Confessions, Confusions, Part 2

The Path of Prayer: Reflections on Prayer and True Stories of How It Affects Our Lives
by Sophy Burnham

(Page 3 of 3)

On the other hand, I could not stop praying. These were usually petitions, which was at the time my sole definition of "prayer." I'd been doing it since babyhood and found the habit hard to break.

It was humiliating. What was I doing? Talking to myself?

When I was in trouble, I would slip into the dusky, trembling silence of an empty church to kneel in a pew, hands folded. I would pour out my heart to a God I did not believe in-or even like, if you consider the historical personage. I would explain my fears and anguish, crying into the void, against my will, "Oh, help."

The odd thing was, I always came away feeling better, except for the tinge of guilt at having once again (like a reformed alcoholic once more going off the wagon) given in to prayer!

Sometimes I would bargain.

"If you give me this, dear God," I implored a deity I refused to acknowledge, addressing Him, moreover, with unwarranted intimacy, given our lack of relationship, "I promise I'll do XYZ....Please help my husband keep his job. Help us stay in this apartment. Help my little girl get into this school. Help us....Help me...."

Somehow things always worked out. Did I give any credit to my prayers? Of course not! They were merely the expression of my own weakness, and I disliked myself all the more for not even being able, like my husband, to live up to my own convictions of atheistic nihilism.

But that's only part of the story, a half-truth of my experience in those days, for even as an inadequate agnostic, I longed for understanding. I prayed to understand. I wished for it on the first evening star. I asked for it, eyes closed, while pulling at chicken wishbones.

Understand what?

All of it! Understand everything.

It may have been my consuming prayer for nearly 15 years, until one day with a surge of joy, I grasped (the bolt from the blue, oh, glory!) that the goal could never be reached-and how wonderful! How thrilling that my prayer was not "answered" (except with this understanding, which at the time I did not consider an "answer"); for if I understood everything, I would lose the mystery-and I rejoiced in that realization like a dog rolling in dead seagull guts, undone by that simple fact: How fine life is, how rich, how inexorable, how limitless, how chaotic and orderly, how violent and peaceful, how right that we should be utterly at the mercy of the Unknown! In the course of my life I have met many fascinating men and women and studied with enlightened masters or gurus. I have experienced extraordinary visions and mystical moments, some of which I've written about in earlier books. Nonetheless, it seems I am always at the beginning of prayer, as innocent and inept as a child.

Whenever I begin a project, I begin with prayer. For every beginning is born in fear and hope. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin this one with prayer, however difficult it is to do so publicly. Listen: My prayers are private. I don't like to voice the silent, secret yearnings of my heart, those intimate communications with an energy that is mysterious, intelligent, majestic, and yet so delicately personal, so immediate, so loving (wings bend brooding over us) that we cannot even name it. "God," we say, for want of a better word.

My prayers are unspoken, private, but with what words I have, here is my sense of longing as we begin this exploration:

O God, Delight of my being, O my Beloved: Fill my mouth with Your words, that each person reading them may be relieved of hurt, fear, doubt....Help me to grow so open that I may see with the eyes of God, hear with the ears of God, love with the heart of God, speak with the words of God-You in me and I in You, in the service of all people, everywhere....And may each person find the longings of her heart, if it be for her highest good....I thank You for Your most tender care....

Something like that. Only it would have no words.

Not all of us will express our prayers with such romantic fervor, and that's the first and most important thing to say about prayer itself: that we each find our own way, our own words, our own deity, and anything I have to say about prayer itself...you must accommodate and shift and shape to fit your perfect mold.

And now we come to pain.

Why does praying seem so often to begin with pain? With broken minds and hearts? We are vessels of unspoken hurt. Is there anyone alive who has not suffered? Or wondered what to do? Life is full of cares, for no sooner do we love a thing than we find ourselves afraid of losing it, and the more precious it appears to us, the worse is our anguish at the idea of its loss. I think that all of life is formed of change and loss: the loss of our children, the loss of our parents, the loss of homes with their comfortable walls and floors, the loss of dreams and ambitions, of jobs, the loss of status or youth or health, and repeatedly the loss of self-esteem, the loss of those whom we have loved-wives, husbands, mothers, brothers, a good dog or cat, or friend. And always, hanging over us dangles the unnamed loss that will be produced by our own death-the loss of a self we may hardly have gotten to know before it will be extinguished (not me!), and with it the subjective loss of this entire thrilling world.

What do we do when we are hurting or in need? We fight our pain and disappointment. We deny it, ignore it, or howl in despair and simple outrage. At some point we try to tackle the problem by willpower and determination. We decide to take control, to change the situation to our advantage and make things come out right, the way they're supposed to be. With all our mind and heart we try to make everything turn out the way we want.

We create a new family schedule to brake a teenager's downward spiral. Or we commit to increased hours of weekend work, when we're already over our head with a failing company. We resolve to spend more time on a "relationship," ("we'll make it work!") or we volunteer to march for world peace. We struggle to bring order out of the chaos of our lives.

Who was it that said, "When humans make plans, God laughs"? Or there's that other antique saying, known in several languages: "Man proposes, God disposes."

Do our frantic efforts work? Fat chance.

Some people try to push the painful situation into submission by drive and hard work, while others take to alcohol or drugs, in an effort either to dull the unwanted sensations or else to vault over them into some exalted, happy state (using spirits to reach the spiritual); and for a short time this course may work. Some people plot vengeance against their enemy. Others stuff down their hurt and anger. They escape into books and films or into hard physical activity and athletics. They drive fast cars to forget their problems, or else they lunge into work or food or chocolate or sex, or even into committing atrocities. Still others erupt in fear and bellow in rage and frustration at the world or at their mother and father or at the God they don't believe in anyway. At fate. Sometimes we lash out in our betrayal, crying for revenge, instituting lawsuits, demanding at least justice if we can't have peace of mind. We substitute righteousness for happiness, though only mercy can make injustice just.

What else do we do? We talk to a friend, to a counselor, or to our private journal. We join a twelve-step program, or perhaps we take our tender, troubled hearts to an astrologer, a medium, a healer or shaman. Just talking helps. We seek respite through massage or Reiki or other forms of loving touch. We dance. We pour our pain into the creative arts. And all these solutions help, but at those times when we cannot take another step, we're forced to pray.

There's the story of a man I know who refused to pray. He was struggling against an addiction and watching as his life unraveled around him, with an impending bankruptcy, divorce, loss of children and home. People kept saying to him, "Pray, pray." But he was prideful and would not. One day a friend took him aside.

"Do you know what the ox does when it's too heavily laden?"

"No, what?"

"It falls on its knees and refuses to move," he said.

The man thought, "Well, if the ox can fall on its knees, I guess I can." That morning in the shower, where he knew he wouldn't be seen, he very quickly-tick-tock-dropped to one knee (help!), and came back up again. Oddly, he felt better, and the next day while in the shower he dropped onto both knees and stayed there a little longer to say his prayer, there, where no one would see him. After that, he found he could pray at night before climbing into bed or in the morning on first opening his eyes. Dropping to his knees even for a moment opened the gate to prayer, to submission to something higher, to the universal energy field, as I call it; that's the only thing we can do when life's breakers boil us in the sand.

Copyright © 2002 Viking Press, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc., used by permission.

About the Author

Sophy Burnham, an award-winning author, is best known for her classic bestseller, A Book of Angels. A prolific speaker and writer on faith and the spiritual path, her work has been translated into twenty languages and has sold more than one million copies.