One of my therapist friends just received frightening medical news following her first colonoscopy. I know what that kind of call from the doctor feels like, how the mind resists such unwanted information, how it changes everything in your life.
She shared her lab results, told me about the developing treatment plan, got fast tracked to surgery. While I’m too far away be any practical help, I offered one thing: Ill pray for you every day, I told her.
I speak her name to God. I added her name to the concerns I pray about: victims of war, violence in the world, climate change, wise leaders, domestic politics, my children and husband, our community and myself.
Essentially, I think of prayer as an internal conversation we have with God. It’s a personal dialogue that shifts our emotional focus to God, a kind of discussion in which I think of God as a loving Mother, patiently attending, listening, feeling our concerns, joining that divine heart to ours.
Rarely does that infinite, loving power directly respond. Instead, that internal dialogue makes us participants in God’s sacred kingdom, a spiritual realm already at work in the world for our good.
Neuroscientists who study spiritual experiences have found within our brains observable energy patterns when we are in meditation, prayer, or spiritual reflection. Humans have evolved with an innate ability to imagine, focus, and link to an experience of power beyond ourselves, to moments of awe and wonder.
We seem to be able to connect with this spirituality through such diverse practices as dance, ritual, story, body postures, visual arts, the natural world, architecture, literature, chant, poetry, music and song, food, or silence. The way we understand this impulse is first modeled by our family of origin, then by our larger culture, as well what we choose individually to develop and practice.
Want God to heal your cancer? A certain televangelist will sell you magical healing water to motivate God’s power. Afraid of dangerous weather? Famous preachers will assure you that specific prayers will change the course of hurricanes. Still others shout their certainty that God is only close to certain political parties, countries, religions, or genders.
Nothing in my experience tells me God responds to prayer like that. Yet religious hucksters continue to draw crowds, always preying on the vulnerable.
If prayer is the innate impulse in the human brain to connect with a life power beyond our physical selves, a pull toward experiences of timelessness, presence, awe, and wonder, what if anything, can we say about how it moves God? How might it influence the physical world?
I see prayer not as some emotional campaign to spur God to specific action, but as an experience of drawing us toward God in relationship, and in strengthening the bond between God and us, seeking the in-breaking of more healing, hope and renewal into this fragile world. In other words, I think of prayer as participating with God in the most powerful experiences of life: of hope, connection, healing, relief, and love. What many call God’s realm or kingdom.
The life of Jesus shows me that God is already close to those who suffer. I believe in a God who weeps when we weep, rages at the evil we do to one another and joins us even in our death. When we pray, I don’t think we tell God anything new at all. Prayer draws us to God’s heart and that holy practice can shape us into people who can offer our best selves to this world.
I will continue to pray for my friend, that God stays close to her in every way, that she be less afraid, find peace and renewed health, and trust in her future. I know that this healing is possible, even if a cure becomes unlikely. I have practice enough with prayer to trust these are already the desires of God’s for all our world.
(Written for the Savage Pacer, published 2/3/24)