Prayer
There is a story told about a priest and a rabbi who were very good friends. The rabbi hadn’t ever been to a boxing match and the priest was a great fan of boxing so he took the rabbi to the next local event. Just before the bell rang to open the fight, one of the boxers made the Sign of the Cross. The rabbi said to the priest, “What does that mean?” The priest replied, “Nothing if he doesn’t know how to fight.”
At the risk of rushing in where “angels fear to tread”, with almost fifty years in the formal and informal study of theology and the history and philosophy of religion, I feel I must comment on some of the ideas being proposed in several recent Haldimand newspapers. Let me begin by defining some terms. There is prayer and there is worship. There is private prayer and public or congregational prayer. There are prayers of adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and petition or supplication. Worship is usually defined as a total attitude toward life so that one can worship anywhere. The student working to get good grades is worshipping. The parent working to be a good parent is worshipping. This is the case in the Jewish-Christian tradition and “dharma” in most of the religions that originated in India . This attitude, most succinctly put, is “to go about doing good”.
(Our Jewish brothers and sisters say that when God sees a person doing a good deed which they do not have to do, God says, “For this moment it was worth making the world.” It’s anthropomorphic to speak this way but the point is clear.)
All prayer and worship depend enormously on one’s concept of God. If God is seen as a Superperson up in the sky, as Lord and Master, as Friend and Lover, as the Power for Good at the heart of the world that makes anything in nature possible, as the Force that makes it possible for me to become fully human, prayer will be different. (These are just a few prevalent concepts of God in contemporary spirituality.) If people read their religious scriptures literally prayer and worship are likely to differ greatly from those who search their scriptures for the context in which they were written and look for the spirit that motivated those believers hoping to carry that spirit into their own lives.
Congregational or public prayer is usually intended to reinforce the attitude of the group that gathers in terms of their doctrines and their ethics. Private prayer can take as many forms as the individuals who are involved in it.
If you are still with me at this point, thank you for persisting. I am trying to make clear that there are as many kinds of prayers, as there are pray-ers, that is those who pray. And that is of major importance is what has been being put forth in terms of prayer in the mayor’s office and indeed the kind of prayer that is reported going on there. Let me try to make a few more things clear.
There is scientific evidence to support that those persons who are prayed for, persons to whom positive energy is sent and that is what much prayer is, do receive the benefits of those good wishes. Unfortunately, the same is true of persons who are “cursed” in any way or to whom negative energy is directed. I am not going to go into detail here but much of the work along this line has been done at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka , Kansas . This work, incidentally, has been done across main line religions and across members of those religions from ultra-orthodox to exceedingly liberal members. Much of this study was begun in the early 1960s.
Another landmark along this line is the work of Dr. Herbert Benson in his 1972 book, “The Relaxation Response”. Dr. Benson still works in this field and much of his research is used with a variety of persons dealing with all kinds of illnesses. Just a few years ago Dr. Benson traveled around the world to a variety of convents, monasteries, ashrams, gudwaras, and hooked pray-ers up to a variety of machines that recorded their brain waves, respiration, and heart activities. His monitoring indicated a release from distress, pain, and suffering during these activities especially connected with chanting and in some cases when people did not even understand the language in which they were chanting or praying.
(Persons interested in following up on any of this might simply put “relaxation response” in their internet search engine and can find this and more on many locations on the net. This response is used regularly now with persons with heart and stroke diseases and also with a variety of persons dealing with kinds of cancer. It has been especially effective in dispelling depression.)
I feel the need to mention that all of my studies since my early thirties have been done in the context of the religions of my world neighbours not just my own Catholic tradition into which I was born. I did do that for the first thirty years of my life and continue to stay abreast of what that tradition is about. But Vatican Council II which closed in 1965 the very year that I turned thirty, advised lay members of my church in particular to come to know our world religious neighbours and, indeed, men and women of good will anywhere. We were invited to work for the sustainable, integral human development of all peoples in our time and place as Jesus had done in his. I continue to work to do that.
Let me end this reflection with suggesting to you what that integral human development means as proposed by the United Nations Development Programme. They have said that the people of our world need food, clothing, shelter, education to get work, education to keep work, sufficient leisure for reflection (religion), a safe and healthy environment, some part in the decision-making that affects their lives, and cultural liberty. This is at the heart of my personal prayer and worship.
I hope that all our prayers will be prayers of loving-kindness for ourselves and for all others and that we will pray always and all ways that what good we have and are will remain with us and grow greater.
Catherine Berry Stidsen lives in Cayuga. She holds a doctorate in Religious Studies from McMaster University , Hamilton , Ontario . After a thirty-year career in secondary school teaching and some sessional lecturing at universities, she took early retirement to be of service to her local community especially in revitalization efforts. She also volunteers her services to a variety of churches, schools, and other non-profit organizations. She has been a teacher of world religions courses in Elderhostel programmes and other senior programmes.