THINKING IT THROUGH

This is a long post on prayer – a subject that gets more mysterious and more fascinating the longer you study and practice it. The nature of its power is what interested me here, as well as the extent and nature of its denial.

In the first place, what is the “power” of prayer? It is a form of spiritual energy. As energy, it has potential power but it also has laws: you cannot, for example, usefully power a computer with coal. For those who accept its laws, it is as accessible as wind-power to a sailboat; more, in fact, because unlike the wind, the energy prayer taps into is there 24/7. Much depends on the person praying, just as much depends on the person sailing the boat. 

What are the laws? First, no fishhooks. Praying for things is on the whole useless: not because God deliberately refuses them, but because the energy doesn’t normally work that way. Second, prayer is always answered, but the time-lapse and the modality of the response are to us unpredictable. God answers in His own time and manner, which are by definition mysterious to us. Third, prayer is a spiritual energy that works on, and in, a spiritual dimension.  This is where it gets difficult, not to understand but, for many, to accept. God does not micromanage the world. He sees, it is true, every sparrow that falls, but He does not stop it falling. Deists got it half right: God created the world and set it going, and He does not normally interfere with the process. Only half, though: because He is present in the world at every moment, He does care for his human creatures, and He does try to guide them toward Him and toward His love. 

This leaves two problems: catastrophes and hatred. Why does God not stop an earthquake that will kill 500 people? Answer: because it is part of the physical creation, and that creation’s processes He does not interfere with. Why does God not stop massacres and other loathsome deeds? Answer: because God’s nature is love, and the one limit to His omnipotence is that He cannot be untrue to His own nature. Since that is love, He is bound by love’s law, which holds that one cannot command reciprocity: if one could, it would kill love instantly. The nature of love is that it can only be returned freely or not at all. And when it is not, when it is trodden in the dirt, the lover may weep, but he cannot command. There are times when one feels the earth must be drenched in the tears of God. 

How does the power of prayer, this extraordinary energy, work? Much of it, it must be said, remains mysterious. The eighteenth century was skilled in the ways, and in the use, of wind for locomotion, but its understanding of the physics was more rudimentary than ours. One thing that can be said is that casual prayer is no more effective than renting a sophisticated sailboat for an afternoon without even the minimum knowledge of its operation: the inevitable failure may even have a negative effect. 

Further, prayer for specifically spiritual goals is likely to be more effective. If I pray to be enabled to give up smoking, it may or may not be granted: the objective is still very much anchored to the physical world. But if I pray, long and steadfastly, for the power to become a more generous person, this may well, gradually and over time, be granted. 

Moreover, experience has found that petitionary prayer of that kind is augmented in its power if it is liberally combined with the other kind of prayer: thanksgiving. One cannot always be asking. Cultivating a keen sense for things that are gifts to be thankful for is in itself a form of healing. 

All prayer is subject to God’s Will. In fact, one might say that the one purpose and effect of all good prayer is to align our being with His will, so that the former may become the unresisting instrument of the latter. As Dante put it, in la sua volantade e nostra pace: in His will is our peace.

Much of this is illustrated by Christ’s Passion. As it looms, in Gethsemane, Jesus prays for this cup (understood: this bitter cup, this cup of hemlock) to be taken from him: he is human enough to quail at the prospect. Yet at once he continues: “But not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” But, we say, did God will this? Does God will – intend, want, and cause – the nailing of an innocent to a cross? If so, He would be a malignant God, a God who could will the extermination of millions of Jews and of Russian farmers, the massacre of thousands of Syrians, and the torture of prisoners everywhere. If, in the face of catastrophe or atrocity, we say “Thy will be done” what we mean is that we pray for the strength and the grace to undergo such things in the manner that His will intends us to and hopes we will. His will is not that we be nailed to a cross; His will is that if we are we will undergo it as Jesus did. 

All prayer for ourselves is contained in the Lord’s Prayer. What about prayer for others? This is an area much more difficult to understand than prayer for ourselves, if only because prayer for others is always already by definition generous and altruistic; this being so, we cannot understand why it is so often not (or not in any obvious way) granted. If my beloved, or my child, has cancer, or Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s, or motor neurone disease, and I pray eight hours a day for that person to be healed, and that person is not healed, it is understandable if I feel rebellious. What, I ask myself, or God, is the point?

