5. Thoughts and Prayers
Bright ideas for dark times
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Previously on Bright Ideas for Dark Times:
Aside from heartfelt objections to whatever is happening in PE this term, I generally hear very little about my son’s school day. But a couple of weeks ago, he came home and said, with some emotion, We prayed for the people in the California fires.
It’s the kind of thing I used to object to, not only the British school system’s insistence that children pray, but also the very notion that praying is a way to help. I have to confess that I was one of the people who used to be outraged when disaster struck, and thoughts and prayers were offered via social media. I found it objectionable that people might offer something so flimsy in the face of horror; that they might thereby satisfy themselves that action had been taken.
I would still say that we ought to be mindful about the direction of our prayers, however well-intentioned; many people have experienced the weaponised version of being prayed for, aimed at bringing us back into line. But over the past few years, my understanding of prayer - and of the people praying - has shifted. My son’s experience shows exactly why it is not the useless gesture I once thought it to be.
I’ve always prayed, but I never used to be able to admit that. It was a kind of instinct I had that arose in me when I felt out of control. In quiet moments, I felt the need to speak very directly about whatever was on my mind, to distill my concerns into words in my head. I wasn’t sure who they were directed to, but the act was comforting in itself. It helped me to arrange clouds of concern into coherent thoughts, to start a conversation with myself about notions that were otherwise amorphous. Whenever this happened, I would notice that a strong ethical imperative would arise in me, challenging me to think less selfishly, to see the bigger picture, to consider the needs of others as well as my own. It was different to meditation, which was often a process of experiencing my experiences, a way of clarifying my own standpoint. Prayer was more deliberate, more outwardly focused, more spontaneous. I valued both.
One day, I heard a Christian minister speaking on the radio who said that prayer was not a conversation with God, but instead a process of trying to think like God. That lit a lightbulb for me: prayer was an act of self-guidance, a way of exploring what I thought the perspective of ‘god’ (however I conceived of that word) might be. That god-like view was forever pulling me away from my own limited view, and into the bigger picture. God would surely have to balance the needs of not just everyone, but everything, and that meant that I needed to see my own needs from that perspective too. I was a kind of filter; some things still mattered under that gaze, and others felt very petty indeed. It filled me with gratitude for things I had previously resented, and put me into the context of all of humanity, the whole earth. It was a relief.
I don’t personally have a fixed idea of God, and I certainly don’t believe in a wise old patriarch weighing up human affairs. But I do find it useful to run my thoughts through the filter that I imagine them to be. I think that, like meditation, prayer is a tool that works whether or not there’s a spiritual belief behind it. It’s a reflective mode that our brains know how to access, a way of evaluating our experiences and ideas. And, like meditation, we tend to think it can only be done one way, when it actually has many possible forms and approaches. To make use of it, we only need to drop our preconceptions and find our own way in.
The truth is, we are frequently helpless in the face of this world’s horrors. We witness all kinds of traumas from a distance, and find we can do very little at all. The version of me who was furious with people who offered thoughts and prayers was burning up with guilt and rage, but was doing very little to help either. Sometimes, we need to be honest and admit that we are unable to do anything, but that we care anyway. The idea that any deity might only assist if we petition them to do so is an odd one; it seems to insult the very nature of divinity. But engaging with our desperation to come to the aid of complete strangers is important. We are learning about our true nature, experiencing our connection to the human whole. We are activating something vital within us.
When I was researching Enchantment, I spent some time in the company of the Zen Peacemakers, an organisation dedicated to contemplating some of the more profound conflicts and injustices of the world. Their practice is centred around witnessing, immersing themselves in the bitter experiences of less fortunate people. I wondered at first if it might feel prurient, a kind of emotional pornography. But I found that my deep engagement made it harder to avoid the fact of my own evasiveness, my own inaction. Thoughts and prayers made me shine a bright light on myself, and to ask searching questions about what I could do. The Zen Peacemakers urge their adherents to move past bearing witness and into taking action; the point is that the action is informed by careful thought and observation first.
As I spend more time deliberately praying, rather than falling into it by accident sometimes, I find that the matter of doing comes up constantly. Whereas I once wasted energy on outrage at people who I thought were signalling their virtue rather than taking action, I now press myself to make myself useful in a practical way, somehow. It is often very, very small indeed, but then I am also very, very small in the context of the world.
I no longer resent the offer of thoughts and prayers; instead I see it as a way of expressing kindness and care, even while acknowledging our helplessness. And I’ve seen from my son how it can help to channel our bafflement at this runaway age, how it can plant a seed. At its root, prayer is not a petition to a supernatural force, but an act of making contact with the transcendent part of ourselves, the part that knows its place in the human ecology. It is far from passive.
Five Bright Ideas about prayer
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