Posted by Christine on: 04.02.2008 /
by Christine Wicker
A friend sent me this prayer. After I read it, I said, “That might be a prayer I could pray on my atheist days.” She emailed me back that she feels the same about it.
I wondered what the rest of you would think about it.
She wrote:
This is what I’m praying right now … in case it offers any help or comfort:
“God, let me remember that you are in charge of today, not me. Thus, I am turning all my friends and family members over to you for guidance and protection. My hope for them is that they all have the best possible day.
As I walk through today, I will attempt to examine what old ideas are at work in my behavior that block me from being who I really am and from doing what You would have me do. As those old ideas collapse, I know I will rediscover the essence of my true self, a spirit that is the manifestation of St. Francis’ prayer. Help me be that hope, that love, that light, that peace. May I rely on You for intuitive thinking rather than relying on my own intellectual thinking.
I am so thankful that my only job is to enjoy life - on life’s terms, not mine.”
I was struck by how many different ideas this prayer draws on. The last part might sound self centered, but in fact this woman spends a lot of time giving of herself to those around her. She works a hard job with such long hours that her weekends are rarely clear, keeps in daily communication with her husband and her boys, one in high school, one in college, and spends lots of weekends helping her widowed aunt or a young couple who are facing what will probably be a terminal illness for the father. They have three young children.
Like so many Americans, she seems caught among different kinds of philosophies and if you didn’t know better, you might think she wasn’t concerned about doing good in the world, but her life shows otherwise.
Her prayer combined with her actions remind me a little bit of a sociologist named Robert Bellah who said that Americans still have a sense of wanting to be good and do good. They just don’t have the language to describe it any more.
Her prayer shows her groping toward some sense of who she is, who God is, what can be asked and what she needs to draw back from expecting. I find myself in similar places every day.
It doesn’t feel that good. But maybe it is good.
Comment by: benjamin ady
1 04/2/08 7:21 AM | Comment Link |Christine,
Great to see another post from you!
My first reaction to the prayer reflects my more general reaction to what I call “American Christianity” (and I realize that of course your friend might not be American =).
The prayer seems to lack a … place for acknowledgment of evil. At one level it sounds very … nice, and perhaps even … beautiful. But how does one in the mindset of such a prayer deal with the presence of overwhelming darkness and horrifying evil in the world (the general thing) and with their contribution to it (the specific thing)? On that axis, it feels astoundingly unsatisfying, as a prayer.
Which is to say it feels *way* too easy and HHJJ.
Not to be excessively critical =) Do I make any sense?
Comment by: Helen
2 04/2/08 9:14 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin, isn’t “St. Francis’ prayer. Help me be that hope, that love, that light, that peace” an implicit reference to those things?
You don’t need light unless there’s darkness, hope unless there’s despair, etc - as the prayer (attributed to St Francis but probably not by him) more explicitly points out.
Speaking for myself, it didn’t strike me as an HHJJ prayer.
Christine I have trouble with the concept of an atheist’s prayer because for me, not praying was one of the most significant parts of moving away from Christianity closer to being an atheist.
If what you and your friend mean is, these are goals I have even when I’m not sure of God - then, yes, that makes sense to me. But expressing them as a prayer isn’t something I could do: one reason I stopped praying was because I’d rather not ask for help than ask someone who isn’t there and then be disappointed. I’d rather make these my goals and if God is there and wants to help me attain them, that’s wonderful. But I don’t want to ask - and actually, why would I need to? - since if he is there and he wants me to be this way of course he’ll help.
What I’m saying is - I often agree with the implicit and explicit goals expressed in prayer but I don’t want to pray them, just to have them and do my best to work towards them.
Comment by: Christine
3 04/3/08 11:04 AM | Comment Link |Hi guys,
These are interesting reactions.
First, what is HHJJ?
Does every prayer have to address evil? Perhaps her prayer does that in the way Helen mentions and in asking for protection and guidance.
I wouldn’t call this a perfect prayer. Just one that has interesting variations in it and seems like the kind of postmodern thing that’s going on so much as people patch together what they can believe in.
Benjamin, I do think there’s a nice, nice feel to it. Especially the last line. But as I look deeper into that line, I begin to reassess it. And that, too, seems to me to be where we are, meaning those of us who are searching for a place to stand spiritually speaking. As a Southern Baptist, I would have thought enjoying life was a complete heresy. Not at all what God requires.