This problem is made worse, in some ways, by what appear to be occasional exceptions that look like miraculous healings. My own belief is that these are probably “sports”: oddities in the process which are sometimes enabled by a particularly powerful spirit. We cannot, and should not, expect these to occur and be offended or cast down when they do not. 

Prayer for others, I believe, is a way of adding to their store of spiritual energy, the energy that emerges in their own prayer. If it is directed to a specific situation, it augments their own prayer energy for undergoing, or dealing with, such a situation. True to the laws of prayer energy, we may pray for their increase in discernment, in wisdom, in charity, in patience, in love. A multitude of such prayers may, and probably does, create an energy field of great force that the beneficiary may tap into. 

Nevertheless, the laws of prayer hold. My friend with motor neurone disease will not be healed by my prayers, i.e. his disease will not go away. The prayers of Mary and John and the others present did not make the Cross go away or allow Jesus to come down from it. But their power very certainly helped him, in this most human of his hours, to bear what had to be borne. 

Another law of prayer appears to be that the prayers of a community are more powerful and effective than those of an individual. I can see that this might be so: six generators connected in sequence will produce more energy that one solitary one. Moreover, it means that a whole community with its energy is advancing God’s hope and plan for the world. This should not, however, prevent the individual from praying, and the longer and deeper the better. 

Given all this, I find it very curious to see how many people who do not deny climate change and its roots in human activity are quite comfortable with denying the power, the efficacy, and even the interest, of prayer. Climate-change denial is rightfully decried; God-denial is accepted without a blink. It must, one feels, come from a fundamental misprision as to the nature of the energy. It is not electricity: you cannot get a bunch of experts to produce it in a form that lets a small child press a switch and light a room. It is more like the power of the wind to a sailboat, or the power of growth to a farmer: it has its own laws and rhythms that must be attended to and cannot be forced. Yet why that should call into question its existence is peculiar. Perhaps it is because many do not want it to be true. Why? Do they think it would limit their liberty? Ten thousand things already do so, from traffic regulations to polio. You can get from London to Athens quickly, by spending a great deal of money, using vast amounts of petroleum, and causing a fair mount of pollution, by taking an aeroplane. Or you can get from London to Athens by using a skill you have patiently learned, working with the wind (which, we know, bloweth where it listeth), in silence and cleanly, by taking a sailboat. 

Finally, what are the rewards of prayer? If it does not normally change the physical progress of things; if it does not bring Huckleberry Finn his fish-hooks; if it does not make my friend’s cancer go away; what does it bring me? You can read the answer in a hundred books written by experts. Experts such as Augustine of Hippo, Juliana of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Juan de la Cruz, George Herbert, John Donne, Thérèse of Lisieux, Thomas Merton. Very simply: it brings you (into) the company of God. The God who is Love.  The lone sailor crossing the Pacific had to spend many years learning the ways of the wind and the water; but he would tell you that it was all worth it. Prayer also takes time to learn; to adapt a proverb, God’s will often moves slowly, but it moves exceeding well.   

PRAYING FOR ANASTASIA, OR, FISH-HOOKS REVISITED

"Human freedom is an essential, aspect of God's creation and as such [J.R.] Lucas argues that there must be an infinity of possible plans. He likens God's providence to the Persian rugmakers who start at one end of a carpet while their children start at the other: the skill of the father is able to accommodate the children's work to create a rug of great beauty." (James Wood, "The Theology of Prayer and Intercession")

 I have written earlier on what to me is the perennial problem of intercessory and petitionary prayer: what can one properly ask for, and what is the meaning of praying for others? The answer to the second question must depend on the way the first is answered; and both, as Lee Rayfield suggests, depend on one’s concept of, and one’s relation to, God. Several theologians have pointed out that early in the Old Testament, petitions to God played out in the language of commerce, of the market-place: the great example is the irresistible story of Abraham’s bargaining with God for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha. (What is sometimes left out is the sequel: even though God acceded to Abraham’s final request to be merciful if even ten just men were found there, the cities did end up being destroyed. Clearly there was no minyan. But more relevant is the fact that Abraham did stop at ten, and did leave the decision up to God.)

