I am thinking about prayer

Tonight I am thinking about prayer. I miss it. I want it back.

I somehow gave prayer up around the time of my divorce in 2005. (My friend Amy wrote a perfectly wonderful first sentence in a short story years ago. It says something like, "I quit praying a few years ago, around the same time I quit smoking, and for the same reasons." I've botched the line dreadfully, but I can't find a record of the real thing.)

When I quit praying, back in 2005, it was hard at first. I kept reaching for it, like Amy's cigarette. I felt frustrated by my own spiritual confusion. I wanted desperately to have everything figured out. I believed prayer would work best if I had broad, open lines between me and the Deity, whatever his/her name was. It would be best if I knew my place and worked forward from there. But I didn't know what to call God. I got hung up from the get-go. Praying is tough when you literally can't get past the first word.

Last week I came across this bit of a Rumi poem. I feel like it was written for me:

If you cannot pray sincerely, offer your dry, hypocritical,
agnostic prayer; for God in His mercy accepts bad coin.

It doesn't matter if we have it all figured out, or if we're totally confused. It still counts.

My mother asked me nervously last week, after the election was over, after my father was out of earshot, if I considered myself a Republican or a Democrat. I didn't give her a straight answer; I wasn't in the mood to break her heart with my liberal politics. Later I realized her question was probably about my faith — she wanted to know if her daughter is still Christian, if her daughter still shares her values, if her daughter still believes in God.

I still don't know what I believe. I'm really not interested in studying different understandings of the divine and figuring out resonates most with me.

But I think prayer is a worthy pursuit. I think finding a way to feel connected to something larger than ourselves is a worthy pursuit.

People need prayer. They deserve prayer. Maybe prayer is one of the best gifts I have to offer people who are in a lot of pain. So tonight I am praying for my friend S. who is working hard to get her life back after suffering from depression for years. I'm praying for J.'s mother, who is in the hospital again with an unexplained illness. I'm praying for D., a woman I've never met, whose young son died unexpectedly this week. I'm praying for J., who is stretched thin with the demands of motherhood, who needs a really good night of sleep.

Ultimately this is about connection with a greater, older, deeper wisdom. Mary Oliver says it better than I ever could:

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.