I have been feeling led to pray, but most of what I want to say is not about prayer at all. What I want to say is about assumptions and perceptions about religion and religious people. I’ve been toiling over this post. I hope it comes out right. 

Before I get into it, let me say that I have a MOST beautiful family: wonderful, cherished, loving, tight-knit, and imperfect. We’re all doing the best we can. I don’t say this because I have to, I say this because it’s most undeniably the case. I am one lucky lady to call them mine.

My friend is blind. She has a seeing eye dog. The other day she went to a job interview and on the way out, the interviewer asked “Wait, so you can read and write, right?” My friend recounted this to me over the phone with exasperation: “I have my master’s degree and they asked me if I can read and write!” 

We’re all a bunch of idiots. We don’t know what we don’t know. And most of the time, I think we mean well. We seem to rely on mile markers to help us identify stuff. “Blind” to most of us simply means “can’t see, therefore can’t read, can’t write, can’t drive.” If you don’t have any blind friends in your circle of contacts, you probably haven’t thought much beyond that. You probably imagine brail and walking sticks. Before I met my friend, I hadn’t really considered the variance of blindness that can exist. I’m not calling myself a jerk for not thinking beyond that. I’m saying I am finite and I don’t have time to empathize with everyone, everywhere, and probably neither do you. It’s sad because being blind isn’t simple, being anything isn’t simple. Simply being isn’t simple. 

A lot of people back home know me through my family, and assume that I am Christian. When they find out that I don’t attend church, they look at my sideways and don’t understand. Wait, I don’t understand. Aren’t you Dr. J’s daughter? Don’t you believe in God? If not, then what do you believe? It’s happened more times than I can count. It’s felt infuriating, hurtful and invasive. How about it’s none of your business and How about I know you think I’m going to hell and How about just because my dad is a pastor doesn’t mean anything about my beliefs and How about Go. Away. You assumed that because I am not religious that I am blind, too, spiritually speaking, and that I am fumbling around. I know because I grew up going to a church that talked about me as “other,” as “lost.” I am the lost soul you talk about, ready to be rescued. I am the wandering sheep. Suddenly I’ve become all those things in your mind and we haven’t even discussed faith. 

When Nana died in July, my family clasped hands and circled around her prostrate, pale figure. I did not want to pray. 

I was sad and angry, and I was annoyed (to put it lightly) by a lot of things including that we were praying because it felt like bullshit.

Something serene and holy and formal like prayer was the opposite of what was happening inside me: Nana’s death was not graceful and not peaceful and not serene and our relationship with her was not formal or stiff or done out of obligation. 

The prayer did not comfort me, it incensed me to my absolute core. 

I felt like I was watching us pray for her. I was thinking: “What you’re doing is stupid. Stop it.” My dad read a passage from the Bible. I also thought that was stupid. It’s not that it was wrong or insensitive but it wasn’t what I wanted to do at the most sad moment of goodbye, to feel so broken in half by my grandmother’s death and to crack open Scripture. It felt like being handed a pamphlet on vehicle insurance when you’re standing over a ditch, watching steam billow out of the hood of your old car. Thanks for that, maybe I’ll wrap some gum in it later. 

The prayer ended and I had to greet the reality, again, of Nana’s body in front of me without a spirit, without a soul. I felt close to her except that she wasn’t there. She had suffered, she wasn’t one of those to give up the fight peaceably. And in one moment, she was gone.

How could I pray? 

On Sunday, I called a friend to tell her that Nana had died. 

It’s been well over a month since her passing. My dear friend, loving, wonderful, generous beyond measure, launched into a story about a neighbor of a distant friend of her’s who recently died. It felt like she was telling me a story about her hairdresser’s cousin’s niece. She told me that there were several odd parallels between her and this stranger. She was telling me that these parallels were special touches from God, putting his fingerprints on this interaction to remind her of his presence. For all of these reasons, she explained to me, “I know you are going to be with Nana again someday.” I told her that I don’t believe that but that I miss Nana and continued to tell her of Nana’s passing and her ever-widening absence.

I sat in Big Bertha at Alaska Car Rental and started to cry. I cried because I was sad that Nana was gone. Simply sad. She is gone and I can’t call her to say “Nana, you’re gone and I’m sad” like I did about any other heartbreak. My voice cracked as I spoke to her. 

She told me the story of when her father passed and how he visited her in a dream. It was a lot to take in. It was more than I could actually absorb. Crestfallen people aren’t especially spongy. 

Then my co-worker rode up and I had to get off the phone, interrupting my phone friend’s story about losing her dad. My coworker saw that I was upset. 

I explained the conversation I had just had.

My phone friend and I had passed like two ships: She was on the God boat, I was on the M/S “What the Hell?”

