To spend a day in prayer
Friday, May 14, 2021
I began writing this piece on Election Day 2020. I’ve always enjoyed the communal aspect and buzzing energy of Election Day, and this past one was no different. What was different was my anxiety and existential dread of the possibility that the sitting president would stay in office. Still, I was excited. And maybe even a little bit hopeful. Maybe we would course correct, or, what I really feel like saying: maybe we wouldn’t fuck this up again.
This was my mindset as I began the day. I had woken up and started making school lunches for the kids before I went into their rooms to rouse them. As I was assembling, the thought suddenly struck me to: spend the day in prayer.
Immediately I thought, what an odd thing for me to think, at this point in my life. 15 or 20 years ago, it would not have been strange. Spending a day in prayer was a common refrain used in the community that birthed me and molded me. People would spend a day in prayer when they faced a big decision of some sort, when they needed guidance and direction, or when they felt anxious and untethered. What comes to mind is a hallowed space, quiet and solemn and dark. A person hunched over their bible pre-dawn, with a notebook splayed open to the side to take notes. This was what Quiet Time should look like, and it should definitely happen for at least an hour on a daily basis. Spending a day in prayer was an extension of Quiet Time.
Prayer, then, is not foreign to me. And the reason I still pray today is largely because of this upbringing—we would pray multiple times throughout each day: before every meal, before every sports game, each night before bed, before meetings, after meetings, before chapel, after chapel, before a big test, etc. It was a way to stay in near constant communion with God. It’s a practice that is practically written into my DNA, and I still welcome the ritual—it grounds me and calms me. I’m just not sure I understand what it is, exactly, that I’m doing anymore, when I pray.
So in a roundabout way, it makes sense then, that I pray for my children every night before bed. It’s similar to the Lord’s Prayer, in that it is largely the same prayer over and over, with various specifics added in depending on what is going on in our lives and in the world at that time, and it has become ritual, something that they, nor me, do not like to skip over. It is one I have repeated thousands of times over them throughout the years. It’s really quite elementary, but the routine and familiarity are comforting. I pray for health and bodily safety and kindness, both within and shown to them; things that presumably every parent desires for their child.
But the sentiment to spend the day in prayer felt like a ghost from my past reaching out to me, an old tradition I have not engaged in, in years. Or, so I initially thought. Maybe the only thing that sounds tired to me about spending a day in prayer is my un-evolved interpretation of what that can mean. Perhaps spending a day in prayer is not as rigidly defined as I once thought, maybe it doesn’t have to look like what I was taught it ought to look like.
Maybe spending a day in prayer can be a mindset, a worldview, as well as a specific act. What if it looks like devotion and compassion and empathy and service. Perhaps it can take the shape of resistance and justice and joy and your vote, and yes, even anger. It can be rest and it can be work. It can be humor and gratitude. I think that what matters is this: is it rooted in love? I believe that anger can, at times, be rooted in love.
***
I have been thinking a lot lately about certainty. How corrosive and distracting it can be to crave it and, paradoxically, the freedom that comes when we loosen our grip on it. I have found that to embrace uncertainty leads to curiosity and subsequently, growth. Prayer is, ironically, an uncertain but comforting practice for me; I’m not exactly sure who or what I am praying to, but it contributes to a sense of rhythmic familiarity and wonder and belonging—which is, in and of itself, quite strange and even funny, because this sentiment surely brands me as a heretic, a desperately lost soul, an outcast, where I come from.
It’s now May, and we are well into 2021. We know the outcome of the election, though many still reject it. For me, a momentary sense of relief, a feeling that I can let my breath out after four years of chaos. Relief, but not certainty.
Some time ago, I had a conversation with a recently new apostolic christian and it left me feeling quite unsettled, which I wasn’t expecting. This individual was kind and pleasant, but adamant that they knew God’s will for their life. I thought to myself: how and why do you say that you know what God’s will is? Where he is? What she is? If she is? I think I felt bothered because her certainty was enviable in a way, and I just don’t possess that anymore. As we talked, she shared about her life and how she got to where she is, and I realized that she has known hurt and pain and suffering, both in and out of the church. She is looking for belonging, and peace. Who isn’t? Who am I to tell her that her experience with God and her time within the church is not valid or real or meaningful? I hold that in one hand and this in the other: I find some of the beliefs and ideas held dearly by the church and christians to be corrosive, to cause real world harm to others, either directly or indirectly. This is a tension that I’m not sure what to do with.
Sufjan is playing but the house is otherwise quiet, I keep watching a bumblebee investigate my hydrangea outside my open window, the earth and the air are finally warming. This is where I am. This is where I am.
