A Prayer
Many things and their opposite have been said about prayers. I am not attempting to add to this confusion. I will not assess the usefulness of prayers or their futility. I will not make any judgment on the necessity or value of praying. I will not write about the kind of people who pray and those who don’t. I will simply define what is a prayer and what it is aimed for.
Fundamentally, prayers are created by humans, for humans. Some are personal and others are collective. Many are emotional, few are rational. They all share common attributes.
A prayer is a simple, clear and inspiring text, which describes a vision, a state of heart and mind, or a way of life. The length is irrelevant, it could be just one word, the name of a loved being or even just a syllable, a mantra.
The vision could include the known world, the unknown one, or parts of any of them.
Prayers, especially when they are personal, are a vehicle to share our intimate feelings and thoughts, our sorrows and joys, our frustrations and satisfactions, our state of heart and mind and our wants and needs.
A prayer also would suggest, at different levels of depth, the way we could or should live in the known world to fulfill its vision.
Almost always, a prayer invokes a higher power or a super being to help us in walking the path laid down by itself. The invocation would typically be a “direct ask for an anticipated help”, or sometimes an indirect ask, disguised in an expression of either “hope for suggested help” or “gratitude for an already received one”.
When we recite a prayer, we are always at its center, directly or indirectly. In some cases, we pray to change what we don’t like and in other cases, we pray to preserve what we like. The spectrum ranges from our own and other people’s qualities, shortcomings, thoughts, feelings and behaviors, to conditions in which we live, strive or thrive. Even when we pray for people we don’t know, and it is very rare, we see things from our perspective, we decide what could be good for them and we pray accordingly. When we belong to an organized group, religious or not, with shared point of view, values and goals, our perspective is surely tainted, but even then, our prayer is, first and foremost, about us sharing our state of heart and mind with a higher power and communicating to it our desires and wishes.
There is almost always a higher power or super being. To change or to preserve, we need strength, wisdom, and courage. To do different things that will lead to different outcomes or even to continue doing the things we are doing, we need infallible help. To walk the path leading to our vision, we need a strong, reliable and caring higher power to give us and sometimes not take away from us the necessary conditions, qualities, and capabilities!
By design, the vision in the prayer is something we strive to fulfil, but we never quite reach; we work (most of us don’t) every day to get closer to, but we never quite grasp. It is an ever-elusive state of things, perceived to be the best we could imagine, hope for, and live by!
At the end of this article, I am suggesting one and only one prayer. This prayer depicts a simple, attractive and powerful vision. It also proposes an obvious, yet very difficult and challenging way to live in fulfilment of that vision. In the world we know, dominated by humans with insatiable egos, the road we have to cross is constantly made harder by many discouraging disappointments, and seldom facilitated by few pleasant surprises.
Before you read the prayer and maybe embrace its essence, there are few questions that you should answer to yourself as you prepare to engage in this new way of living:
Are you a pleasant surprise to the people around you? If not, why not?
Do you have the will to become a pleasant surprise? If not, why not?
Do you have the conditions, qualities, and capabilities to become a pleasant surprise? If not, how can you acquire them?
Now, go ahead and pray….
Pray out loud and in your heart.
Pray every day and all the time.
Pray for love and those you hate.
Pray for hope and those who lost.
Pray for joy and those who weep.
Pray for life and the living.
Pray for health and the dying.
Pray for wealth, pray for beauty.
Pray, always pray!
Pray for things you need and others you want.
Pray for people you know and others you don’t.
Pray to remember, pray to forget.
Pray to keep and finally pray to let go!
Pray, pray and pray!
And when you pray, say:
“You, Me,
Teach Me the Wisdom to Be Kind with Every Soul.
Inspire Me the Courage to Repair my Mistakes.
Strengthen Me to Accept You, as You Try to Repair Your Mistakes with Me and to Ignore You if You Don’t.
Help Me Acquire the Power to Create, for You, Me, Peace of Mind and Joy.
Otherwise, Leave You, Me, Be!”
And for the believers in an almighty super-being, the utmost essence of wisdom, kindness, and care, the only prayer you will ever need to say, and repeat until you cannot or until you stop believing in that super-being, is:
“We are here, we are here, we are here!!!”
