It’s Complicated (On Prayer)
Several years ago, I spent an hour every week participating in a trauma support group. At the beginning of each session, the facilitators would ask us to check-in three different ways: sharing how we were feeling emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It was a simple enough request, and I did okay with most of it. My emotions were always easy for me to articulate. Checking in physically was as simple as reporting whether or not I was tired or was sore in a particular spot. When it came the “spiritual” check-in, though, I all but shut down. After weeks of this question & being one of a handful of people who said “pass” to the spiritual check-in, one of the other participants asked for clarity around how to answer that question. If they, like me, didn’t hold a belief in God or a higher power, what type of answer could they give? How could we gain any kind of context with which to frame an answer?
The advice we received was simple. At that moment, at the time of check-in, did we feel connected to something outside of ourselves, or did we feel cut off? The “something outside of ourselves” could be a higher power, our community, our family, our purpose, the Universe – you name it. Did we feel connected? Or did we feel isolated? Suddenly the question had context for those of us who didn’t consider ourselves to be spiritual in any of the ways we knew. Suddenly the question became a lot easier to answer.
The experience of having my context for spirituality shifted in that way had a huge ripple effect in my life, the outcomes of which include my arrival in this congregation a year or so afterward. Prior to that, I had spent a good part of my life feeling like I was “doing spirituality” wrong because I didn’t naturally align with the theology and dogma that I was brought up with, and the parts of that theology that did sink into my belief system actually did the work of disconnecting me from myself in many ways -- from my self-worth, my sense of agency, and my sense of worthiness.
In her book on prayer, “Help. Thanks. Wow,” Anne Lamott distills the reasons we cry out in prayer into those three distinct categories. The versions of those prayers I grew up with were, “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner,” “Glory be to God,” and “Thy will be done.” And as I child, I never could comprehend that if faith the size of a mustard seed could move mountains, then why did it seem that none of my prayers were answered? Did I truly have no faith at all, no matter how hard I tried?
My relationship with prayer and my religion experienced a seismic shift when I was 13 and my 18-year-old cousin Travis was in a car accident. After we got the news, I remember my mother falling apart. I remember her collapsing into my arms, and thinking about how strange it felt to be comforting my mother in that way.
At some point, I slipped out of her room and headed outside. I stood on the sidewalk in front of our house, and I started to pray. I prayed for my cousin’s life, but a lot of what my pleading focused on was sparing my mother’s pain. “God. I don’t think she can handle this. Please let him live.”
Travis did not live. No one was spared pain. I had never prayed so hard and desperately in my life, yet he was gone.
Standing up here today, recounting that story, I also recall a profound sense of shame that I carried. It echos a similar shame I felt for much of my life. Shame over the worry that I was “doing it wrong.” That I prayed for the wrong thing. I should have been begging for his life only. My focus was in the wrong place. I was selfish. My prayer wasn’t answered, or maybe, as desperately as I was begging, no one was listening.
After that day I was almost scared to pray. I always felt guilty about what I prayed for if it was anything other than “thy will be done,” or “have mercy on me a sinner.” And in those moments when I was feeling the most scared, sad, or desperate and did indeed cry out for “help,” I felt so selfish. There was no comfort in praying.
The time I spent just after separating from my church were spent angry at religion and the very notion of spirituality. I think that a lot of my anger was stemming from the fact that I despite all the pain it had caused me, I had loved being in the church. I was angry that it hadn’t held space for me. I loved the sense of mystery. I loved the sense of being a part of something larger than any four walls could hold.
So when I sat in that circle of women that day and was told that spirituality could be tied to a sense of connection, it was like a thousand puzzle pieces started shuffling into place. It now seemed that moments of connection with myself like meditation, or moments of connecting with others in relationship or in a protest or in creating or giving - those were the ways that I reached out to my higher power. Those too were my prayers.
Not too shy of a year ago my daughter was born. After a delivery that was very scary and nothing like we could have imagined, my wife was faced with a difficult recovery and our baby was recuperating in the NICU. I remember laying on the two inches of foam they call a sofa in that hospital room so exhausted. So scared. And I laid there and prayed. I prayed for my daughter. For my wife. For myself - for strength and in the short term, the ability to sleep. And I realized that something else had shifted. I didn’t feel guilty about these prayers. I didn’t feel alone. Even without a belief in an interventionist God that could or would swoop down and fix things, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything in vain. I felt comforted, even by the act of praying, because in doing so I was reminding myself that I was not alone. I was reminding myself that through my fear and exhaustion I was connected to something much larger than myself.
The journey I’ve been on with prayer has been fraught. It’s been complicated. I imagine that it will continue to evolve. But I know that as my spirituality and even my theology continue to change what won’t change is the fact that I will always have a need to reach out to something larger than myself, and I’m thankful that I feel no hesitation in saying “help.” Saying “thanks.” or saying “wow.”
