Why You Shouldn't Pray
It Might Spill Over Into Living
There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t pray. If you pray for someone, you might feel like you should also reach out to her with a card. And she may be so moved by the card that she might call you to say “thanks,” which could lead to a conversation about how she is really doing. She might tell you about the book she is reading by Nadia Bolz-Weber that is keeping her going, and you might decide to go to an independent bookstore to pick up your own copy. While there, you might start talking with the owner who tells you about a book by a Black author that she enjoys so you buy two books instead of one. It’s the second book, the one by Ross Gay about a Book of Delights that sparks your imagination to start making space each day to notice the delights in your world, like the oriole calling in a poplar tree on your morning walk.
If you pray for peace, you might feel like you should act somehow to put your body where your prayer is, and you might call a friend that you haven’t talked to for ages because of the insensitive things he said to you even though you have had a long friendship. And as you get a coffee with him, he might tell you about his daughter who is going through a rough patch and he doesn’t know what to say to her because she gets defensive. And you don’t need to have an answer; he just needs someone to share that with. And you leave the coffee shop with a hug and a little peace has happened.
So you pray for more peace, this time in the Middle East, and you begin to feel like you really do not understand Israel and Palestine so you listen to a podcast by a Palestinian American who tells stories you have never heard before. You end up learning more about the plight of the Palestinians so you call your legislator to tell them you want the country to send fewer weapons, and then you find out about a local group that is committed to bringing together Jews, Christians and Muslims in dialogue for peace. So you go, and meet people you had never before gotten to know and it expands your understanding of the world. It makes you wonder about different foods, too, so you stop into a Lebanese deli that you have passed dozens of times, and at Zakia’s Deli you get the most delicious gyro you have ever tasted, and you are grateful.
If you pray with gratitude, you might start to see more signs of grace all around you. Your kids who sometimes do not make fun of you, your parents who tell stories that you amazingly do not remember ever hearing, your neighbor who shoveled your driveway when you were sick, the kind person at the checkout at Trader Joe’s, an oak tree to sit under in the shade. It’s the oak tree that really makes you pause. You might wonder how that tree got there. You might notice squirrels and woodpeckers. You might decide you want to do something so that your friends’ grandchildren have oak trees to enjoy so you get involved in Third Act (for people 60 and over) or Climate Action or a local birding group and suddenly you are connected to people who show care for the environment and you are even more grateful.
If you pray, you might sense a depth of quiet in your own soul that surprises you. You might spend more time just listening to that quiet. It might bring you calm despite all that concerns you. It might help you process memories you had forgotten were rumbling around in some random corner of your soul. It might help you hear faint notes of grace in a music that seems like God’s presence. Your eyes may moisten and you don’t even know exactly why. But if you pray you might never again be able to say “World here — God there” because in the quiet you sense that God is with you all the time. Taking out trash. Cutting garlic. Turning off the lights. Bending down to that dandelion that caught your attention.
There are so many reasons not to pray, because prayer may connect you to every atom and molecule of your daily life and the world around you and your soul may expand to notice God in it all.
But then again, maybe praying is precisely what you long for today because it opens up your very being to living now. Who knows?
There are so many reasons you shouldn’t subscribe to other people’s writing on Substack. You might recognize their name in your notifications and then you might be provoked by the title of something they wrote. And then you might find yourself opening it and starting to read what they wrote while you drink morning your coffee. And then you might find yourself smiling and getting all warm inside because something they put into words waters your heart the way you just watered your flowers. And then you might find yourself feeling really grateful for this crazy place where people take the time to share things that really matter to them. People you haven’t met in person, but you feel like they live next-door to you in a world where you need that feeling to fuel your day. Namaste, Hans.
I don’t relate to prayer as a practice, but I do relate to the idea of permeability.
That there are states of attention where the boundary between “thinking about something” and “being implicated in it” gets thinner.
And once that happens, even ordinary actions start to feel connected.
Hope you are having a good Thursday bro :)