Prayer: An Interesting Perspective

Gerard van der Leun has written a quirky piece on prayer. Well-worded; worth the read.

It is only recently that I've come, in my dotage, to see that prayer -- even unheard or unanswered -- can be a powerful intellectual force in one's life. And by this I mean prayer in its most personally humiliating and elevating form: down on the knees and speaking out loud. Daily. Very abasing and very uplifting at one and the same time.
For most of the time, answers come there none. But that's the way of prayer. If prayer were the vending machine of God, we'd spend all our time on our knees between meals and lovemaking and let basic maintenance of roofs and refrigeration go to Hell. Nope, prayer as a constant begets random answers, and not always the straight-forward ones we were looking for, because we are a very simple Smart Monkey.

Indeed, it has occurred to me, in my very dim monkey brain, that prayer can work even if God Himself does not exist. Yes, He's just that clever. Prayer seems to be a need hard-wired into our limited cortex. If you doubt this, please go out and sit under an artillery barrage for an hour or two and then come back to continue this discussion.

As I was saying, prayer -- with or without God -- makes us stronger and our desires and abilities more focussed just by happening. As a result, things you pray for tend to happen to you more often than things you don't pray for simply because your abilities are more concentrated on the outcome. Pretty clever wiring for a God who does not exist.

You may, of course, because you have free will, mark it down to a random effect of DNA fresh from the uber-automated Evolution Factory. And you can explain it all, over and over again, to the other members of your religion. That doesn't mean your memo is going all the way to the Top. After all, what makes you think God wants to read your plaintive little magazine articles in the portentously titled "National Geographic" or "Scientific American?" He not only wrote the blueprints and whipped up the algorithm for the Evolution Factory, He did Charles Darwin in a nanosecond's afterthought just because He felt we weren't getting onto it fast enough. Before Darwin we had clues, but we didn't yet have a prayer. Now we've got fish with feet on the backs of our cars so others can tell our way-new religion from the
old.

Prayer's important to God because it is His way of staying current with the various problems besetting free-will in smart monkeys. After all, He may be a bit detached with love from this part of His creation, but He knows we have, well, "issues" with life and all that, and He'd like to know. Prayer is, in a sense, God's suggestion box; which is why many think that not all prayers are answered and why some, like the Tibetans, think that if you repeat a prayer often enough it gets noticed and answered. This irritating approach to prayer probably cost them their nation even though it hasn't shut them up. In general, it is probably not a good idea, but who am I to criticize? I'll leave that to the Dalai Lama who seems to be carrying on just fine.

For me prayer is done best the old-fashion way: on knees, a hearty "How are you today, God, and thank you for the miracle of creation and for letting me witness one more day of it, and, oh, while we're at it...." and then I slip one in quick and move on to, "Thanks again for being God, Have a good one." And off it goes.

But what comes back? Precious little but I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining at all. Let me repeat that in case He wasn't listening, "I'm all right with whatever You
want to do."

You see, my theory about why prayers are answered but rarely concerns God's work load. As noted above, He's one God who is running a very big universe. Perhaps He's got the whole thing franchised and He's running thousands of universes in a host of different dimensions, all with local variations to the main menu. We don't know. We can't know. But if you grant even one universe to this one God, you've got to admit this would be a very busy Supreme Being. Even being omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient, You'd still have an In-Box beyond the human mind's capacity for bogglement.

So what do You do? You do what Big Executives everywhere do. You show up for work early and leave late. Every so often you come in on week-ends. You always take a ton of work home. Believe me when I say your arms too short to lift God's attache case. Even then the occasional all-nighter is not out of the question if you're doing a complicated project like, say, a platypus.

As God, it is good you don't have a wife because she'd make your home life a (dare I say it?) living hell. There are, after all, some advantages to having a Son by a mortal woman, not that She's any less holy for that, but at least She isn't waiting at home with the dinner growing cold for the multi-billioneth time. Better still, You don't have to check in from somewhere out near the galactic core of Andromeda.

But given even the most hard working, attentive and desk-bound CEO God we monkeys can imagine, even God has got to, sooner or later, take a break. A little stroll down the corridor to check in with the staff -- management by walking around so to speak. A brief visit to the God's room for a little wash-up and wet-comb. A small working lunch with The Boys. For all we know, a weekend in Vegas in, we hope, the high-roller suite with very attentive room service. After all, when You are God you can set your own schedule.

So, for whatever reason, God is sometimes away from his desk. But does that stop the prayers? Not a bit. They keep coming in at the same pounding rate that they always do from every corner of the cosmos. After all, prayers are postage paid so you don't every have to look around for a stamp. You just make it, hit "Send," and, Bingo, off it goes with that little swooshing sound that comes with Macintosh Mail.

And on like that. A bit irreverent, but...

HT: The Anchoress