To pray or not to pray . . .

Comments around a recent face book status have provoked further reflection. I wrote, "Because not everyone is spared harm, does that mean it is disingenuous to pray for safety and gratefully claim divine protection when we have been spared? What is the underlying message heard by those who are suffering [when we claim an experience of Providential protection]? Something doesn't sit quite right if we say God is personally loving and interested and drawing each of us to greater wholeness and well-being, but can't acknowledge that care because someone else might have had a different experience."

So, back to the age old question, to pray or not to pray. Does prayer make a difference? Here is a flow of consciousness from my morning journal:

Prayer for me is this quiet time, writing in my journal, listening in the silence. Breathing in, breathing out. Letting go of things I can't control. Trusting there is a Spirit of love, well-being, goodness, a stream working to right the universe, knowing that I want to align myself with that greater good. A centered feeling of "all shall be well."

I do not know how the fields of energy around us work, whether they are measurable or not, whether they are physical or spiritual, whether they are angels or Spirit or electricity or light waves. It is our human nature that longs to quantify, touch, label. The spirit longs for resonance with the Spirit within, to learn the language of the unutterable, the indescribable, mystery, seeks a "knowing" that is deeper than any words and language, preceding, interceding, all encompassing. A glimpse of the Holy.

It seems a risk to speak of these sacred moments. To bring them from the beauty of our inner sanctuary to the outer world exposes them to the intellect where we examine them with the critical lens of our limited human understanding, a bit like casting the proverbial "pearls before swine." Touches of the Holy may be tarnished by our doubt, our questions, our skepticism.

In recent years I have been drawn to the thought that I am a spiritual being on a human journey (rather than a human being on a spiritual journey). I continue to ponder the implications of such a perspective and find it a helpful paradigm to understand my dissonance with values of the surrounding culture. How to live in the world but not of it--a question that goes back at least to Biblical times if not before . . . leaving a meaningful footprint, not denying our humanity, finding ways to be fully human, yet having a self-identity that is immeasurably more.

So then, whether or not prayer moves the universe, prayer changes me. It is my favorite hour of the day, the source of well-being, centered contentment and deepening joy.