. So I opt for “thinking of you” or “sending love” instead. But what does “thinking” of someone actually entail? And what does “sending love” actually mean? These two phrases are just as rife with convoluted significance.
A prayer, by definition, is a plea to god, an attempt to reach a higher being. Your capital G-O-D could exist in any form; it could be the man in the sky, or the waves on the shore, or a detectable buzzing in the air between you and your crush. Whatever your god is, a prayer is your call to it. This call might occur when life down on earth is too complex, too fraught, too painful, too incomprehensible that we wish it away to another power that can help us decipher how to accept our fates and move on. Praying is an attempt to access something that might have control over the things we cannot control.
With this definition then, when I get news that a loved one is suffering, I actually do engage in an act of prayer. I close my eyes tightly, I ground myself in their memory, or I try to transport myself to their reality. I imagine what the hospital room looks like, what’s etched on their family’s faces, what snacks are in the vending machine, what clothes they are wearing, what the light looks like as it filters through the jagged blinds, whether they have their phone charger with them, what is the pattern in the ceiling above their head. And then, I beckon something that is greater than me to fix this, to numb their pain, to fast forward to the point where I can say with confidence that everything will be okay.
We could be engaged in conversation with something bigger than ourselves more often than when we are in crisis, though. I could be praying when I bite into an apple, when I open a window to let the cool air in, when my bags arrive at baggage claim, when I read a good line in a book. I could treat my prayer as a form of gratitude, of taking stock of the ordinary but perfect things that happen to me each day. And then when I experience true suffering, or I absorb the true suffering of those around me, or across the world from me, I can pray without feeling like that word weighs so much on my tongue. Instead, it’s my natural instinct as I take heed of the unremarkable parts of life, the parts that are joyful and terrible at the same time.
So if you do experience a loss or suffering of any kind, know that I won’t just think of you, I’ll send you an agnostic, somewhat spiritual, genuine prayer.
From Prompt 293 from the Isolation Journals: Write about prayer. About who you talk to, when you do it, and how it has changed over time. If you don’t pray, write about how you’d pray and what you’d pray for if you did.