One of my favorite art purchases ever is this ex voto from Guatemala. I found it at my favorite gallery about 9 years ago. It’s a thank you note to God (or in this case Christ the King of the Mountain) for having survived a school bus accident, hand stitched by the person giving thanks. As soon as I saw it, I was touched by it. At the time it was because it made me think about how often when we make it through something scary we move straight through the “thank goodness I’m alive” and on to: “whose fault was this?” and “How can I make sure I’m never so scared again?” or, in many cases, “Where can I get some financial recompense for being so threatened?” Taking the time and trouble to mark the sheer fact of survival when things could have turned out otherwise, to actually make a beautiful tribute to the fact of being saved… well, it just hadn’t ever occurred to me.
When I bought it, I had just graduated with my M.Div., been through a divorce, and had a brush with death in the form of a pulmonary embolism. I had plenty of reason to be thankful just to be walking around somewhat intact. And so I carried it home on the plane as a reminder of the constant need to offer thanks and praise. I don’t usually think of prayer as having magical powers or as something one does to stave off bad events in life. I certainly don’t tend to attribute miraculous survival to the person of Jesus. But whatever the direction of prayer, I am ever more convinced that it is important as an acknowledgement of the struggle and the joy of our lives. We sanctify them by offering them up, just as they are, to some great and ultimately unnamable force. And when we say them out loud, make them into art, preserve the significant moments of our lives, we come to understand them in a new way, to offer them a bigger context and sometimes a greater purpose.
As I have held onto this particular prayer from the journal of Zenaida, I’ve also come to realize the power of holding and honoring anothers’ prayer — one that belongs to someone I may never meet, with a life I probably can’t imagine. Most of us are familiar with prayer chains and different ways of sharing prayer as a way to magnify its efficacy or just to feel held in community. From Catholic altars and shrines to puja offered at Hindu shrines and temples, there seems to be a universal human need to offer prayers publicly, to share them and believe they can be heard — if not by the gods or goddesses, then by our fellow humans. Who knows, they could be one in the same.
One of my favorite parts of the liturgy we do at my church is the Morning Prayer. Before worship begins, anyone in the congregation is invited to write down a prayer and light a candle on a table at the front of the sanctuary. They can indicate whether they wish for it to remain private or want it to be shared, and then as I speak the rest of the prayer I read the words of prayer of the folks in the congregation. On the days when I think about its meaning too deeply, I end up choking back tears. There is something astoundingly powerful to me about having the honor of speaking the prayers of others. I consider it the centerpiece and most religiously important part of our worship.
I don’t know how many people are reading this blog (my stats just say how many hits there were, but I don’t know about duplicates or from where), but I’d like to offer this as a place where folks might also offer prayers to be shared. Not in a creepy chain-letter way, but as a way to offer up genuine thanks, or concern, or sorrow, and let it be held by a larger community that will offer some tender care. I can hear many of my beloved rationalist atheist UU’s rolling their eyes at how cheeseball it may seem. But I’d be willing to bet that even you folks have some deep yearnings that you’d love to get off your chests and have a little bit of help holding.
Give it up, dear readers. Do you have a thank you note to God? A lament? A tirade? A full-on angst directed at the universe? Let’s hear ‘em.
PS: Later update — I will have intermittent email access at best for the next week, so if you don’t see a comment right away, know that it will be posted as soon as I can get to it.