            Since the coming of Jesus, however, the language of petition has been the language of love. Jesus taught us to call God Abba, Father: not obvious, when you think of Him as the Creator of the entire universe now revealed by Hubble. He taught us how to pray, how to ask, and suggested we do it as simply as a child asks its father for a bun. He also told us that if and when we ask, and ask insistently, we will receive (though he did not go into detail about what and how we will receive). Moreover, he showed us how he himself prayed: and, as one theologian pointed out, the most relevant of his prayers for this question is in Gethsemane, when he prayed God to let the cup of the Cross pass from him – “yet not as I will but as Thou wilt”.

            Which, of course, leads us to micro-management, and to Huck Finn’s fish-hooks. Does God micro-manage the world? In one sense I don’t think so. Jesus tells us that He sees the fall of every sparrow; but He doesn’t prevent it. Magic may stop the arrow dead in its flight; but God does not. On the other hand, I don’t think God stays aloof from the beautiful watch He has made and wound up. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and theologian, has reminded us that the Deist (and sometimes atheist) view of God is based on a mechanistic universe, and that in a quantum universe, where uncertainty plays a major role, a far more dynamic and subtle view of God is possible.

            We do not, usually, receive fish-hooks if we pray for them, though sometimes we do – which should make us think seriously about the relation between petitionary prayer and thanksgiving. But what interests me more today is prayer of intercession for others. We pray for a sick acquaintance. What do we pray? The simplest version is, “God, heal Anastasia (or Mrs X) and make her well again.” This may or may not happen. If it does, we give thanks, usually without questioning what that implies. If it doesn’t, there are several explanations: our faith wasn’t strong enough; or her healing at this time was not part of God’s will for her. The former, though in some places Jesus seems to sanction it,  almost reduces prayer to magic. The latter is very hard for us, with our love for the patient, to understand.  Some theologians solve the problem by saying that God’s sense of time is not ours; others, that God moves in mysterious ways.

            Yes, well, did we think we would grasp God and His ways? Does the child understand all its father’s circumstances and considerations? We are told that the great theological virtues are Faith, Hope, and Love. So why not apply those to our prayer of intercession? We pray that she may be healed. In that prayer, we do not attempt to bind God’s Will. We do apply Faith – we trust in God’s love, we trust Him to act out of the love He has for her. We do apply hope – the true Hope, which is itself a form of faith, a faith that points to a future, to an outcome. And we do apply Love, for the very fact of our praying for her is a putting into motion of the energy of Love. And that is enough. We cannot do more; we need not do more. As my mother, old and deep into Alzheimer’s, said to me one night before going to sleep, when I asked her what she thought about death and after: “I don’t think we’re meant to know, or to think about that. That’s what faith is for. You go into the dark, trusting.”

            But we have a restless and a questing mind, and some things I think we are allowed, indeed encouraged, to think about. If intercessory prayer “works,” how does it work? If a hundred people pray for Anastasia, what happens? And a couple of things I read recently gave me an idea about that. First, a sermon I heard said that God’s love for us is poured out constantly – not only at certain times of His choosing or our asking. It pours down upon us like the sun’s light. And if it does not efficaciously reach us, it is because we are blocking it. So what we can and should pray for is help to stop blocking God’s love. My second reading was the interview with Jean Vanier, and his insistence that we regard those unregarded by everyone else or the world in general.

            Those two ideas produced, in my mind, a third: that apart from my blocking the flow of God’s love for me, there may be more general and/or objective blocks that prevent that love from reaching me – or you, or Anastasia. And that praying for her, by one person but especially by more persons, may create a metaphysical energy that helps dissipate those blocks. What sort of blocks might they be? Well, as Vanier says, in a class, look at, regard, the kid everyone else makes fun of. Or, he mentions a 40-year-old paraplegic who has always so far been treated like something thrown out with the garbage. So one block might be the world in general, a person’s environment. Or a person’s circumstances. Or, indeed and startlingly often, a person’s own nature and its idiosyncrasies. I know several elderly women living alone, of varying prosperity but none of them poor. All of them have the physical problems that come with age. Three of them live rich, satisfying lives; two are profoundly and enduringly miserable, in spite of intelligence, education and talent. 

            Intercessory prayer for such people may create or fuel and augment an energy, deeply pleasing to a loving God, that helps to remove the screens blocking His love from pouring into their hearts and souls. We can only ever pray that He may lead them to the knowledge and love of Him, and that His will be done; but we are asked to do that often and insistently and also, I believe, smilingly (on His part) allowed to wonder, and ponder, how.