I say it’s a prayer that I might be able to pray even when I’m an atheist because I think much of it is addressed to her own psyche. And I often think that our prayers are really pleas to our unconscious mind. And the prayer for others is just the kind of pleading that so many of us need to do just to feel that maybe things will be all right. It’s almost like carrying a lucky charm.
Comment by: Helen
4 04/3/08 1:31 PM | Comment Link |Thanks for your response, Christine.
I picked up on that in the last line too - that in some Christian circles it’s a new or heretical thought that God might want people to enjoy life. I like that this prayer affirms it’s ok to enjoy life.
I wondered if you were thinking this.
I’m fine with it as a plea to myself (I’d think of it more to my conscious mind than my unconscious mind probably - I’m not sure what my unconscious mind is). I need to think of it that way rather than as a prayer.
Comment by: benjamin ady
5 04/3/08 2:04 PM | Comment Link |Christine
Just very briefly for now. HHJJ is “Happy happy joy joy”. Like this (I take the liberty of quoting myself =):
Comment by: benjamin ady
6 04/3/08 2:16 PM | Comment Link |I guess probably not, for relatively normal people. For people who’s psyche is so … directed (twisted?) towards the dark side of everything, like me, perhaps yes. =)
and
That makes a lot of sense to me.
But “enjoy” is not the right word for me, in that last line. “Embrace” would work a lot better. “Enjoy” implies positive emotion–I must react to life, on life’s terms, with positive emotion. I think if there is a god, she does not require such–indeed she would make herself *ridiculous* to require such. I do think she insists on “embracing life on life’s terms”. Perhaps that’s more what the author meant? My experience with god, before I divorced her, was that she required exactly that, and did so patiently and exactingly (the horror of it), never letting a body escape–kind of like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
Lazarus: “Thank *God*, *finally* I can chill and stop *feeling*!!
Jesus: “Ha–tricked ya! I demand (with all the authority of the very writer of the novel) that you come back and be a character a bit longer. Like it or not. You shall not stay dead, nor frozen, nor … lukewarm. I shall have you hot and breathing, the blood coursing through your veins, feeling and thinking and … diving into the deep end of life. Every day. Come forth.”
Comment by: Helen
7 04/3/08 3:54 PM | Comment Link |Benjamin, I hear what you’re saying about the last line: I didn’t see it as a command to enjoy life but rather, permission to enjoy life. Which for people with backgrounds like Christine’s is rather refreshing.
Now I understand more why it felt HHJJ to you - since HHJJ is a forced false outward happiness.
Comment by: Elaine
8 04/4/08 8:55 AM | Comment Link |Christine - thank you for sharing this lovely prayer.
Whether I remove the references to God or not, I find it a life affirming statement and a good reminder to begin the day.
I’ve modified it show you what I mean:
“Let me remember that I am not in charge of the world today, only myself. Thus, I am choosing to respect all my friends and family members to make their own choices. My hope for them is that they all have the best possible day.
As I walk through today, I will attempt to examine what old ideas are at work in my behavior that block me from being who I really am and from doing what is right for me and the larger world. As those old ideas collapse, I know I will rediscover the essence of my true self, a spirit that is the manifestation of *St. Francis’ prayer.
Let me remember to model that hope, that love, that light, that peace to others.
I am so grateful that I have this life - and am seeking to accept it on its’ terms, not mine.”
Comment by: Beth Patterson
9 04/10/08 8:07 AM | Comment Link |This is a great dialogue–
For me, prayer right now consists of being present to the moment: not thinking or worrying into the future, or consumed with what I screwed up in the past. In the present moment is all possibility and I’m at peace there.
St. Francis’ prayer (whoever wrote it) has been a powerful catalyst for millions. That’s probably why there’s more garden statutes of St. Francis than any other saint or icon in the world (maybe not that those little round buddha-belly ones). The prayer has been an excellent teacher for me. And this is how I interpret it these days:
“In this present moment
I choose to be at peace, no matter what is happening.
I choose to be forgiving, no matter what is going on/coming at me
I choose to think of others as having no other real goals than mine, no matter what the appearances are of the lesser goals: peace for our children and our children’s children. And I trust with little reservation, that this is the same goal that God has for me.
Today, may I not throw my unworthiness, pain, grief or fear out into the universe, but keep them close to my heart where the warmth of the fire that I stoke there will eventually, like water on stone, wear these little nuisances down to nothing but love.”
Something like that-there prayer!
Beth, aka Myrabeth