My coworker said “Now why is it that you are not religious, exactly? I’m just asking because you’ve mentioned it before and I am curious.” 

Now let me pause for a moment and explain that my coworker is the polar opposite of my phone friend. My phone friend’s voice and essence and complete being is doused in honey, lined with caramel and dusted with confectioner sugar. Everything is “Hello Sweet Precious Friend. We are so richly blessed by Him and everyday is a birthday” (this is hyperbole except it mostly isn’t). My coworker, on the other hand, is a retired halibut fisherman. She curses like a sailor and gives no shits. She’s a breast cancer survivor who is single, drinks two cups of green tea every morning and has a dog. Her mother died this year and she has talked with me before about losing Nana, comparing our losses. 

Well, so. I answered her question. I told her what I don’t believe. I told her about my upbringing. I told her about my friends back home and how different our philosophies are. I told her I am the black sheep of my family, albeit the most clean-cut black sheep she’ll probably meet. 

I felt really good about my elevator speech. 10 years of trying to explain myself and I can finally do it semi-succinctly. Maybe it takes a conversation with a halibut fisherman.

But I will say, in my own defense, “What do you believe?” is a hard and unspecific question to answer. “What do you believe about Jesus?” is equally unspecific, while we’re at it. Not to mention it makes you feel like you are on the stand, having to defend yourself. 

But: “why aren’t you religious?” Somehow that’s an easier question to answer. 

On Monday I jog-walked along the main street that overlooks the water, the mist loomed large and it was all beautiful. The lighting wasn’t dramatic, it was just enough. I was thinking about my friend’s son who disappeared (they live here in AK). He was found that morning, cold and disoriented. He’s struggling, so his family is too. He too has a wonderful family. 

I wanted to pray for him. I wanted to write on Facebook “Praying for him and your family.” I wanted to actually pray too, not just say it.

But I couldn’t get really beyond the thought: “I want to pray for him.” How would I start it? “Dear God, please help my friend. Please comfort his family. Amen, Natalie” Actually wait, you don’t sign prayers. You just say “Amen.” 

I haven’t really prayed in years. I have several journals full of prayers from high school and even college. 

I wrote down the names of people I knew who I wanted to pray for. I used to pray for people that they would be saved. I also prayed for people by name, just because I knew them. But then, I would have conversations with God too. I would write down my thoughts to share with Him. 

The church I went to in high school talked A LOT about quiet times. On the requisite list for being a Christian, “Quiet Times with God” was at the top. Quiet times were for reflection, communication with God, and prayer. They were also, if you were really intent or something, supposed to reveal things to you on occasion. I don’t remember any epiphanies from my Quiet Times, but I did write down my thoughts and my prayers. 

My understanding on prayer was that the most powerful purpose of prayer was to seek and receive salvation. For me, I invited Jesus into my heart at age 5 on the side of the road after listening to a Psalty tape about asking Jesus into your heart. (Psalty was like Barney but Christian and a big blue book whose name I can only guess was spelled with a Ps because it was alluding to Psalms). My Mom pulled over because I started asking questions in response to the things Psalty said on the tape. I guess she thought it warranted a stop on the side of the road so we can pray sort of thing, but that was 25 years ago so my memory could be wrong. 

Just as I get my elevator speech arranged to the letter about why I don’t believe in God, I’m finding myself wanting to pray. I want to tell his family “I’m praying for you.” In the last 10 years, I’ve taken to saying “Holding you close” and “Keeping you in my thoughts.” It’s been the best of the options, since I don’t pray. But thoughts don’t feel powerful enough of an offering. Thoughts are ugly little pesky things that track mud through the floor of your mind. While I don’t totally understand prayer, I’m trying this on for size: 

Prayers float a bit higher and elevate you to a, hopefully, sacred pursuit of concerning yourself with the wellbeing of another person. Maybe a prayer is a thought attached to a balloon. 

And here are my thoughts on why we, as a people, are drawn to the concept of prayer:

I think we all want some sort of way to help, some control, when shitty things happen. 

It’s hard to feel so helpless in the face of someone else’s suffering. 

If we can just pray hard enough or long enough, maybe we’ve made a difference, maybe we’ve twisted the fates. 

It’s less lonely if you have someone to talk to about your concerns, and maybe prayer is that conversation that makes you feel heard. Maybe it helps with anxiety to think that someone else might pray for you in your time of need, too. 

And lastly, prayer can be comforting in the midst of your own fear.

But I think those are all reasons why we pray, I’m still not any more convinced that prayer is an actual force of change. I don’t know if it makes any sort of difference in the end. I think if prayer really did have power, we wouldn’t have all the tragic illnesses and senseless loss we see every day. 

I think we believe prayer has the power to change things because we want that to be true. 

But. I’m still compelled to think about another person and call it prayer.