Prayer
I don’t pray anymore.
I quit praying a very long time ago, and with a profound sense of hopelessness. The hopelessness wasn’t a result of the giving up, but of the praying and not receiving. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell a kid that if he has enough belief he can move mountains before you teach him about context, and metaphor, and allegory. I tried moving Mt. Ozzard so many times, all to no avail. Well, I think it was to no avail, maybe I just didn’t move the mountain that I was looking at, instead moving mountains somewhere else causing widespread chaos and disaster. If this is the case, I apologize, and I’ll send thoughts and prayers if I can be convinced of their efficacy by way of proof that I did, in fact, move said mountain.
Truthfully though, I really hope that prayers don’t work considering how often I prayed mad. I reckon that if I prayed mad, then other people do as well, and if prayers do, in fact, work, then that would be bad. That would be very bad.
Maybe they do work...
Aside from my attempts at megatelekinesis and spite prayer, most of my praying was done at the supper table. The prayers were all a bit formulaic, but it was a really good practice of showing gratitude. Once I thanked the lord for the food, and for Mom who put it all together so expertly, I was free to pray about whatever I could think of, so I’d thank the lord for helping me find my favourite book, or knife, or for whomever dropped off the sack of clams, because I love clams, or for sending me a new friend at school, or that we all survived that rogue wave incident at the lighthouse yesterday, and stuff like that.
Privately, I used to pray for forgiveness for lying to my parents about playing Dungeons & Dragons, thinking impure thoughts, and swearing with my brain, but I eventually quit after I realized that I wasn’t sorry at all. That may have been my first foray into the wilds of mindfulness, of intentionally living.
Despite what you may have heard about multi-tasking, you can only effectively concentrate on one thing at a time, especially if you reduce the time factor into manageable increments. I like the flashlight analogy-or is it metaphor-in which you reside-or abide-in a darkened room with only a flashlight for attention, and you can only interact intentionally with what is illuminated by the ray of light, and all other interactions are bumping and tripping in the gloom, and there are only a few situations where bumping and tripping in the gloom are any good at all.
It’s a really terrible thing to not be able to hold the light steady, instead to swing it wildly from side to ceiling at every tick, or sniff, or movement of air. It leaves one in a frantic and desperate state where that dark room expands to become a dark world, and the light hangs forgotten in your hand, illuminating the scattering tears on the dusty ground. It’s a terrible thing to feel, to know, that everything is within your grasp if you only had enough hands, if you could only reach a little farther. If you could only be a little better you.
Illuminating the world makes it worse. With all that light and input, all that active call to attention, you might find yourself wishing for the dark, and maybe seeking it, and maybe finding it, in your need for a smaller world where you crouch, watching your scattering tears pool on the dusty ground, and you realize, that they’re beautiful, the way they reflect and refract the light, the light you hold in your hand, hold in your breath, let it out, let it back in like you mean it, let it back out like you know you can bring it back, bring it back, to you, and now you’re lying on the floor, and you don’t need the light on right now, and you bring it back, and you let it go, and you find one thing that matters, and you love it with everything you’ve got as you lay there, in the dark, in your dusty tears, until you’re ready to let the light back out.
Is that prayer, or mindfulness, or meditation? I don’t know. All I know is that we’re all going to have to do that at least once, that little death. If you can do it before your last breath, you’ll have the chance to shed a bit more light, and that’s a good thing, no matter how you get there.
