Reflections

At Church the Pastor does a “prayers and concerns” interaction with the congregation during the service. This past Sunday one of the congregation asked for prayers for a fellow I knew who was in the hospital battling sepsis after a cancer surgery. It was a bit of a surprise to hear his name come up at Church. He is one of our “Old Retired F*$&^%’s” breakfast group, and a good friend to quite a few of the guys in that group. I’ve had a chance to talk to him on and off over the last year, and he is a really nice guy. It was a bit of a surprise to hear his name in that setting; but it was also a surprise because at the very moment this lady spoke his name and asked for prayer, I was saying my own silent prayer for him.

I’d like to consider myself a “Christian” and a “religious” person, but I find myself at times wondering about the efficacy of prayer. Are prayers really answered, or is the outcome of our lives really just a roll of the dice? At its simplest analysis, many outcomes can be judged as a fifty - fifty chance. Will it rain on the weekend of my camping trip? Will my car start on a cold Montana morning? Will the tumor be cancerous or benign? We thank God when the thing we prayed for has a positive outcome, but does God really have a hand in this? Or is it just that over the course of a lifetime the odds are that at least some of the things we pray for will inevitably come true. And some don’t. Are we fooling ourselves into thinking that our prayer is a direct line “upstairs” and that our God is plucking them off the wire like some crime reporter mining the police frequency on her scanner?

We don’t get angry at a God who fails to answer our prayers (okay, sometimes I do). We rationalize with cute sayings on refrigerator magnets that say “God had other plans” or “Sometimes the answer is no.” We sort of expect, and live with the fact that our prayers may not be answered, and that we may not ever understand why.

But this praying is something I’ve found myself doing more and more over the course of the last year and a half. I’m a logical person, I understand science enough to know that all the praying I do is not going to part the waters or bring a plague on my enemies (full disclosure, I don’t have any enemies, and if I did I would not wish on them a plague). I’m not saying it never happened, I just don’t see it happening again anytime soon. Especially at my request.

So then I’m asking myself, why do I close my eyes and fold my hands and do this thing that my logical self tells me cannot really affect the outcome? The weather for my camping trip is the result of atmospheric conditions and patterns that behave according to their own natural laws. The car will start if I’ve kept it properly maintained and has a good battery. Most likely the tumor has been growing for some time, and though previously undetected it’s nature is already determined by either genetics or environment.

So then why bother?

Faith is a funny thing. People do believe that the power of prayer can indeed change outcomes, or portend miracles. And who knows, perhaps they are right? How could I know? That is the definition of “faith,” belief in a thing you cannot prove. There is just so much in this life that I cannot prove, so faith even has a spot in my toolbelt next to the things I know work, like screwdrivers and pliers.

In the end I guess I believe that God has given us what we need to survive this world. A mind that can think and reason, and a body to carry out the mind's instruction.

I won’t pray for blue skies during my camping trip. I’ll pray that I can appreciate the purpose and wonder of whatever nature throws at me. I’ll pray that I’ve used my mind and body to become a steward of life’s bounty (ahem … my car) so as to keep it in good working condition; and when things inevitably fail that I can draw on my experience and knowledge to resolve the issue. And I will pray that the sick friend, his family and his friends, can draw on their own inner strengths to get them through difficult times. These prayers may not change any outcome, but they do help me condition myself to respect and appreciate the gifts that I’ve been given. And to learn how to better honor the lives of others. To access my better self.

Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it just caring enough about life; it’s people, it’s suffering, it’s joy to be able to hold it all in your heart through the ritual of focused thought. Logic that tells me that this won’t likely affect the outcome won’t stop me. But it is a way to center myself. To remind myself how precious, how impermanent, and how interconnected this life really is.

And who knows, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps our God is really listening and willing to selectively pluck our prayers from the ether and will choose to act on a few.

Wouldn’t that be something!